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Biographies of Speakers

Lisa F. Berkman is Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy and chair of the Department of Health and Social Behavior at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). Dr. Berkman is a social epidemiologist whose research examines inequalities of health linked to socioeconomic status, race and ethnicity, and social isolation. The majority of her work has focused on identifying the role of social networks and support in predicting declines in physical and cognitive functioning, as well as the onset of disease and mortality. The former director and current chair of the Center for Society and Health, based at HSPH, Dr. Berkman also co-edited the first textbook in her field, Social Epidemiology. Before coming to HSPH, Dr. Berkman served on the faculty of Yale School of Medicine, where she co-directed the Program on Aging and headed the Division of Health Policy and Resources and the Division of Chronic Disease Epidemiology. She received her MS and PhD degrees from the University of California at Berkeley, which named her Alumna of the Year in 1997.

Gro Harlem Brundtland, director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), is promoting that institution’s role as moral voice and technical expert in creating sustainable and equitable health systems in all countries. A lifetime Social Democrat and advocate of women’s rights, Dr. Brundtland has also thrice served as prime minister of Norway. When first elected (1981), she was the youngest person and first woman ever to hold that position. Earlier in her career, Dr. Brundtland spent ten years in the Norwegian public health system, concentrating on children’s health, before accepting the post of minister of the environment in 1974. During the 1980s, as chair of the UN-sponsored World Commission on Environment and Development, she gained international recognition as champion of the principle of sustainable development. In her second term as prime minister, she was a major force behind Norway’s successful mediation of the 1993 peace agreement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. Dr. Brundtland received her medical degree from the University of Oslo and her MPH degree from HSPH. She credits her stay at Harvard with extending her vision of public health beyond the medical world to concerns for human development and the environment.

Julio Frenk assumed the position of minister of health of Mexico on December 1, 2000, when Vicente Fox became president of that nation. Previously Dr. Frenk was the executive director for evidence and information for policy at WHO; in that capacity, he contributed to the design and application of a comprehensive framework for the assessment of health-system performance. Prior to his work at WHO, he served as the founding director-general of the National Institute of Public Health of Mexico and as executive vice president of the Mexican Health Foundation. Dr. Frenk’s research interests have encompassed medical manpower, including the education and employment of physicians; the relationship between globalization and health; the policy implications of shifts in dominant patterns of health and disease; and a wide-ranging review of Mexican health policies and options for health system reforms. He was president of the Mexican Society for Quality in Health Care Reform from 1994 to 1996. Dr. Frenk received his MD from the National University of Mexico and three advanced degrees (MPH, MA in sociology, and PhD in medical care organization and sociology) from the University of Michigan. He was visiting professor at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies in 1993.

Christopher Jencks, Malcolm Wiener Professor of Social Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, has devoted his influential research and commentary to such questions as the social and health consequences of economic inequality, the impact of homelessness and welfare reform, poverty measurement, and the effects on children of living in poor neighborhoods. In addition to Harvard, he has taught at Northwestern University, where he was John D. MacArthur Professor of Sociology and Urban Affairs; the University of Chicago; and the University of California at Santa Barbara. Before entering the academic realm, Mr. Jencks was a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC, and editor of the New Republic. Mr. Jencks’s books include The Academic Revolution (with David Riesman), winner of the Borden Prize for Best Book on Education by the American Council on Education; Inequality, Who Gets Ahead?, named the Best Book in Sociology for 1974 by the American Sociological Association; The Urban Underclass (with Paul Peterson); The Homeless; The Black-White Test Score Gap (with Meredith Phillips); and Rethinking Social Policy.

For more information, please contact Elizabeth Jones at (617) 432-1070 or ejones@hsph.harvard.edu

Health Disparities Symposium/text only version

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