Harvard School of Public Health 84th Commencement
June 7, 2007
WELCOME FROM DEAN BARRY BLOOM
DEAN BLOOM: Please be seated. It is my pleasure to welcome everyone to the 84th Commencement of the Harvard School of Public Health.
Almost a decade ago, Harris Polls asked the American Public, do you know what public health [is]? And at that time, only 7% said they did, and they weren't really queried to know if they really got it right or not. It is my sense that you are entering a very different world as our graduates than you would have a decade ago, and that public health has emerged as a very front burner issue on the national and international agendas, whether related to bioterrorism, or preventing AIDS and communicable diseases in far parts of the world, or flying on an airplane with extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis.
Perhaps for the first time, you, our graduates, will not have to explain what public health is to your families and friends. We are entering a time of heightened awareness about public health and a recognition that, as our former President Larry Summers once said, there is probably no other area of human endeavor in which the application of thought and resources can make so profound a difference in as many people's lives as the world of public health and biomedical science.
Examples. The United Nations has set a series of Millennium Development Goals to reduce poverty in every developing country. Of the eight MDGs, four are related to health, including reducing maternal mortality by three quarters, reducing mortality of kids under five years by two-thirds, halting and hopefully reducing the spread of HIV, AIDS, malaria, and TB, and protecting the environment to protect health. The President of the United States has dedicated more than $15 billion for an emergency plan for AIDS relief, called PEPFAR, and which we are privileged to work in three African countries. And last week, the President asked Congress for an additional $15 billion, to ring it up to $30 billion over the next five years. The President also committed $1.2 billion to reduce malaria deaths in the world over the next five years.
Former President Clinton has a global initiative working with leaders to focus on global health, particularly AIDS, climate change and energy and poverty alleviation. Bono and Bobby Shriver joined with business leaders to launch Project Red, a new organization to engage the private sector in a fight against AIDS in Africa. Now when you buy a Red product from Gap, or Motorola, or Armani, Converse, or Apple, the companies give 50% of their profit to buy AIDS drugs for mothers and children in Africa.
Celebrities in Hollywood, known to the youth of this country and around the world, have dedicated themselves, more than ever, to public health causes. Drew Barrymore became an ambassador against hunger for the World Food Program. Soccer star David Beckham agreed to star in a 30-second TV advertisement to raise funds to fight malaria. And Angelina Jolie has served as a UN High Commissioner for Refugees Goodwill Ambassador. And even America's most popular TV show, American Idol, had a special two-night star-studded, Idol Gives Back, that raised $70 million to divide it equally between U.S. and Africa, to help children and young people in extreme poverty.
Finally, with some advice from us at the Harvard School of Public Health, the Motion Picture Association of America took a historic step by considering smoking on a par with violence and sex, and considering it for movie ratings, restricting it for access to children for the first time in 40 years.
Public health is on the agenda of the world that you enter, hopefully as leaders. Each of the graduates this year has training and ability to be leaders of that public health awareness. So let me sell you a little bit about some of your classmates, what they have brought to -- their experience has brought to us, and what some of them are planning to do when they leave, to give a sense of the diversity enrichment of what the students bring to this school.
Today, we award 414 graduate degrees in public health. Two hundred and twenty of you are in -- receiving your master's of public health. One hundred and twenty-three master's of Science, two master's of occupational health, five doctors of public health, 47 doctors of science, and 17 PhDs. Fifty-five percent of the graduating class are women, 45% men. We're privileged to have 25% of our graduates coming from 60 different countries from all over the world, from Argentina to Iran, and Ghana to Japan, Serbia to Zimbabwe. And from the United States, we have graduates coming from approximately 38 states, including Hawaii and Alaska.
Some of the students have brought with them, to us, some unusual experiences, and some plan to do unusual things. Mark Brady will spend the month of June in South Africa working on an HIV project, prior to beginning his Fogerty Fellowship in Peru studying emerging infectious diseases. Luis Castellanos will complete his fellowship in minority health policy and go on to sub-specialty training at UC Davis Medical Center, focusing on strategies to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in cardio-vascular disease.
Scott Corlew will be the chief medical officer at Interplast, a non-profit organization that provides free reconstructive surgery for needy children around the world. Sonak Pastakia will combine his training in pharmacy and his MPH to work for a university consortium with Kenya, where he will train students in clinical pharmacy, particularly improving practices for drugs in HIV. Jennifer Post will be a pediatrician at the Brookside Community Health Center here in Jamaica Plain. Paul Ruiz, in the Humanitarian Studies Initiative, is completing his fellowship in international emergency medicine and will assist the governments of Serbia and El Salvador in the development of their emergency and disaster medicine systems.
Beatrice Schaad Noble has been able to apply her experience of Switzerland's unique 11 years with an individual mandate for universal health coverage, to study the Massachusetts healthcare reform law that also mandates an individual obligation. She has invited the Swiss minister to implement the reforms in Switzerland to meet with officials in Boston, to help an exchange of knowledge that may help smooth out Massachusetts' adventure in this new initiative. Ami Zota conducted environmental health research at Tar Creek in Oklahoma, a Superfund site, working on infant exposures to toxic metals in a rural population composed primarily of Native Americans. She's going to begin a research fellowship at the Silent Spring Institute to study the relationship between breast cancer and toxic chemical exposures.
A number of these graduating students today like this place so well and their work so well, that they're going to continue here to obtain an additional HSPH degree. Others will return to academic medical centers to complete their medical training, take public health practice positions with state and local governments, international organizations, consulting firms, HMOs, hospitals, or a wide variety of academic careers. In Massachusetts, Kerry McBrien will be a fellow with Blue Cross Blue Shield, which has been one of the leaders in creating the Massachusetts health plan. Alice Watson will be working as a corporate manager for Partner's Health Care. Xiaotian Zhong will be associate director at Wyeth Research in Cambridge. Katherine Blackburn will be a public health research associate for Project Bread, the Walk for Hunger in East Boston.
Some of our graduates will go overseas and share their skills abroad. Keren Ladin will be a research fellow for the Mannheim Institute for Economics and Aging in Germany. Frank Atuguba will be a clinical research officer in Navrongo Health Research Center in Ghana. Mauricio Maza will be a medical director for Basic Health in San Salvador in El Salvador. And Manish Kakkar will become a member of the faculty of one of the new public health schools at the Public Health Foundation of India.
Each and every one of our graduates has a special contribution to make, and it has been a great privilege for me to have the opportunity to meet so many of you during your stay here.
The preamble to the constitution of the World Health Organization, which, as most of you know, is engraved on the walls of the FXB building here, states that the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being, without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic, or social conditions. In that context, our greatest challenge in public health together, I believe, is the disparities in health within this rich country and between countries of the world. Today, half the world, nearly three billion people, live on less than $2 a day. If one accepts life expectancy as the absolute crudest measure of health -- that is, whether you're dead or you are alive -- then in 2004, life expectancy at birth in the U.S. was about 77.6 years. We're not the best. Japan is at about 82 years. But Sierra Leone had a life expectancy of 38, and Zimbabwe a life expectancy of 36, less than half the life expectancy of someone in the U.S. or Japan.
And even in the United States, a life expectancy gap between the 3.4 million urban blacks in America and the 5.6 million Asian females was a gap of almost 21 years of life. In the U.S., Hawaii and Minnesota have the highest expectancies of about 80 and 79. Massachusetts ranks fifth. The lowest life expectancy, shamefully, is in the District of Columbia, the nation's capital and the home of our government. On the positive side, at least to us, it's very exciting that Massachusetts is at the cutting edge of thinking about providing access to all of our citizens and implementing a most creative healthcare reform, I think, of any state in our union -- seeking universal access to high-quality healthcare, which we hope here will serve as a model for the whole country. It is my hope that each of you will contribute in some way during your careers to lessening those disparities in health and quality of life.
Before concluding, it is with a sense of both deep appreciation and some sadness that I have to say that our beloved Director of Student Affairs, Jim Glover, will be leaving us this year for a new life and adventure in New York, although we hope that he will return. I think I would like to acknowledge the wonderful work he has done for our students, with our students, and with this administration in making students' life great. And I would like to thank Jim and his entire staff.
Let me say, in conclusion, that we appreciate so much that most of you and your families have made tremendous sacrifices to come to this school and to pursue your studies with us. Behind every graduate here, I know, is a story of dedication and sacrifice, and behind most of you, a debt. All of us on the faculty have a debt to you, and truly wish the school had the capacity to offer more in the way of scholarships and financial aid. We appreciate deeply the commitment each of you has made to pursue your studies in public health and pursue them with us. The Harvard School of Public Health community is richer and a more interesting one, because of what each of you has contributed, and we thank you very, very much.