Dr Howard L Sobel
Turtle Beach, one of the landmarks in Honiara, Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands.
Dr Howard L Sobel is an internist, paediatrician and preventive medicine physician. He is currently the World Health Organization (WHO) Representative for Solomon Islands.
Dr Sobel’s work has taken him around the world, including WHO Headquarters (Switzerland, HIV), China (SARS), Guyana (immunization), Ghana (immunization), Philippines and Cambodia (maternal and child health, immunization and nutrition). Most recently, he was Coordinator for Maternal and Child Health, Quality and Safety, Safe and Affordable Surgery, Infection Prevention and Control at the WHO Regional Office for the Western Pacific.
He was deployed to Lao People’s Democratic Republic as acting Head of Office during the COVID-19 response in 2020.
Dr Sobel focuses on operationalizing and scaling up evidence-based programs that save lives across the lifespan in low and middle-income countries. He has more than 50 internationally peer-reviewed publications and 20 WHO publications and has been part of editorial review boards and conducted manuscript reviews for many journals. Dr. Sobel gained his undergraduate degree from Virginia Tech in Engineering, a Master of Science in Engineering at Case Western Reserve University, Medical Doctorate at Medical College of Virginia, Master of Public Health at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health (where he was Chief Resident and instructor), and a PhD at Ghent University, Belgium.
