Carlos del Rio, MD — a longtime Emory faculty member, infectious diseases physician, HIV/AIDS researcher, collaborative colleague, mentor and global health leader — has been honored with the prestigious 2024 James Shepherd Lifetime Achievement Award from the Georgia Hospital Association (GHA).

Del Rio, who was one of only five individuals statewide to receive the Hospital Hero award, and the only individual to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award, was recognized in a ceremony at Emory for his longtime dedication to enhancing care and outcomes for patients locally in his community and throughout the world.

“Dr. Carlos del Rio is a local and national leader in the field of medicine and has bettered the lives of countless patients,” says GHA Board Chair Mary Chatman, PhD, RN. “We are grateful for his commitment and are pleased to honor him with this prestigious award.”

GHA named the award after James Shepherd, co-founder of the Shepherd Center, as a way to honor his legacy and the many lives he touched. Honorees of this award share the same incredible characteristics as James Shepherd and represent everything he stood for throughout his career. The award is presented to just one employee who has made a significant impact on his or her organization, the community and patient care during a career that has lasted at least 30 years.

A Lifetime of Accomplishments

Currently, del Rio is the H. Cliff Sauls Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Chair of the Department of Medicine at Emory University School of Medicine. He has been caring for patients at both Emory and Grady Memorial Hospital for more than three decades. He is also professor of epidemiology and global health at Emory’s Rollins School of Public Health. His contributions to medicine and public health, both locally and globally, have intersected throughout the years, impacting the lives of many patients he has cared for in Atlanta and beyond.

Since early in his teenage years growing up in Mexico City, Mexico, del Rio knew he wanted to be a physician. During a summer job in a Houston, Texas, hospital, he worked as an assistant in the pathology department. There he learned about the wonders of science, medicine and patient care. Both his grandfather and great-grandfather had been physicians, so pursuing a career in medicine seemed like a logical and natural career choice for him.

He attended medical school at the Universidad La Salle in Mexico City, Mexico. During his last year there, he completed clinical rotations at the University of Oregon in Portland and at Emory University in Atlanta. In hopes of becoming a cardiologist, he decided to pursue residency training at Emory where the well-known cardiologist J. Willis Hurst, MD, was the chair of the Department of Medicine.

However, as del Rio began residency training in 1983 in internal medicine, the HIV/AIDS epidemic began sweeping the nation. With the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) located next door to Emory, he observed the public health response to the epidemic, and decided to pursue training in infectious diseases instead, completing an infectious diseases fellowship at Emory.

In 1989, del Rio returned to his native Mexico to care for patients with HIV/AIDS. With an eye on the global impact of the epidemic, he worked with the national agency responsible for HIV/AIDS policy in Mexico (CONASIDA). From 1992-96, he was executive director of the organization. He also became a member of the Program Coordinating Board of the World Health Organization’s Global AIDS Program and, in 1994-96, helped launch the United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

In 1996, del Rio returned to Atlanta and joined the Emory faculty as associate professor of medicine, where he began his long career of patient care, teaching and research.

His research focuses on early diagnosis of HIV; access to and engagement in care; compliance with antiretrovirals; and the prevention of HIV infection. Several large training grants early in his career stressed the importance of global health and HIV collaborating across borders. Since then, del Rio has worked to support marginalized populations to improve HIV clinical care and outcomes in the U.S. and abroad.

In Atlanta, much of del Rio’s clinical time has been spent caring for patients at Grady Memorial Hospital. In 2001, he was appointed as chief of the Emory Medical Service at Grady, a position he held until 2009 when he was appointed chair of the Hubert Department of Global Health at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory.

Del Rio has played a major role in global infectious diseases — from pandemic influenza to Ebola virus disease to Mpox to COVID-19.

Most recently during the COVID-19 pandemic, del Rio was a local and national leader, focused on research, developing policies, writing scientific publications and making countless media appearances. He advised municipal, state and national leaders during the pandemic. He also served on the national advisory committee of the COVID Collaborative, which focused on developing consensus recommendations and engaging with U.S. leaders on effective policy and coronavirus response.

Outside of Emory, del Rio was chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of PEPFAR (the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) from 2015-24; a member of UNAIDS Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee; and was president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America from 2022-23.

In 2013, del Rio was elected to the National Academy of Medicine and, in 2020, he was elected as the international secretary of the National Academy of Medicine. In 2022, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Additionally, he has co-authored 30 book chapters and more than 600 scientific papers and is chief section editor for HIV/AIDS for the New England Journal of Medicine’s Journal Watch Infectious Diseases.

When asked about his top career highlights, del Rio says, “There are many things that stand out in my career, but what makes me most proud is seeing people I have trained and/or mentored become successful.”

As for his greatest accomplishment, del Rio states, “At the end of the day, my greatest accomplishment is my family and watching my two children grow up and become successful professionally and have their own families. This, however, is not just my accomplishment; it belongs to both my wife and me together.” Del Rio is married to Jeannette Guarner, MD, professor and vice chair for faculty affairs and development in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Emory.

After an expansive career of nearly 40 years as a physician in both Atlanta and Mexico City, an infectious diseases researcher and global health leader, we congratulate Carlos del Rio, MD, for being recognized with Georgia Hospital Association’s James Shepherd Lifetime Achievement Award.