Howard Koh’s tenure as assistant secretary for health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) got off to a memorable start in June 2009—he watched President Barack Obama sign a bill into law giving the Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate tobacco products.
Tobacco control has long been a priority for Koh, who is now Harvey V. Fineberg Professor of the Practice of Public Health Leadership at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. During his five years at HHS, Koh helped coordinate efforts that contributed to lowering the nation’s smoking rate by 0.78 percentage points—a rate more than double that seen during the two previous administrations.
A February 17, 2019 profile in the journal Cancer highlighted Koh’s many accomplishments in public health research and policy, including helping to lead the campaign to pass the Massachusetts Tobacco Tax Initiative and later serving as the state’s public health commissioner.
Koh told the journal, “I really believe quite passionately that we all should have a calling, and I feel very blessed to have discovered mine and to have lived it.”
Read the Cancer article: First Person: Howard Koh, MD, MPH