Mark W. Kline is an American pediatrician and infectious diseases specialist who currently serves as the Physician-in-Chief, Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer at Children's Hospital New Orleans and Professor of Pediatrics at the Tulane University School of Medicine and LSU Health New Orleans. Kline is known for his life-long work in building programs for children with HIV/AIDS all over the world. Early life and education Kline was born in Corpus Christi, Texas to William Marshall Kline (an undercover federal drug agent) and Elsie Ford Kline (a homemaker). He has two siblings: Gary Kline and Patricia Bivin. The family grew up primarily in South Texas. Kline graduated from high school in San Antonio. Kline expressed an interest in science and medicine from a very early age and began volunteering at the Bexar County Hospital in San Antonio at the age of 15, ultimately accumulating several thousand hours of volunteer experience. Kline received a Bachelor of Arts in biology from Trinity University in 1979, graduating summa cum laude. In 1981, he received his M.D. with Honors from Baylor College of Medicine, where he completed a residency in pediatrics at Texas Children's Hospital in 1985, having served as Chief Resident in Pediatrics, and was a Postdoctoral Fellow in Pediatric Infectious Diseases at BCM and Texas Children's. Career Kline began caring for HIV-infected children in 1987, before the advent of antiretroviral therapy. Beginning in 1990, he was heavily involved in pediatric HIV clinical research, chairing several pivotal National Institutes of Health-funded clinical trials that advanced the treatment of American children with HIV/AIDS. In 1996, Kline began working in Romania where he trained hundreds of health professionals, built clinical and laboratory infrastructure and implemented a model of pediatric AIDS care delivery that resulted in a marked reduction in the child death rate. Kline replicated this model in Africa, first in Botswana and later in many other countries, always in concert with host governments, as an extension of existing public health programs. Kline founded the Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative (BIPAI) in 1996 with a goal of expanding access to lifesaving HIV treatment for children and families living in the poorest countries. By 2020, more than 350,000 children and their parents were being treated with HIV medication across the BIPAI network. In cooperation with host governments, he built centers of excellence in Botswana, eSwatini, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, Lesotho and Romania. Between 2005 and 2020,