About the Award

In May 2026, CORE Group introduced a new recognition, the Dr. Henry Perry Global Champion in Community Health Award.

This award celebrates a man whose dedication to community health has spanned nearly six decades and continues today, reaching from the highlands of Bolivia to the villages of Bangladesh, Haiti, Kenya, and beyond. Dr. Perry has spent his life championing the communities that need it most and remains actively engaged in advancing community health around the world. We are proud to celebrate this work alongside him, and even more proud that he gets to see this recognition begin.

The Dr. Henry Perry Global Champion in Community Health Award will be presented annually alongside the Dory Storms Child Survival Award.

About Dr. Perry

Dr. Perry’s journey began in 1969 as a Duke University student traveling to Bolivia to immunize children against measles, a spark that ignited a career that continues to this day. Over the past five decades, he has built community health projects in Bolivia, Bangladesh, Haiti, Guatemala, Kenya, and beyond, pioneering the Census-Based, Impact-Oriented (CBIO) Approach and Care Groups model that continues to save lives around the world.

From 1984 to 1994, he practiced general surgery in the mountains of North Carolina and supported the continuation of the work he had helped to start in Bolivia. That work became known as Andean Rural Health Care, later becoming Curamericas Global as its work spread to Guatemala. Mexico, Haiti, Liberia and Kenya – gaining distinction because of its effective community-based child survival programs using what became known as CBIO+ — the Census-Based, Impact-Oriented Approach delivered through Care Groups and local birthing centers.

From 1995 to 2004, Dr. Perry worked overseas in community health – first in Bangladesh and then in Haiti. He 2004 he joined the small NGO then called Future Generations (now Future Generations University) as part of its inaugural faculty for a Master’s Program in Applied Community Change, serving as the Carl Taylor Professor for Equity and Empowerment. From 2009 to 2019, he taught and conducted research in the Health Systems Program of the Department of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He then semi-retired as Senior Scientist and moved to North Carolina to be closer to his extended family but continued his involvement in teaching and research at Hopkins.

Since 2019 he has remained engaged in a broad array of community health activities, including supporting Curamericas Global (which became Impact Global Health Alliance in 2024). His work has also included research and writing about community health, mentoring students, and working with various organizations and committees, including with UNICEF on visioning a next-generation community health worker for low- and lower-middle income countries.

He has authored or co-authored five books and over 250 publications in scientific journals, book  chapters, and other widely distributed documents. According to Google Scholar, his works have been cited by more than 11,000 other publications. His two most widely cited publications are Community health workers in low-, middle-, and high-income countries: an overview of their history, recent evolution, and current effectiveness, published in 2014 in the Annual Review of Public Health and What do we know about community-based health worker programs? A systematic review of existing reviews on community health workers, published in 2018 in Human Resources for Health. His published work has been ranked in the top 1% of citations in the Web of Science’s articles on community health over the past decade.  

His teaching and mentoring of students have been widely acclaimed, resulting in numerous awards. More than 100,000 people from around the world have enrolled in his massive open online course (MOOC) on Coursera, Health for All through Primary Health Care, still opening every month for new enrollees. A video of his life’s work is available as well as a description of his contributions to the early development of the physician assistant profession, his faculty webpage at the Johns Hopkins University, and his curriculum vitae.

Dr. Perry’s engagement with the CORE Group and its closely associated United States Agency for International Development’s Child Survival and Health Grants Program (CHSHGP) dates back to 1987 when his NGO, Andean Rural Health Care, received a grant for its work in Bolivia. Over the next three decades, ARHC and its successor organization Curamericas Global received nine such grants, with Dr. Perry supporting these. From 2006 to 2009 he served as Vice-Chair of the Board of Directors of the CORE Group and Chair of the CORE Group Polio Eradication Initiative Coordinating Committee. He has evaluated numerous child survival projects funded by the CSHGP. In 2009, he received the CORE Group’s Dory Storms Award,  “to a person or persons who demonstrate courage, leadership, and commitment to helping non-governmental organizations have an impact on and effectively implement programs that end child deaths.” He served as guest co-editor of the 2019 supplement in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene on “Impact, Innovation, and Inclusion of Civil Society Organizations in Polio Eradication: The CORE Group Polio Project Story.” He is the co-editor of the forthcoming journal supplement that highlights the legacy of the CSHGP.

In 1995, he co-founded the Working Group on Community-Based Primary Health Care of the International Health Section of the American Public Health Association  and has continued as an active member. With Paul Freeman, he led a project of the Working Group in collaboration with the America Public Health Association: a comprehensive review of the effectiveness of community-based approaches to improving maternal, neonatal and child health, published as a journal supplement in 2017 and a book in 2018.

He has served on numerous task forces and professional committees (including as a member of the Community Health Worker Hub of the WHO Global Health Workforce Network, the Advisory Board of the International Institute for Primary Health Care –Ethiopia, the Expert Panel of the Primary Health Care Performance Initiative, the Senior Technical Advisory Committee of the 1 Million Community Health Worker Campaign, and the Community Health Worker Advisory Panel of the Office of the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for Health in Agenda 2030 and Malaria.

In 2025 he received the Distinguished Service Award at the International Conference on Primary Health Care for “foundational contributions to community-based primary health care, improving equity and empowering communities worldwide.” He is also a recipient of the Carl Taylor Lifetime Achievement Award given by the International Health Section of the American Public Health Association. He has served as a consultant or program evaluator for major international organizations and NGOs including UNICEF, the World Bank, the Gates Foundation, World Vision, BRAC, and Concern Worldwide. Beginning in 2014, he represented the Johns Hopkins University in a joint effort with the Ministry of Health of Ethiopia which led to the establishment of the International Institute for Primary Health Care – Ethiopia. He served as a Founding Member of its Advisory Board until 2025.

He also remains actively involved with the NGO he co-founded, now called Impact Global Health Alliance, and continues to champion the Census-Based, Impact-Oriented Approach, its signature methodology.

At present, Dr. Perry is focusing on expanding awareness of the potential of the Census-Based, Impact-Oriented (CBIO) Approach for helping communities improve their health.

He received his undergraduate education at Duke University and his MD, MPH, and PhD degrees from the Johns Hopkins University. He completed his residency in general surgery at the Maine Medical Center and is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons.