TENNESSEE HEALTH CARE HALL OF FAME NOMINEE WALTER HUGHES

Walter Hughes, MD, earned his medical degree at the University of Tennessee College of Medicine (1950-1954) and completed his training at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital (1955-1957). After serving in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, he went into private practice in Cleveland, Tennessee. He later joined the University of Louisville School of Medicine, where he became Physician-in-Chief at Louisville Children’s Hospital. He joined St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in 1969 and, as one of the first physicians to specialize in pediatric infectious diseases, became the institution’s founding chair of the Department of Infectious Diseases. He also served as a professor of pediatrics at the University of Tennessee College of Medicine during that time. In 1977, he became division head of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at John Hopkins University School of Medicine and was named the endowed Eudowood Professor of Pediatrics. He returned to St. Jude in 1981 to head the Infectious Diseases Department again until his retirement in 1998.

When the HIV/AIDS epidemic began, hundreds of children contracted the virus through blood transfusions or mother-to-infant transmission. Dr. Hughes proposed a clinical program at St. Jude dedicated to HIV/AIDS, which led to the organization declaring the disease a pediatric catastrophic disease. This led to hate mail and threats by donors to pull their funding of the hospital. In response, Dr. Hughes began an education campaign. The NIH awarded his work with a multimillion-dollar grant to establish the Pediatric AIDS Clinical Trial Unit, a collaboration among St. Jude, the Regional Medical Center at Memphis and LeBonheur Children’s Hospital. Today, St. Jude continues to support HIV/ AIDS research through a broad team of clinical, psychosocial and research professionals. They additionally provide community support and education and offer continuity of HIV care from childhood to adulthood.

Dr. Hughes also led the work identifying Pneumocystis pneumonia (PCP) as a life-threatening infection in pediatric cancer patients and later in adults with HIV/AIDS. At the time, 30-40 children a year were dying from the infection. Dr. Hughes’ discovery of a drug combination to prevent and treat PCP—without side effects—saved countless lives of childhood cancer patients. Within a short time, the incidence of PCP in St. Jude patients dropped to zero, significantly improving the cure rate for pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

Dr. Hughes was the co-founder and first elected president of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society of America, a chair of the committee on Infectious Diseases for the Tennessee Academy of Pediatrics and the inaugural Arthur Ashe Chair of Excellence for Pediatric AIDS. He received the Etteldorf Alumni Award (1994), the Outstanding Alumnus Award at University of Tennessee, Memphis (1997), and the Distinguished Physician Award from the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society (1997), which recognizes a pediatrician with significant contributions in the field of pediatric infectious diseases. In 2021, that award was renamed the Walter T. Hughes Distinguished Physician Award.

A prolific writer throughout his life, he authored more than 500 articles in peer-reviewed journals and medical textbooks and published seven books. He was a respected teacher, mentor and researcher who shared his knowledge, wisdom and clinical experience with trainees, early-career scientists and students throughout his career.