Polio: It’s Not Here Now, But It Can Come Again

About the Speaker: John W. Aldis, MD, MPH&TM

Dr. John Aldis is a retired family physician living in Jefferson County. After graduating from the University of Kansas School of Medicine in 1971, he completed his internship at Gorgas Hospital in the Panama Canal Zone. He then served nine years with the U.S. Navy on overseas tours in the Philippines, Taiwan, and Guam. During that time he also completed his Family Practice Residency in Jacksonville, Florida, and became board-certified in family medicine.

Dr. Aldis went on to join the U.S. Foreign Service, where he spent 18 years as a U.S. Embassy physician in Mali, Indonesia, Nigeria, and China. Along the way, he earned his Master’s in Public Health and Tropical Medicine from the Tulane School of Public Health.

In 2001, he returned to Shepherdstown, West Virginia, and moved back into his boyhood home. Since then he has:

• Served ten years as the first volunteer medical director of the Free Clinic in Ranson, WV
• Worked ten years in vaccine research programs at Fort Detrick and the NIH
• Served as founding medical director of the Home-Based Primary Care Program at the Martinsburg VA Medical Center
• Spent several years working in addiction medicine clinics in the Eastern Panhandle

Today, Dr. Aldis enjoys gardening with Pheny, his wife of 57 years. Their two daughters and three granddaughters, who live near Washington, D.C., and in New Mexico, visit whenever they can.