Mark Kline


Mark W. Kline is an American physician and pediatrician. He was the Physician-in-Chief at Texas Children's Hospital and J. S. Abercrombie Professor and Ralph D. Feigin Chair at Baylor College of Medicine. Kline is known for his life-long work in building programs for children with HIV/AIDS all over the world. Kline has been responsible for the treatment of more HIV-infected children and families than any other individual, organization or institution worldwide.

Early life and education

Kline received a Bachelor of Arts in biology from Trinity University in 1979, graduating summa cum laude. In 1981, he received his M.D. with Honors from Baylor College of Medicine, completed a residency in pediatrics at BCM and Texas Children's Hospital in 1985, having served as Chief Resident in Pediatrics, and was a Postdoctoral Fellow in Pediatric Infectious Diseases at BCM and Texas Children's.

Career

Kline first began his work in the mid-1990s in Romania where he trained hundreds of health professionals, built clinical and laboratory infrastructure and implemented a model of pediatric AIDS care delivery that resulted in a marked reduction in the child death rate. Kline replicated this model in Africa, first in Botswana and later in many other countries, always in concert with host governments, as an extension of existing public health programs.
In 1996, Kline founded the Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative at Texas Children's Hospital with the goal of eliminating HIV/AIDS as a global health pandemic. As of 2019, more than 350,000 children and their parents were being treated with HIV medication across the BIPAI network. In cooperation with host governments, he built centers of excellence in Botswana, eSwatini, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, Lesotho and Romania. By 2015, a combination of prevention and treatment reduced the numbers of children with AIDS from 650,000 to fewer than 150,000.
Kline conceived and implemented the Pediatrics AIDS Corps, a Peace Corps-like program to promote the scale up of African AIDS care and treatment programs. Since 2005, the Pediatrics AIDS Corps has trained more than 52,000 African health professionals and dramatically enhanced capacity for the treatment of many other life-threatening diseases.
In 2009, he succeeded the late Ralph Feigin, as physician-in-chief at Texas Children’s and chairman of the department of pediatrics at Baylor.
In February 2020, Kline "abruptly resigned" giving no reason for the resignations.

Research

Kline has been the recipient and principal investigator for more than $50 million in research grants from the U.S. National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He authored more than 250 scientific articles and textbook chapters and has presented over 300 national and international lectures on subjects related to infectious diseases of children and global child health.

Awards