Dear Friends:
A new academic year is always a time of excitement, opportunity, and discovery. For me, this September is particularly exhilarating, as it is only my second full year as Dean at Harvard School of Public Health.
A year ago, still new in my job, I had a clear sense of the immense aspirations and potential embodied in the School’s faculty, students, and staff. I recognized both the responsibility to protect the School’s significant legacy of accomplishments, and the desire to build on those accomplishments and aspirations to develop the first true school of public health of the 21st century.
A “circle of knowledge”
In my first full year as Dean, we restructured several aspects of academic governance and support functions to better equip us to fulfill our mission. I also encouraged all of us to think of our mission in a new light. Most academic institutions describe their mission as encompassing three distinct activities: research, education, and an often poorly defined area of “service” or “practice.” I proposed that rather than defining our mission as three distinct sets of activities, we provide a single product — knowledge — and a single, integrated process around it — what I like to call the “circle of knowledge.”
This circle includes the production of knowledge through research, the re-production of knowledge through education, and the translation of knowledge into evidence that can guide policy and practice. We then scientifically study those policies and practices to learn which work in the real world and which do not — thus closing the circle with the creation of new knowledge.
I believe this circle is the essence of our School’s contribution and that knowledge is truly the most potent lever to improve our world. Indeed, over the past 100 years, average life expectancy has doubled — and much of this amazing increase in longevity can be attributed to the advancement of knowledge.
Key priorities
Over the last year, working with department chairs, faculty, staff, alumni, and our advisory bodies of volunteers, we identified a number of key priorities to enhance our mission.
- We developed the Research Transformation Project to improve our faculty’s ability to produce knowledge by providing additional support systems that enable them to compete more effectively for research grants.
- We are rethinking our educational mission and redesigning our educational programs to improve our ability to reproduce knowledge in students by transforming the learning process. Three years from now, in 2013, we will be celebrating the centennial of the first educational program in public health at an American university — the Harvard-MIT School for Health Officers, the direct precursor of our School. This is an opportune time to consider what types of knowledge public health practitioners, policy makers and researchers must have to be effective in the 21st century, and what are best ways to recreate that knowledge with our students as they become the next generations of leaders.
- We established the new Division of Policy Translation and Leadership Development to improve our ability to translate knowledge into public policies that improve the health of millions by providing evidence-based solutions for world health problems. The Division soon will be launching several new initiatives targeted specifically at fostering a continuing dialogue between those who make public policy decisions affecting human health and those who can inform decision-makers about the best scientific evidence.
We have also identified three flagship priorities upon which we want to focus even greater faculty and student collaborations across the School and the University. These are:
- Genes and Environment. This priority, initiated by my far-seeing predecessor Dean Barry Bloom, will help propel the growing study of how genes and environmental exposures, broadly defined, interact to cause disease. Robust life sciences activity has always been a distinctive and pivotal component of the School’s research and educational agenda. Together with our epidemiological, social, behavioral and policy research, the life sciences enable us to create a multidimensional picture of disease — one that spans from the gene to the globe.
- Women and Health. HSPH has a rich legacy of rigorous research in women and health — but much more needs to be done. Ninety-nine percent of maternal deaths occur in impoverished countries; AIDS is the leading cause of death among women between ages 15 to 44 worldwide; chronic illnesses such as cervical and breast cancer take a huge toll. Simultaneously, never before have women played such a variety of roles in health — from healthcare decision maker for the family to leaders of major health care systems. Healthier, better educated women mean healthier children and stronger societies. The opportunities for profound impact are immense.
- Understanding What Works — Comparative Effectiveness in Public Health. Cost-effectiveness research and other analytical approaches pinpoint best values for limited health care dollars. If we are ever to be able to provide comprehensive services for everyone who needs them — whether it be in the U.S. or in resource-poor countries around the globe — we need to understand what interventions and strategies —both preventive and therapeutic— are worth delivering, and which can be replaced with less costly but equally effective remedies.
A global perspective
All of these efforts are framed by our global perspective. We live in an increasingly interdependent world, where the health effects of a previously unknown viral infection, insecticide-tainted crops, or a host of other public health challenges can spread across the globe in the time it takes to travel from one country to another by plane. To match the growing complexity of challenges, we must mobilize knowledge as the ultimate global public good. I am pleased that President Faust, recognizing these challenges and opportunities, has made global health a priority for the University.
Never a more exciting time
In closing, I would like to say that I am privileged to have been entrusted with such a strong School at such an outstanding University. My goal is to preserve the legacy of accomplishment that has been achieved in the past, and to enrich that legacy together with you in the year ahead.
There has never been a more exciting time to be in the field of public health. We are at the threshold of a new era fueled by revolutions in the life sciences; in information and communications technologies; in systems thinking which allows us to comprehend and transform complexity; and in the human rights, which provide the ethical foundation for so much of our work. As we begin this new school year together, we need to rise to the challenges and harness the potential of these developments to realize the fundamental right to health for every human being.
No other school is as well positioned as ours to lead this new era of public health. I look forward to working together this year with you — our community of scholars, students, staff, alumni, friends and partners — who will help to shape public health in the 21st century.
Julio Frenk
Dean of the Faculty
Harvard School of Public Health
