Dr. Islam is a Pediatric Infectious Disease Specialist at CHLA, and an Associate Professor of Clinical Pediatrics at the Keck School of Medicine at USC. He joined CHLA and USC in late 2023 from the University at Buffalo (SUNY), where he was the Founder and Medical Director of the Antimicrobial Stewardship Program, and the Pediatric Clerkship Director. At CHLA he is the Associate Director of the Education Track of the Pediatric Residency, and became the ID Fellowship Program Director in 2024. Dr. Islam is also CHLA’s first Public Health Liaison, a role in which he’s working closely with hospital leaders on population health and health equity issues, and with LA and California Departments of Public Health (PH) to improve the care of pediatric Tuberculosis (TB), Coccidioidomycosis, and other diseases of PH importance.

Dr. Islam received a BS in Biology from M.I.T., and his MD from Weill Cornell. He completed his pediatrics residency training at University of California San Francisco and his pediatric infectious diseases fellowship at Children’s Hospital and Research Center Oakland. He’s also received a Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene at the London School, a Masters of Education at the University at Buffalo (2022), and a Masters of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University (2023).

Early in his career, Dr. Islam’s research focus was in visceral leishmaniasis, and he led characterization of a dermatosis associated with the neglected disease, PKDL, in Bangladesh. He also was active in examining IGRA (Interferon-gamma release assay) performance for TB, and contributed to establishing IGRAs as having advantages to the TB skin test in evaluations of both pediatric TB infection and disease. More recently, he’d focused on inpatient and ambulatory antibiotic stewardship studies, including several analyses which demonstrated non-guideline management and suboptimal antibiotic use for various common childhood infections, such as pharyngitis and UTIs.

Dr. Islam’s current scholastic foci include global infectious diseases and public health, optimal management of Staphylococcal aureus and osteo-articular infections, and antimicrobial and diagnostic stewardship. He is particularly interested in travel and environmental drivers of global antimicrobial resistance (AMR), One Health and AMR, and outpatient antimicrobial stewardship. Amongst his broad interests in medical education are clinical reasoning, health justice, and humanism. Among his increasing involvement at Keck SOM, is serving on the Medical Education Curriculum Committee, (MECC) and as small group leader in the Health Justice and Systems of Care (HJSC) Course. As a clinician and educator he is most passionate about healthcare for vulnerable individuals and communities.