Donald L Budenz, MD, MPH

Glaucoma Surgical Clinical Trials, Glaucoma Epidemiology, Diagnostic Testing for Glaucoma

Donald L. Budenz, MD, MPH, earned his medical degree from Harvard Medical School and completed his ophthalmology residency at the Scheie Eye Institute at the University of Pennsylvania. He then completed a Heed Foundation fellowship in glaucoma at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, where he later served on the faculty for 17 years.

In 2004, Dr. Budenz received a master’s degree in public health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He went on to serve for 14 years as the Kittner Distinguished Professor and chair of ophthalmology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has since returned to the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute as professor of ophthalmology and medical director of Bascom Palmer SoLe Mia.

Dr. Budenz has held leadership roles in the field, serving as president of both the Association of University Professors of Ophthalmology and the American Glaucoma Society. He is an editorial reviewer for numerous medical journals and serves as associate editor of the American Journal of Ophthalmology and the Journal of Glaucoma. He is also editor-in-chief of the glaucoma section of Current Opinion in Ophthalmology.

As principal investigator, Dr. Budenz has led multiple landmark glaucoma clinical trials, including the Ocular Hypertension Treatment Study (OHTS), the Tube Versus Trabeculectomy (TVT) study, and the Ahmed Baerveldt Comparison (ABC) study. Alongside his research, he has published extensively in the field of glaucoma. His work includes two textbooks—Atlas of Visual Fields and Atlas of Optical Coherence Tomography for Glaucoma—numerous book chapters, and nearly 300 peer-reviewed journal articles.

For his humanitarian work in Ghana, West Africa, Dr. Budenz has received Humanitarian of the Year awards from both the American Glaucoma Society and the American Academy of Ophthalmology.