William B. MacLeod

About

William B. MacLeod is a Research Associate Professor in the Department of Global Health at Boston University School of Public Health. He is a public health data scientist with training in demography, epidemiology, and biostatistics. His work focuses on answering policy-relevant programmatic questions related to the management of HIV treatment programs. Bill has been based in South Africa for the past seven years, where he has collaborated on research and monitoring & evaluation projects with South African government institutions. He is the Co-Principal Investigator of a USAID-funded project that has developed dashboards and tools for monitoring the HIV treatment program in South Africa. MacLeod is recognized internationally as an expert on clinical trials and has served on Data Safety and Monitoring Boards and Technical Advisory Groups for WHO and CDC sponsored international studies. His educational background includes a Doctor of Science and a Master of Science in Population and International Health from Harvard School of Public Health, and a Bachelor's degree in International Relations from the University of California at Davis.

Research topics

• Medicine
• Environmental health
• Pediatrics
• Political Science
• Biology
• Computer Science
• Internal medicine
• Demography
• Pathology
• Genetics

Selected publications

• Covid-19 deaths in Africa: prospective systematic postmortem surveillance study

  BMJ · 2021 · 217 citations

  OBJECTIVE: To directly measure the fatal impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) in an urban African population. DESIGN: Prospective systematic postmortem surveillance study. SETTING: Zambia's largest tertiary care referral hospital. PARTICIPANTS: Deceased people of all ages at the University Teaching Hospital morgue in Lusaka, Zambia, enrolled within 48 hours of death. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: Postmortem nasopharyngeal swabs were tested via reverse transcriptase quantitative polymerase chain…

  DOI

• Infant deaths from respiratory syncytial virus in Lusaka, Zambia from the ZPRIME study: a 3-year, systematic, post-mortem surveillance project

  The Lancet Global Health · 2022 · 45 citations

  BACKGROUND: Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is the leading cause of acute lower respiratory tract infections and a key driver of childhood mortality. Previous RSV burden of disease estimates used hospital-based surveillance data and modelled, rather than directly measured, community deaths. Given this uncertainty, we conducted a 3-year post-mortem prevalence study among young infants at a busy morgue in Lusaka, Zambia-the Zambia Pertussis RSV Infant Mortality Estimation (ZPRIME) study. METHODS…

  DOI

• Asymptomatic Bordetella pertussis infections in a longitudinal cohort of young African infants and their mothers

  eLife · 2021 · 41 citations

  Recent pertussis resurgence in numerous countries may be driven by asymptomatic infections. Most pertussis surveillance studies are cross-sectional and cannot distinguish asymptomatic from pre-symptomatic infections. Longitudinal surveillance could overcome this barrier, providing more information about the true burden of pertussis at the population level. Here we analyze 17,442 nasopharyngeal samples from a longitudinal cohort of 1320 Zambian mother/infant pairs. Our analysis has two elements.…

  DOI

• Importance of breastfeeding and complementary feeding for management and prevention of childhood diarrhoea in low- and middle-income countries

  Journal of Global Health · 2022 · 28 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Background: Early and exclusive breastfeeding have been shown to protect young infants from all-cause and diarrhoea-related mortality. Ideally breastfeeding should be initiated within the first hour of birth. Despite efforts to increase rates of early and exclusive breastfeeding in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), challenges with uptake remain. This analysis reviews trends in early and exclusive breastfeeding, and the impact of infant feeding interventions in reducing childhood diarrhoe…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Antibiotic resistance trends for common bacterial aetiologies of childhood diarrhoea in low- and middle-income countries: A systematic review

  Journal of Global Health · 2023-07-21 · 22 citations

  reviewOpen access

  Background: Diarrhoea is the second most common cause of death among children under the age of five worldwide. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends treating diarrhoea with oral rehydration therapy, intravenous fluids for severe dehydration, and zinc supplements. Antibiotics are only recommended to treat acute, invasive diarrhoea. Rising antibiotic resistance has led to a decrease in the effectiveness of treatments for diarrhoea. Methods: A systematic literature review in PubMed, Web of…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Davidson H. Hamer

  Boston University

  173 shared

• Matthew P. Fox

  University of the Witwatersrand

  100 shared

• Donald M. Thea

  Boston University

  84 shared

• Lin H. Chen

  Mount Auburn Hospital

  82 shared

• Christopher Gill

  65 shared

• Lawrence Mwananyanda

  Right to Care

  64 shared

• Sergio Carmona

  University of the Witwatersrand

  62 shared

• Wendy Stevens

  59 shared

Labs

• Admissions TeamPI

Education

• SD, Population and International Health

  Harvard School of Public Health

  1999

• SM, Population and International Health

  Harvard School of Public Health

  1995

• BA, International Relations

  University of California Davis

  1985

Similar researchers at Boston University

• Charles R Horsburghh-96
• Sydney B Rosenh-71
• Elaine O. Nsoesieh-55