Associate Professor of Pediatrics

Dr. Eric McCollum is a pediatric pulmonologist at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.  He has expertise in global child respiratory health with more than ten years of clinical and research experience in low-resource settings in southern Africa and south Asia.

After having lived in Malawi for five years as a clinician with the Baylor Pediatric AIDS Corps and as a NIH Fogarty International Clinical Research Fellow, Dr. McCollum is now primarily based in the countries of Lesotho and Bangladesh.  He is the principal investigator of a NIH K01 International Research Scientist Development Award, through the Fogarty International Center, examining the role of pulse oximetry in Bangladeshi children with clinical pneumonia.

Dr. McCollum is also a co-investigator for a study comprehensively examining the effectiveness of the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine in rural Bangladeshi children. In the southern African country of Malawi Dr. McCollum is the principal investigator of a randomized controlled trial investigating the effectiveness of bubble continuous positive airway pressure in children hospitalized with severe clinical pneumonia. He has successfully designed, led, or co-led several multi-site studies in developing countries throughout Africa and Asia including the novel application of pulse oximetry for children with clinical pneumonia by rural Malawian frontline health workers and digital auscultation as a respiratory diagnostic in six low-resource countries participating in the Pneumonia Etiology Research for Child Health study.

Dr. McCollum has been recognized globally for his contributions to child respiratory health.  He has won multiple early career investigator awards and is currently a member of the World Health Organization Technical Support Network for pneumococcal conjugate vaccine impact studies and a member of the World Health Organization expert global working group for the World Health Organization chest radiograph guidelines for children.  He holds a joint faculty appointment in the Department of International Health at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.

Expertise

• Pediatric Pulmonary Medicine

Research Interests

• Global health
• Child pneumonia in developing countries
• Oxygen delivery in low resource settings; pulse oximetry in developing countries
• Digital auscultation as a pediatric respiratory diagnostic in low resource settings
• Non-invasive ventilation in developing countries
• Asthma in low resource settings
• Air pollution and respiratory health outcomes in developing countries
• Pneumococcal conjugate vaccine effectiveness in low resource settings