Leslie L. Davidson

Leslie L. Davidson, MD MSc MRCP (by distinction) is Professor Emerita of Epidemiology and Pediatrics at the Columbia University Medical Center with research interests in maternal and child health, child and adolescent development, the prevention of injury and violence as well as an interest in global health.  She was trained at Harvard University, the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

After a post doc at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, she returned in 1984 to Columbia as an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and Epidemiology (in the Sergievsky Center) until 1992. 

She worked in the United Kingdom from 1992–2002, first as a regional pediatric epidemiologist and a community pediatrician in the NHS and then from 1997–2002 as Director of the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit at Oxford, assisting with the development of the UK Millennium Cohort Study and studies of reproductive health and of intimate partner violence. 

Since returning to Columbia in 2002 as Chair of Population and Family Health (2002–2004) and then Professor of Epidemiology and Pediatrics until retirement. She continued research into the prevention of violence, youth violence and intimate partner violence in the CDC funded Columbia Center for Youth Violence Prevention. Dr. Davidson also led the doctoral training programs in the Department of Epidemiology for 15 years.

For the last 20 years, working with teams from the University of KwaZulu-Natal and Columbia she contributed to the development and then led the NIH-funded South African population-based Asenze Cohort Study as PI, most recently as Co-Principal Investigator with Dr. Chris Desmond of the Center for Rural Health in the University of KwaZulu-Natal.  Since her formal retirement in 2022, she has remained active in the cohort study but nominated Dr. Jeremy Kane (Epidemiology) to replace her as Co-PI with Professor Desmond.

Updated October 4, 2024