About the Director

Social epidemiologist Lisa Berkman was appointed director of the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies by Harvard Provost Steven E. Hyman in October 2007. Berkman is the Thomas Cabot Professor of Public Policy and of Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). She was chair of the school's Department of Society, Human Development and Health since 1995. Recognized for her groundbreaking work in the field of social epidemiology, she is noted for identifying the effects of social networks on mortality risks that helped define the field in the late 1970s. Berkman also broadened the field with her investigations of how social conditions related to inequality, race, ethnicity, and social isolation influence health and aging. Upon her appointment, Dean Barry R. Bloom of the Harvard School of Public Health, commented "Lisa is a creative and dynamic leader with the rare gift of being able to engage with members in almost every faculty in the University and bringing together people and ideas from the biological sciences, social sciences, and humanities."

 

Before coming to HSPH in 1995 to head what was then the Department of Health and Social Behavior, Berkman was head of the department of chronic disease epidemiology at Yale School of Medicine.

A graduate of Northwestern University, she Berkman received her master's (1975) and doctorate (1977) in epidemiology from the University of California, Berkeley. She joined the Yale faculty in 1979 as an assistant professor.

Berkman is currently a member of the Institute of Medicine and serves as chair of the Board of Scientific Counselors of the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health. She is a past president of the Society for Epidemiologic Research.