Robert Blum

Robert Blum is the emeritus William H. Gates, Sr. Professor Bloomberg School of Public Health and the immediate past Director, Johns Hopkins Urban Health Institute. He has edited two books and has written over 325 journal articles, book chapters and special reports. Past-President of the Society for Adolescent Medicine and Health, he has served on the American Board of Pediatrics; is a past chair of the Guttmacher Institute Board of Directors, and was inaugural chair of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Adolescent Health.

He is a consultant to The World Bank, UNICEF, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) where he recently authored the guidance on adolescent pregnancy, the WHO where he has served on the TAG of the MCH Department as well as the Scientific and Technical Advisory Group of the Human Reproductive Program. In 2021 he led the qualitative research for UNICEF’s State of the World Children’s Report on Adolescent Mental Health. Over the past decade, he served as the PI on a 10-country study of gender norms and their consequences among young adolescents—the Global Early Adolescent Study; and currently is co-lead on a three-country adolescent mental health study in Kenya, Indonesia, and Vietnam.