Dr James H. Cross
Assistant Professor
London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
Keppel Street
London
WC1E 7HT
United Kingdom
James H. Cross is an Assistant Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), where he is Co-Principal Investigator of the NeoShield Programme, a Wellcome Trust and Gates Foundation funded multi-country implementation research initiative on neonatal sepsis and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) across multiple sites in Zambia and Malawi. He is a member of the Management Committee of the LSHTM AMR Centre, where he also co-founded and co-leads the Healthcare-Associated Infection Interest Group.
With a background in clinical microbiology and data science, James specialises in neonatal health in high-burden setting. His research focuses on identifying practical strategies to reduce neonatal infections by integrating clinical, health data science, and health systems approaches. He has interests in strengthening clinical bacteriology services, including blood culture systems and point-of-care sepsis diagnostics, antibiotic stewardship, and reducing hospital-acquired infections and AMR-associated neonatal mortality.
James is a member of the NeoTest Working Group (Centre of Global Development-Neonatal Sepsis Diagnostics Market Shaping Accelerator), NeoNet-Africa, the WHO/FIND Neonatal Sepsis Diagnostics Target Product Profile Group, and the Neonatal Sepsis Genomics Metadata Working Group. He is a previous author on the Lancet Haematology Commission on Anaemia and collaborates with the Vermont Oxford Network and African Neonatal Association on standardising neonatal inpatient datasets for quality improvement.
James holds a BSc (Hons) in Medical Microbiology with a Year in Industry (MRCG at LSHTM) from the University of Bristol (2015) and a PhD in Epidemiology and Population Health from LSHTM (2020). His Gates Foundation funded PhD, conducted over five years at the MRC Unit The Gambia at LSHTM, explored hepcidin-mediated hypoferraemia and the immunological response to iron transition in the early hours of postnatal life in full-term, preterm, and low birthweight newborns. James holds a Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching from LSHTM and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Affiliations
Centres
Teaching
James teaches across several LSHTM modules and short courses. He is course organiser, lecturer, and tutor for the Introductory Course in Epidemiology and Medical Statistics (ICEMS) Short Course, a three-week hybrid summer course for 60 students, and course organiser and tutor for the MSc Data Management Short Course. He tutors on practical sessions and marking for the Design and Analysis of Epidemiological Studies (DANES) and Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases MSc modules and delivers the Introduction to Epidemiology lecture for the Professional Diploma of Tropical Nursing. James serves as a personal tutor and marker for students on the MSc Public Health for Global Practice and MSc Epidemiology programmes.
Over the last six years, James has supervised many MSc students on summer projects relating to neonatal infection and global health, several of which have led to peer-reviewed publications. He co-supervises three current doctoral students working on maternal AMR colonisation in Uganda, blood culture quality improvement in Zimbabwe, and neonatal inpatient data systems in Malawi. He has also supervised undergraduate students on industrial placements from the University of Cardiff and Mercer University (USA), and mentors two NHS medical doctors through the British Infection Association Early Career Researchers’ Committee Mentorship Scheme.
Research
James’ current research centres on the NeoShield Programme, for which he is Co-Principal Investigator alongside Professor Eric Ohuma. NeoShield is conducted in partnership with the Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Programme and the Zambia National Public Health Institute. NeoShield aims to strengthen the prevention, detection, and response to neonatal sepsis and antimicrobial resistance in hospital settings through five integrated workstreams: clinical decision support, laboratory strengthening, outbreak detection and alerting, IPC/antibiotic stewardship, and whole-genome sequencing. The programme brings together clinical, data science, and health systems approaches to generate evidence for scalable interventions that reduce infection-associated neonatal mortality. NeoShield involves industry partnerships for bacterial identification and antimicrobial susceptibility testing systems. James also leads a linked public engagement initiative, Safe Babies, Smart Tools, delivering parent and caregiver workshops on newborn infection care and digital support tools at neonatal care facilities in Malawi and Zambia, funded by the LSHTM Public Engagement Small Grants Scheme (see NeoShield website for further details).
Previously, James spent over five years with the NEST360 (Newborn Essential Solutions and Technologies) Alliance, a multi-partner collaboration across Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, and Tanzania focused on improving hospital care for small and sick newborns. As co-lead of the NEST360 Infection Workstream, he led knowledge generation and quality improvement activities encompassing neonatal blood culture (across ward, laboratory, and interface), antibiotic stewardship, and outbreak detection, including aetiology and AMR surveillance, across 67 newborn units. He also co-led the Infection Prevention and Control Health Systems Building Block of the NEST360/UNICEF Implementation Toolkit for Small and Sick Newborn Care, working with UNICEF, WHO, and other partners.
As a data scientist within the alliance, James co-led the co-design and institutionalisation of a core Neonatal Inpatient Dataset (NID), released as a global public good, capturing essential variables for measuring impact, quality of care, and facility course correction. The dataset and its associated quality improvement dashboards facilitated real-time data flow and analysis from over 500,000 newborn admission records across four countries.
Selected Publications
