John (Jack) Woodall, a co-founder of ProMED, dies - October 24, 2016

[sharon sanders]

Helen Branswell has authored a nice article about Jack. I did not know him but I had an occasional correspondence with him through the years. He was very kind in those emails.

FluTrackers offers condolences to everyone at ProMED and to his family and friends.

Thank you Jack for being a trail blazer.

[sharon sanders]

Published Date: 2016-10-27 21:25:51
Subject: PRO/ALL> Obituary: John Payne (Jack) Woodall, Co-founder of ProMED-mail
Archive Number: 20161027.4584430
OBITUARY: JOHN PAYNE (JACK) WOODALL, CO-FOUNDER OF PROMED-MAIL
************************************************** ************
A ProMED-mail post
http://www.promedmail.org
ProMED-mail is a program of the
International Society for Infectious Diseases
http://www.isid.org

ProMED-mail is deeply saddened to announce the death of its co-founder, Jack Woodall, on Monday evening, 24 Oct 2016, London time.


[1]
Date: Thu 27 Oct 2016
From: Larry Madoff [edited]


To say that Jack was critically important to ProMED-mail's birth, growth, and successes would be a vast understatement. His creativity and foresight led to ProMED's creation, to building it from its 40 original members to the over 80 000 we have today. On his watch, ProMED grew from a handful of dedicated volunteers in 1994 to more than 50 professionals in 35 countries today.

Jack articulated and focused the guiding principles that remain integral to our philosophy today. He understood that transparency in disease reporting is necessary for the early discovery of outbreaks. In an era when the International Health Regulations only required a handful of diseases to be reported by the member countries, Jack prided himself on beating the official sector in the public dissemination of outbreak reports. The One Health concept underpins all of our efforts at ProMED. Jack saw early on that so many emerging pathogens were zoonotic and that you could not begin to understand emerging infectious diseases without understanding the health of agricultural animals, wildlife, and the environment. Finally, Jack believed that ProMED should be seen as a complement to the traditional public health system, not an antagonist. That we should not criticize the action (or inaction) of governmental health authorities, but through our example, encourage them to make the right decisions, especially toward transparency.

When I joined ProMED in 2002 (a latecomer compared with some of the others whose comments follow), Jack took me under his wing, sharing his knowledge, insights, and philosophy. He was a type they don't make anymore: The dashing Cambridge/London School-trained Brit traveling the world to where the action was -- perhaps a little bit of a James Bond. Indeed, when I was to meet Jack for the 1st time at a hotel bar, he described himself, tongue only slightly in cheek, as looking like Sean Connery. He became a friend and mentor to me and I was glad to have had the chance to visit with him and Mary in London just 3 weeks ago.

We at ProMED rededicate ourselves to fulfilling Jack's vision in service of global health.

--
Larry Madoff
Editor
ProMED-mail


******
[2]
Date: Tue 25 Oct 2015
From: Marjorie Pollack [edited]


Jack was a remarkable person in many ways -- a brilliant mind, a warm and caring person on both the professional as well as the personal level, and a mentor to too numerous to count individuals, including me. In the obituaries that follow, one sees the picture of a very accomplished scientist working in global health after years as a research virologist with an academic and professional pedigree making him bigger than life. He was passionate in his work, and tenacious to further the goal of disease control and prevention.

In his words describing his background for the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine [LSHTM] alumni page (http://www.lshtm.ac.uk/alumni/survey...k_woodall.html), Jack said,
"I was educated at Bedford School and Clare College Cambridge, and obtained my PhD in entomology and virology at LSHTM in 1956. My 1st position was as a member of Her Majesty's Overseas Research Service, working at the East African Virus Research Institute in the then colonial capital of Uganda, Entebbe. There I was Cubmaster of the only inter-racial Cub Pack in the country, member of the Town Council, Special Constable with the police force, and Entertainment Secretary of the Entebbe Club. My work involved yellow fever and discovery of new viruses" [one of the new viruses included Zika virus and o'nyong'nyong virus].

"I had visited Brazil as a member of the Cambridge University Amazon Expedition 1954, and after Uganda became independent, I returned to Brazil in 1965 as Director of the Rockefeller Foundation Virus Laboratory in Bel?m, Par?, where again I carried out research on yellow fever and discovery of new viruses. I left Bel?m in 1971 to work for the New York State Department of Health on mosquito- and tick-borne viruses. In 1975 I became Director of the San Juan Laboratories of the Centre for Disease Control (CDC), US Public Health Service in Puerto Rico, responsible for the dengue and schistosomiasis programmes there.

"In 1980 I was seconded to the World Health Organization, where I travelled extensively leading teams to assist developing countries in improving their health laboratories, health services management, primary health care, and health financing. I introduced the WHO programme on AIDS to 4 African countries. I was also a member of the WHO Staff Committee, General Secretary of the Federation of International Civil Servants Associations for a year, and editor of UNSpecial, the monthly magazine for United Nations international civil servants in Geneva.

"In 1994 I retired from WHO, returned to my old post with New York State, and co-founded and still work with ProMED-mail, the free online global network reporting outbreaks of emerging infectious diseases (http://www.promedmail.org).

"In 1998 I went back to Brazil as Visiting Professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), doing research on emerging diseases. I finally retired in 2007 and live in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

"In 2003 I joined the One Health Initiative team, a pro bono clearing house for global information about the One Health concept, bringing human and veterinary medicine and environmental health workers together to combat the many challenges posed by human diseases emerging from animal reservoirs."

ProMED was Jack's baby and for those of us in the ProMED family he was and will always be the father of ProMED. He, along with Steve Morse and Barbara Hatch Rosenberg were the founders of the Program to Monitor Emerging Diseases, an initiative that was launched in August 1994 in response to the 1991 IOM (Institute of Medicine) review on Emerging Infectious Diseases that concluded there were significant weaknesses in global disease surveillance that would lead to delayed detection of emerging diseases. It was decided to use the then nascent internet as a platform, as well as a source of information through which a network of like-minded individuals, with an interest in emerging infectious diseases could communicate -- a "social network" in today's parlance. Jack became the public voice in developing this network, starting with 40 individuals. When I subscribed in early April 1995 (after learning of ProMED through word of mouth) Jack was leading the discussions and welcoming new subscribers through posts announcing a new country joining the list of subscribers or through a "welcome to our 200th subscriber" posting. Early moderators joining Jack included Charlie Calisher and Martin Hugh-Jones. In the early days of ProMED, the discussions were easygoing, often filled with humor in the mod (moderator) comments, but always aimed at increasing the transparency in disease surveillance at the global level.

Jack in his role as a mentor, collecting mentees wherever he was, co-opted me to join the ProMED family in 1997. Memories of those days included Jack's drive for ProMED to be "the 1st kids on the block" to report on outbreaks, with a joy every time ProMED "got the scoop" before the official sector did. The impact of this approach was to help pave the way for increased transparency and a drive for countries to strive to identify emerging diseases and outbreaks sooner. At one international workshop, a Ministry of Health authority mentioned that in the early days, they "hated" ProMED, for finding outbreaks and reporting them before the Ministry of Health knew about them. Then they took on the challenge to beat ProMED in reporting globally when an outbreak occurred in their country A testimony to Jack and his efforts.

Jack was awarded the prestigious Richard M Taylor award by the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene [ASTMH] this year [2016]. The Richard M Taylor Award is given every 3 years to a person who has made outstanding contributions to arbovirology throughout his or her career. While the award is traditionally given at the ASTMH annual meeting, which will be next month [November 2016], the award was presented to Jack in London at the hospital 2 weeks ago.

On the personal side, "Jack was born in China in the British zone, in Tientsin. His parents were there because his mother's parents had been Missionaries there and his father had gone out as the Headmaster of the International/British School. Both were British/English. He and his family were interned in a Japanese Prison camp for the whole of the war. They had been told to leave China and were booked on a ship leaving from Shanghai sail to UK but when they got there some influential Chinese had taken their tickets and so there was no room for them so they had to stay in China and were put into prison camp. They left for England when the war was over. (Jack always said that it was while he was in prison camp that he was able to wander in a derelict space overgrown with weeds, where he took an interest in insects that a doctor in the camp identified for him, and that started his interest in science.)

"Jack got his US citizenship when he had worked for 9 years with the Rockefeller Foundation [in New York City] and they said he could only remain with them if he took out US citizenship." But even though he took US citizenship, he did not lose his charming British accent and sense of humor. He is survived by his wonderful loving and devoted companion Mary Crawshaw, and his 5 children by former wives and Mary's 3 daughters who were very close to Jack, with mutual fondness. (The personal details about Jack in quotations above were provided by Mary Crawshaw)

Jack, we will miss you sorely. We will miss your tenacity, your corrections if there were mistakes in posts, your delightful sense of humor, your insisting that all Yellow fever posts should be treated as "RED" (urgent) and be posted at least 2 days before they are finished. We will miss your continued collection of mentees and converts to the ProMED philosophy. But most of all, we will miss your smiling face and all your continued contributions that made you a delight to work with.

--
Marjorie P Pollack
Deputy Editor
ProMED-mail


******
[3]
Date: 25-27 Oct 2016
From: ProMED family members - past and present [edited]


Stephen Morse
Co-founder ProMED-mail
Professor Epidemiology at the Columbia University Medical Center
Director, Infectious Disease Epidemiology Certificate Program
New York City, NY, USA
--------------------------------------------------
Jack was truly larger than life. I'll sorely miss his infectious humo(u)r, his insight, his dedication, and his generosity of spirit. Jack was a great inspiration, and remains one of my true heroes. His many contributions to science and to our lives will long be remembered and continue to inspire future generations.

****
Charlie Calisher
Center for Infection and Immunity
Professor, College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences
State University
Fort Collins, CO, USA
--------------------------------------------------
I do not even remember when I first met Jack. Certainly, it was long before 1996, when I joined ProMED as Moderator at Jack's invitation. He and I put together the only e-mail addresses we had and formed a list of people who might be interested in receiving ProMED mail each day. It was a very short list, perhaps 25 names. It grew like Topsy, of course, and pretty soon we were inundated with good information and crap, so we had to be careful to either not post some messages or to post them with comments indicating that we would like more definitive information before we would accept it as fact. That was tough sledding.

I was working 10-12 hours each day after work and Jack was probably not sleeping at all. I roomed with him at the ASTMH meetings each year for decades and, if I awoke in the middle of the night, there would be Jack, working on his laptop, getting one more message out. He was not compulsive, he was devoted, to ProMED and to the dissemination of information. We both considered that information should be freely available to all.

Jack's legacy will long outlive Jack.

Warts and all, like everyone, I loved the guy.

[From Charlie's Book "Lifting the Impenetrable veil"]:
"John P Woodall is another of the many experienced, resourceful and accomplished arbovirologists. He was born in what was then British territory in Tientsin (Tianjin), China, a 3rd generation member of a British family in China. After graduating from Cambridge University, in 1958 he obtained a PhD degree from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine at London University. Her Majesty's Overseas Research Service appointed him to the East Africa Virus Research Institute in Entebbe, Uganda, where he stayed long enough to help describe the epidemic of fever caused by o'nyong'nyong' alphavirus with Miles C Williams and Andrew J Haddow and the isolation of Congo virus (now Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever nairovirus) with Williams and David I Simpson. In 1965 Woodall traveled to the Rockefeller Foundation virus laboratories in New York City for additional training, remaining to become a staff member of the Foundation. Later he was appointed director of the Foundation's virus laboratory in Bel?m, Brazil. His arbovirological accomplishments there included not only virus isolations, but summarizing and documenting the distribution of the arboviruses of Brazil.

"After spending another year with the Foundation when it moved its arbovirus laboratories to Yale University, the peripatetic Woodall moved to the New York State Department of Health Laboratories in Albany, New York, as head of its arbovirus laboratory. Then, from 1975 to 1983 he worked for the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, being stationed in Puerto Rico as the director of the San Juan Laboratories, then taking an assignment at WHO, Geneva. He returned to Albany in 1994 as director of the state arbovirus laboratory, but eventually settled at Brazil's Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in its Institute of Biomedical Sciences.

"Woodall was one of the founding members of ProMED-mail, the Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases, an invaluable internet-based reporting system that rapidly and globally disseminates information on outbreaks of infectious diseases, and which appears in many of our mailboxes each day. He remains an active editor of ProMED-mail and an enthusiastic supporter of the need for rapid, accurate (honest), and complete disease reporting."

****
Martin Hugh-Jones
ProMED-mail Animal Disease Assistant Moderator
Director, WHO Collaborating Center for Reference and Training in Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems for Veterinary Public Health
Coordinator, Anthrax Research & Control Working Group
Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge, LA, USA
--------------------------------------------------
You ask for contributions to Jack's in-house obituary. Many great things are being said about the dear man, who is already badly missed, but I think there is already a tendency to indicate that he walked on water. Believe me, he didn't and I probably miss him the more because of his various faults and mistakes.

When we recruited a new veterinary moderator, I warned that we all make mistakes and to be patient with Jack, who would sometimes as Top Mod come out with a less than wise editorial decision. I would advise to wait a couple of weeks and he would commit some bloomer that could be used to persuade him to reverse his previous editorial proscription. And low and behold he would and he did. It was and is the moderator group discussion and consensus that Jack initiated that makes being a moderator such a daily pleasure. As I said, Jack did not walk on water and we were the better for it. Our in-house expertise and experience is deeply satisfying, even when we occasionally get it wrong.

****
Tom Yuill
ProMED-mail Viral Diseases Moderator
Emeritus Professor, Pathobiological Sciences,
Department of Wildlife Ecology
University of Wisconsin-Madison
USA
--------------------------------------------------
So long Jack, but not goodbye.

I have been trying to identify and define the space in my life that Jack occupied. I admired him as a colleague with whom I shared many interests in the biology, natural history, and public health importance of arboviruses. He contributed substantially to the field with his high quality research over many decades. The importance of his contributions were reflected in his receiving the Richard Moreland Taylor award by his arbovirus peers.

I admired his ability to not only see the public health consequences of his and others research, he was willing and able to take policy positions on that understanding and act on them. Very recently, although battling cancer, when 11 cases of yellow fever occurred in China, spread from the Angola outbreak, he sounded the alarm about consequences of the spread of yellow fever from that outbreak and he demonstrated a willingness to press for better surveillance and more aggressive vaccination. That also led him to publicly support the "vaccine sparing" approach using 1/5 of the usual dose when it became clear that the world supply of the vaccine was not adequate to cover the populations at risk. He simply could not remain silent about the yellow fever outbreak and let it run its course with potentially disastrous results.

I admired his ongoing commitment to arbovirology and public health after his several "retirements". Not one to sit back and take it easy, he took a leadership role in establishing ProMED-mail and its subsequent development and expanding scope. He was also a key player in development of the One Health Initiative. Both are alive, well, and growing -- a continuing monument to Jack.

My affection and admiration of Jack as a friend will keep his presence alive in my mind and heart.

****
Donald Kaye
Associate Editor, ProMED-mail
Professor of Medicine
Drexel University College of Medicine
Philadelphia, PA, USA
--------------------------------------------------
Jack was a man of great determination to get things right -- he sought perfection. I found his intellect to be of the highest caliber and he always sought to educate others from his great wealth of experience and his command of the English language.

****
Rodrigo Nogueira Angerami
ProMED-PORT Moderator
State University of Campinas - UNICAMP
Campinas, SP, Brazil
---------------------------------------------------
Very sad news, very sad to hear that...
Words... No words can explain my feelings...
Thoughts... Very good and great ones...
Dr Jack was a great, kind, patient and perfectionist mentor, tutor, ombudsman...
Great man, brilliant mind...
Face to face, only twice. But they were always great moments, every time he wrote to me his intelligent, smart, and provocative emails.

****
Laura Kramer
ProMED-mail Viral Diseases Moderator
Director of the Arbovirus Laboratories, Wadsworth Center, New York State Department of Heath
Professor of Biomedical Sciences, School of Public Health, State University of NY
Albany, NY, USA
--------------------------------------------------
I first knew of Jack indirectly through colorful stories recanted by those who worked with him in Bel?m, Brazil, and I always thought of him as a mythical creature until I finally met him, and was able to appreciate first-hand the power of his personality and expertise. Jack was a friend and a mentor over more years than I care to count. He is one of the foundations of arbovirology upon which everything I do has been built. I have followed in his footsteps from working in the tropics, to directing the Arbovirus Laboratory in the New York State Department of Health, to moderating for ProMED. He always challenged me to be more, do more, and not to shy away from tackling projects I felt were beyond me. He taught me to be a critical thinker and express myself clearly and precisely. Jack has always been bigger than life and someone who will forever be an inspiration even in his absence. I suspect his impact on the field will only grow as we re-examine his legacy, and what a legacy he leaves behind! I will miss him profoundly.

****
Peter Cowen
ProMED-mail Animal Disease Assistant Moderator
Associate Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health, College of Veterinary Medicine
North Carolina State University
Raleigh, NC, USA
--------------------------------------------------
For me, there was always something about him of mythic proportions. The world needs to know more and communicate about emerging diseases; well, then why not just start collecting emails from friends and colleagues and disseminating them? Seems reasonable, so Jack just jumps in. Jack trained me as a moderator and it was his desire to have the best possible item/posting that we could put together in the short term, that really inspired me think hard, do the leg work, and write concisely. He certainly got the best out of me and provided me the most rewarding professional experience of my life.

He did with humor, logic, and all by email -- which in those days was a new way to have a professional relationship. We were a small group, just 5 moderators and Jack was leading the merry band who were disrupting the obviously inadequate status quo. Of course, Stephen [Morse] and Barbara [Hatch Rosenberg] would weigh in as well and it really was a group effort, but Jack was the epicenter. Underlying it all, was a sense that we are all called to do the right thing, to make the world we live in better, a more rational and healthy place for all. These days, we could all use Jack's example, that is for sure. I have known many people in the academic infectious disease world. Jack not only cut a striking appearance, he was among a handful of truly special, inspirational, and progressive personalities I have encountered in over 35 years. I will definitely miss him.

****
Eskild Peterson
ProMED-mail Parasitic Diseases Moderator
Editor International Journal of Infectious Diseases
Specialist of Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine
Department of Infectious Diseases
Aarhus University Hospital
Skejby, Aarhus, Denmark
--------------------------------------------------
It is indeed very sad, but he lived a life more full than most of us and was alert and participating to the last days. Jack was a perfectionist and I believe he read all ProMED-mail postings even in Portuguese, Spanish, and French. His knowledge of widely diverse topics was amazing and he often commented on mod's comments, and if I spelled a species wrong (it does happen) I surely received a mail from Jack.

He will be missed.

My visit to Mary and Jack in Rio and their visit to my home in Denmark are fine memories.

****
Arnon Shimshony
ProMED-mail Animal Disease and Zoonoses Moderator
Associate-Professor, Koret School of Veterinary Medicine
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Jerusalem, Israel
--------------------------------------------------
I'm deeply saddened. Jack was at the cradle of ProMED-mail and treasured it ever since, identified with it, and inspired us all. A huge loss.

****
Maria Jacobs
ProMED-mail Senior Technical Editor
Zurich, Switzerland
--------------------------------------------------
In 2001, when I started working for ProMED as copy editor and translator for the Spanish regional page, ProMED-ESP, Norman Stein, Executive Director of the International Society for Infectious Diseases (ISID, of which ProMED has been a program since 1999), gave me a copy of the 1998 novel "The Eleventh Plague: A Novel of Medical Terror" by John S Marr and John Baldwin. The story's protagonist is "Dr Jack Byrne [surely our Jack], noted virologist who heads the ProMED computer hotline (quite real) and flies about the planet fighting epidemics" (https://www.amazon.com/Eleventh-Plag.../dp/0786116838. "Baldwin and Marr draw upon many real-world resources to add realism and depth to their story, including references to the ProMED system, a database and reporting system used to report and research outbreaks of new diseases." (http://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/edu...dwin-john-1944 and https://www.sfsite.com/04a/elv30.htm). The authors give "particular thanks to Jack Woodall for providing inspiration."

Jack inspired people in all walks of life and was a hero in a world where infectious diseases and biological warfare are either prevalent, or far from fiction.

In his quest for perfection and consistency, Jack wrote the original ProMED-mail Style Guide, and in 2007, when I became ProMED's senior technical editor, he guided me through its revisions, year after year. Jack probably read most posts published in ProMED (more than 50 000) and never hesitated to chide us, moderators and copy editors, for misusing the English language, or missing an important detail. He would add photos, maps, additional resources, anything to help the reader. Much of what I know of style and grammar I learned from Jack, for which I am forever grateful, and I hope he will continue to guide me.

****
Susan Baekeland
Correspondent, ProMED-mail, plant and animal diseases
Normandy, France
--------------------------------------------------
Jack was a very generous person, a kind, funny man. His dream was to have ProMED-mail reporting in various languages. He spoke Portuguese, Spanish, French, read all the posts each day including the Plant posts and made comments on them, or picked up mistakes. He was always there to share a joke, answer if you had a problem, or pose a question if there was something he did not understand or wanted more information about.

He used to be the Editor of a magazine in Rio, The Umbrella, in which, at his request, I wrote several articles on life in Arabia. If he saw some report or other in the Middle East I would get an email asking about the background to it, not the infectious diseases background but the political one. He kept us on our toes, and we loved him.

[Susan wrote the poem below to Jack]

The Rose for all its beauty, its scent
Is torn apart by the wind, the rain

A world torn by rivalry, greed, religion,
Yet in this you saw opportunity for excellence.

For the creation of ProMED-mail, which will live on.
But what does a blind man see in his reflection?

When you were our colleague, our friend, our guidance
You were our light
When you left us your light became fire

Your Spirit, Jack, your Guidance
will remain with us.

It has no limit to define it.

--
Communicated by:
ProMED-mail


*******
[4]
Date: Tue 25 Oct 2016
From: Bruce Kaplan, One Health Initiative [edited]

http://www.onehealthinitiative.com/news.php?query=Extraordinary+Scientist%2C+Admired+One+Health+Supporter-Activist-Leader+Dies

Extraordinary Scientist, Admired One Health Supporter-Activist-Leader Dies
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Jack Woodall, PhD (John Payne Woodall) 1935-2016, a viral epidemiologist, scientist and visiting Professor and Director (retd.) Nucleus for the Investigation of Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Institute of Medical Biochemistry, Center for Health Sciences, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil has died after a valiant battle with pancreatic cancer.

Dr Woodall was a co-founder and associate editor of ProMED-mail, the outbreak early warning system online of the Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases of the International Society for Infectious Diseases. ProMED-mail was one of Dr Woodall's primary passions since its inception. He became the contents manager/editor of the ProMED-mail section in the One Health Initiative [OHI] website (http://www.onehealthinitiative.com/promed.php) in February 2009 and retired from that endeavor in May 2016. Jack was an integral member of the One Health Initiative Autonomous pro bono team comprised of Laura H Kahn, MD, MPH, MPP, Bruce Kaplan, DVM, Thomas P Monath, MD, and Lisa A Conti, DVM, MPH. Promotion and support of One Health with the goal of eventual implementation was of great importance to our esteemed colleague, Dr Jack Woodall.

Other posts that Dr Woodall held included the Biological Weapons Working Group of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, Washington DC (USA) since 2004, the Editorial Advisory Board of The Scientist magazine since 2007, and the Editorial Advisory Board, Journal of Medical Chemical, Biological & Radiological Defense since 2008. In addition, he was on the Scientific Advisory Board, Sabin Vaccine Institute, Washington DC from 2004-2006. He has served on the American Committee on Arthropod-Borne Viruses, American Society of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene (ASTMH) and as Web Site Editor of the ASTMH from 2002-2008.

Dr Woodall earned his PhD in virology/entomology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. He was subsequently Senior Scientist for Her Majesty's Overseas Research Service, East African Virus Research Institute, Entebbe, Uganda; a staff member of The Rockefeller Foundation, New York, NY (USA); Director, Bel?m Virus Laboratory, Bel?m, Par?, Brazil; Research Fellow, Yale Arbovirus Research Unit, Yale University, New Haven CT (USA); Head, Arbovirus Laboratory, New York State Health Department, Albany NY, (USA); Staff member, US Public Health Service, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), (USA); Director, San Juan Laboratories, San Juan, Puerto Rico; Scientist with the World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland; and Director, Arbovirus Laboratory, New York State Health Department, Albany, NY, (USA). Dr Woodall published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals.

Dr Woodall was an internationally recognized public health authority, educator and One Health leader. Serving as a pro bono contents manager of the ProMED-mail page of the One Health Initiative website, he was an active participant of the autonomous pro bono One Health team of Drs Kahn, Kaplan, Monath, and Conti. He traveled frequently by invitation to promote the online reporting of emerging disease outbreaks and One Health.

The One Health Initiative team has suffered a profound and irreplaceable loss with the death of our dear friend and colleague, Jack Woodall. He collaborated brilliantly and freely on every major One Health issue since joining the OHI team in 2009. Numerous email communications were exchanged each week and frequently on a daily basis between the five of us. Laura, Bruce, Tom, and Lisa depended a great deal on Jack's experience and wise insights about a variety of topics. Our hearts go out to his wife Mary and all family members. The national and international One Health community has lost an invaluable, dedicated and trusted advocate with the passing of Jack Woodall. He shall be sorely missed and yet remembered fondly and affectionately.

Please see more at http://www.lshtm.ac.uk/alumni/survey...k_woodall.html and http://www.onehealthinitiative.com/p...%20Feb2015.pdf.

--
Communicated by:
Bruce Kaplan DVM
Contents Manager/Editor One Health Initiative Website
Co-Founder One Health Initiative team/website

http://goo.gl/KujQkP

http://www.onehealthinitiative.com

http://www.promedmail.org/post/4584430