Lopez is asking similar questions in her own research, as she works to shine a light on the factors that make it more likely for cyclists and pedestrians to be involved in a crash on the streets of Boston. She is earning her doctoral degree in health policy, with a concentration in evaluative science and statistics, through a University-wide interdisciplinary program offered through Harvard School of Public Health and five other schools and expects to graduate in 2016. She has received financial support for her work from the Boston Area Research Initiative at the Radcliffe Institute and the Rappaport Institute at the Kennedy School.

For the past year, Lopez has worked with Boston’s Police Department, Department of Transportation, and Mayor’s Office on an assessment of bicyclist injuries in the city. Findings from an analysis she led of narrative police reports of bicycle crashes was part of the Boston Cyclist Safety Report released by the Mayor’s Office in May 2013. With the help of Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Lopez also developed a methodology for automating the removal of personal identifiers from thousands of police narratives, which may help reduce a barrier to sharing sensitive data with other stakeholders.

Key findings from the report include:

• Collisions were dispersed all over the city (unlike street violence events, which are concentrated in certain parts of the city).
• Motor vehicles were involved in over 90% of the bicycle collisions reported to the Boston police.
• Taxis were more likely than non-taxis to “door” (open a door in the path of) an oncoming bicyclist.
• College-aged men were overrepresented in the crash reports, indicating that they are a population to target for prevention efforts.

Lopez’s section of the report also elucidated two areas in which policy makers could focus their efforts to address bike safety in Boston: hotspots and door-related injuries. Lopez identified the top five spots in each of Boston’s neighborhoods for cyclist injuries, including the portion of South Huntington Avenue directly across from the Back of the Hill stop of the trolley’s E line. Seven cyclists were injured at this location over a period of four years. Through analysis of the narrative police reports of these crashes, Lopez and her colleagues found that all but one could be attributed to a cyclist getting his or her wheel lodged in the trolley tracks. And crashes throughout the city could be reduced by 10% if drivers and their passengers were educated to look over their shoulder for cyclists before opening a car door, Lopez said.

Lopez expressed concern when, upon the report’s release, media coverage focused instead on whether helmets should be made mandatory for cyclists. “It’s not that helmets aren’t effective in preventing injury, it’s that they shouldn’t be our top priority right now,” she said. Returning to her analogy of the bridge, Lopez compared giving more cyclists helmets to throwing life preservers to the people in the water. Better to focus on preventing them from falling in the first place, she said.

She also emphasized that data regarding behavior responsible for a crash is incomplete. It is up to each individual officer whether or not to include factors such as if a cyclist ran a red light or was riding in a bike lane. Her goal was not to use the data to place blame on drivers or bicyclists, but to highlight the need for a more comprehensive data collection system that could uniformly capture elements that contributed to such collisions, she said.

Lopez hopes that future researchers will have more data to work with when attempting to measure the effectiveness of transportation safety interventions. The need for more data also was the motivation behind the Bicycle Analysis Reporting System, a project proposed by the winners of this year’s HSPH Spring Challenge student policy writing completion. The winning team, which was advised by Lopez who was also a judge, presented their proposal to Boston City Council in May.

Lopez believes that a data-sharing system such as that proposed by the students is feasible in Boston if political will could be harnessed. Based on her work in San Francisco, she strongly encourages the city of Boston to build a comprehensive injury surveillance system that links police and trauma center data. This system would also include crashes involving pedestrians, who are hit by cars far more often than bicyclists, she said.

“Pedestrian crashes are often forgotten,” Lopez said. “There is an identity specific to owning a bike. But not to being a pedestrian. That’s everyone.”

Lopez will give an oral presentation of more in-depth research findings at this year’s American Public Health Association conference, which will be held in Boston in November. This summer she is working for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and learning about how national transportation policies and funding streams impact injury prevention efforts and their outcomes.

— Amy Roeder

Photo: Amy Roeder

The Champions of Change program was launched as part of President Obama’s Winning the Future Initiative, which highlights individuals, businesses, and organizations who make positive impacts on communities. Quackenbush and the other award winners were singled out for their efforts to make open sharing of scientific data a reality, which the Obama administration has deemed a priority for boosting scientific innovation.

Quackenbush was cited in a White House press release for the founding of the company GenoSpace in 2011 with colleague Mick Correll. GenoSpace develops advanced software tools for collecting, interpreting, and sharing clinical and genomic data to further biomedical research and facilitate personalized medicine.

In particular, Quackenbush was praised for the way GenoSpace has helped support the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation’s (MMRF) CoMMpass study. CoMMpass is a five-year longitudinal study gathering genomic and clinical information from 1,000 multiple myeloma patients. GenoSpace worked closely with MMRF to develop software ensuring that all the data from the study is accessible and useful to anyone interested—scientists, doctors, or patients.

“I’ve long been an advocate of open access science,” Quackenbush said. “Everyone talks about the importance of big data, but it’s not useful if the only people who can use it are specialists. We wanted to make sure that anybody with access to big data would be able to do something with it. It’s like crowdsourcing—the more people who are looking at the data, the more likely it is that someone will find something interesting and relevant.”

He added, “Receiving this award was a tremendous honor, but it reflects not just on me, but on all the people and groups I’ve worked with over the years who have been in favor of open science.”

President Drew Faust summarized each honoree’s accomplishments during the ceremony. Below are her remarks.

Rachel Boschetto, associate director of finance in the Department of Biostatistics
“No one knows exactly how you did it, but you managed to keep the biostatistics department running smoothly despite temporary and permanent staff departures, and an especially uncertain funding environment. Taking on the responsibilities of, and I quote, ‘two, three, or even four people,’ you put forth a heroic effort whenever necessary—a welcome outlier in a year of deviations from the mean.”

Jen Doleva, endowment, gift and chart of accounts administrator (Green Hero)
“You have saved paper and money for HSPH by encouraging departments across the School to redistribute and reuse interoffice envelopes. At your suggestion, people now compost paper towels and take the stairs. They think about sustainability and their personal impact on the planet. It isn’t easy being green, but you make it easier.”

Betty Johnson,  associate director of student and fellow experience
“The architect of HSPH’s Senior Leadership Fellows Program and Voices from the Field webcast series, you have an unsurpassed eye for detail and an unmatched desire to fine tune even the most successful endeavors. A persistent and personable leader, you put everyone at ease and gracefully orchestrate complex events.”

Noman Siddiqi, director of animal biological safety laboratory level 3
“You support the fundamental mission of teaching and research through your exemplary management of crucial equipment that supports the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases. Incredibly vigilant and always thorough, you minimize risks and communicate the importance of your work and the work of HSPH to individuals inside and outside of the University. You are a vector that transmits excellence.”

Kei Chou, cashier, Sebastian’s Café
“You are a welcome sight at the cashier’s station, the hero of Sebastian’s Café, and a beloved member of the HSPH community. Your nominators noted your “blazing speed” at the register, as well as your consistency and efficiency. Keeping the lines moving quickly at the busiest times of the day, you demonstrate excellence in all you do, making change and taking charge to the benefit of countless patrons.”

Photo: Jon Chase/Harvard Staff Photographer

Read Harvard Gazette coverage of the Harvard Heroes ceremony

The award was announced June 3, 2013.

Antibacterial resistance is one of the greatest threats to human health worldwide. The ARLG, which includes more than 20 investigators nationwide, aims to strengthen existing research capacity and address the most pressing scientific priorities related to antibacterial resistance. Its scientific subcommittees will conduct a range of activities including evaluating antibacterial drugs, testing diagnostics, and examining best practices in infection control.

The SDAC, located at HSPH, will develop and implement practical and innovative methods for  the efficient and optimal design, conduct, interim data monitoring, analyses, and reporting of ARLG studies. It will be part of the Center for Biostatistics in AIDS Research (CBAR) at HSPH, reflecting a broadening role for CBAR in infectious diseases research beyond HIV/AIDS, said Michael Hughes, director of CBAR.

Investigators at Duke Medicine and the University of California, San Francisco will oversee the nationwide research effort.

Read Duke University Medical Center release

In the process, they witnessed the power of private delivery mechanisms for improving health – and experienced the messiness that is the real world of public health in resource-poor countries.

For the seventh year, Antares—a collaboration between HSPH and HBS focused on harnessing private enterprise for public health—has brought together three cross-disciplinary teams made up of four students each as part of a semester-long course that includes a five-day field experience.  The teams worked with partner organizations in developing countries that are implementing self-sustaining models for providing health-related services to the poor and made recommendations for improvements.  The student teams then presented their findings in April to an audience of peers, mentors, friends of Antares, and faculty at HBS.

Antares is co-directed by David Bloom, PhD, the Clarence James Gamble Professor of Economics and Demography at HSPH, and Michael Chu, a financial strategist and senior lecturer at HBS.  Their idea is to cross-pollinate doing good socially with doing well financially by training cadres of students who understand that ventures providing health services to the poor based on business models might be more sustainable than those based on philanthropy or in the public sector.

As Sebastian Rodriguez-Llamazares (HSPH, MPH ’13) and admitted “public health romantic,” learned first-hand, maximizing profits can be a sustainable way of benefiting the poor of the world.  Such lessons are the heart of Antares. 

Read more about each student project:

Coupon Books Empowering Women To Be Healthy – Nicaragua

Calling for Care – India

Rural Sanitation: Water Filters and Latrines –  Cambodia

Coupon books empowering women to be healthy

This is the sixth year that Antares has partnered with Pro Mujer, a Latin American nonprofit that seeks to empower women through microfinance, business training, and healthcare support.  This year’s project was based in Nicaragua, one of the poorest countries in the region with significant health gaps and only 6.3 percent of people insured.  The students’ task was to evaluate Pro Mujer’s new healthcare program piloted in the last year in Leon, Nicaragua: for preventive healthcare services, including Pap smears, dental check-ups, and discounts for optical services and other specialists.

 “We think that Pro Mujer has great, but unrealized, potential to impact healthcare in the five countries in which they operate—Nicaragua, Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, and Argentina,” reported Jenna Troup, an SM’14 candidate at HSPH.  Pro Mujer has 250,000 microfinance clients, but sees many fewer of its clients in their health clinics.

Other students on the team were Patricia Ceballos Carrascosa (HBS, MBA ‘13) Paloma Merodio (HKS, MPA ‘13) and Sebastian Rodriguez-Llamazares (HSPH, MPH ’13).  As part of the presentation, they took turns discussing the company’s background, business model, and their recommended strategy and implementation.

The team discovered that Pro Mujer’s new healthcare program was popular with Pro Mujer clients and that clients might be willing to pay more for the services they are able to access. However, if Pro Mujer achieves its health-based goal of greatly  increasing use of the coupons, the team calculated that the program on its own would not be financially sustainable. Currently, a relatively low percentage of Pro Mujer’s clients use the coupons they have purchased. If more clients purchase the coupon books and use all of the coupons, the program will lose money.

To truly impact health yet make the program self-sustaining, the team proposed a few potential solutions including cross-subsidies from the microcredit side of the organization or increasing the price of the coupon book. Pro Mujer leadership has to find the balance between keeping the price low enough to encourage their clients to buy the coupon books, yet high enough to sustain the program with greater usage and sufficient profit. Also to encourage greater use of the coupons, “Pro Mujer needs to communicate more information in the packet so it’s clear where to go or how to schedule appointments,” pointed out Merodio. The team was pleased to learn that the integration of the microcredit and health sides of the organization is working well – over 90 percent of clients who have purchased the coupon book did so with an extension of credit or by using money from their savings.

Pro Mujer staff is committed to all three arms of their mission, the students determined, but staff receives twice the incentive to extend microcredit compared with selling the healthcare package. The organization needs to better align with its missions and sell both credit and healthcare together, they advised Pro Mujer leadership. They also recommended changing the title of the person in charge of credit, training and healthcare. Currently she is called the Credit Officer, but a title like Empowerment Officer might better reflect and align all aspects of her job.

Moreover, the students thought the company could leverage their current microfinance clients, who meet in groups every 14 to 28 days in someone’s home to go over their loans and finances and to pay their monthly loan installments for their healthcare program. Incentivize the women to use the clinic too, the students suggested. Perhaps they could have a contest and if 100 percent of the group, say, get a Pap smear, offer microcredit prizes.

The group’s recommendations:

• Define and ensure a sustainable business model

• Focus on prevention but enable access to treatment (there is more of a willingness to pay for treatment than prevention)

• Take advantage of an integrated alignment of services

In the audience, Santiago Ocejo Torres, MD, MPH ’10, MBA ’14, identified himself as a former Pro Mujer staff member (Country Director of Health and Human Development Services, 2011-12), and said that staff discussed issues like incentives all the time. “I’m impressed that you keyed in on that and love the idea of changing the name of the Credit Officer,” he commented.

Calling for care

In India there are only 6 physicians per 10,000 people but close to 100 percent of people have cell phones. Filling the healthcare gap, MeraDoctor, which means “my doctor,” offers a 24/7 physician-staffed call center. For a nominal annual subscription fee ($23.95 USD), its 10,000 current customers can call anytime and talk to a doctor. MeraDoctor’s goal is to have 1 million customers by 2017; they only need 100,000 customers to break even.

“Our goal was to help lower operational costs while maintaining quality as they scaled up,” explained Candy Liang (HSPH, SM ’13).

MeraDoctor was founded in 2010 by Ajay Nair, MD (HSPH, MPH ’07), a Mumbai-trained physician, and Gautam Ivatury, an expert in mobile phone-based financial and health services. This is the second year Antares has worked with them, and this year’s team also included: Will Cook (HKS, MPA ’13), Lindsey Crumbaugh (HBS, MBA ’13), and Yogeeta Manglani (HSPH, MS ‘14).

After conducting interviews with doctors, nurses and customers, the students discovered that customers had a low understanding about healthcare quality. They use MeraDoctor because it is accessible at all hours and private. Most calls are non-emergency—cough, fever, or about sexual health—and the callers primarily want someone they can trust, and don’t mind whether it is a doctor or a nurse.

Having an all-physician staff was not a competitive advantage, the students concluded. MeraDoctor’s two closest competitors used both doctors and nurses to take calls. They discerned that 55 percent of the call volume could be handled by nurses, who are much more plentiful in India than physicians. If MeraDoctor staffed with a combination of nurses and doctors, they could reduce costs by 10 percent.

The students also investigated decision-support software that could improve diagnosis and productivity, assessing five vendor products and recommending one that would work best with MeraDoctor’s call platform. Though they brainstormed many other ideas—using texts for questions or prerecorded answers or interactive voice responses—they ended up focusing on two recommendations that were compatible with the founders’ mission: using nurses and implementing decision-support software, which together could achieve savings and maintain quality.

One of the valuable lessons from the experience, Will Cook pointed out, was that “we had to make sure we gave them what they wanted and what they needed.”

Rural sanitation: water filters and latrines 

iDE, a non-profit nongovernmental organization with a market-based approach to poverty reduction, has had recent success in the rural sanitation market in first Vietnam and now Cambodia. Its two arms of business in Cambodia follow two different business models: a for-profit business selling ceramic water filters through sales agents who go to the villages (subsidized by the receipt of carbon credits) and a nonprofit donor-driven business selling latrines to rural households by commissioning local masons to build and market them.

Antares students were tasked to answer: How can iDE boost the sales of both water filters and latrines, and deepen its social and health impact for rural Cambodians?

Providing context, Azalea Ayuningtyas (HSPH, SM ’13) described Cambodia’s 20 percent prevalence of water-borne diarrheal disease, one of the major cause of its high rate of child mortality. Eighty percent of the country’s population is rural and 72 percent defecate in the open.

The team—which also included Andrzej Ejsmont (HSPH, MPH’13), Brandi Burns (HBS, MBA’13) and Jon McClain (HBS, MBA’13)—uncovered three major problems. The supply of latrines was unreliable and varied region to region in part because the cost of the latrines was set at $35 USD. The latrines were affordable, but masons could often make more by building other products. The team also found that people stopped using the water filters because they didn’t know how to maintain them or that they could get a free replacement for a broken ceramic pot? Purchased latrines also went unused because buyers later found out that they needed a shelter to go around the latrine as well.

“We sat down with iDE leadership to see how they defined success,” explained Burns. They wanted to grow and expand the businesses, but they also wanted to be champions in global water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH), she said. They had been using indicators such as numbers sold as metrics for success. “But if success was defined as having impact in the WASH sector, their strategy wasn’t working if people weren’t using the products,” said Burns.

Other insights emerged from interviews with customers. People wanted to purchase with their own, not borrowed, money, and their choice often came down to buying WASH products versus other daily needs like food. They disengaged when presentations went too long. Sales agents typically didn’t return to the same village to follow up with those interested.

The students then generated a list of prioritized commercial and health care initiatives. Their suggestions included creating micro savings options, shortening the length of community sales presentations, and allowing market supply and demand to dictate latrine price. They also recommended bundling latrine sales with hand washing stations, developing a fertilizer business model to address human waste management, and giving more maintenance information about water filters to iDE customers.

Cross-disciplinary approach working

The students universally felt that Antares had been an incredible learning experience. “It opened my eyes to the power of private delivery,” said Liang, who worked on the MeraDoctor project.

Students were exposed to layers of complexity, to each other’s professional tools and language, and learned how to build good functional relationships with clients. “Part of the value is that the students struggled with the messiness that is the real world,” said Beth Springer (HBS ’90), the iDE team’s technical advisor.

They learned that it was okay to push back with a client if the project is too narrowly focused, commented Terry Kramer (HBS MBA’86) the advisor to the MeraDoctor group. He added: “The multidisciplinary, global challenges are dramatic in an area such as public health. It was energizing to see students from HBS, HSPH, and HKS come together to appreciate the diversity of challenges in this space, the need to apply multiple disciplines and an understanding of unique market challenges country by country to address these opportunities. The feeling of passion for what they worked on was outstanding.”

But perhaps the results of the Antares project were best summarized by another advisor, Tom Barry (HBS ’69): “Now we have a generation of students coming out of three Harvard schools who understand how to solve major social problems.”

–Ellen Barstow

Dean Frenk, Dr. Brilliant, distinguished guests, faculty and alumni, parents and families: Greetings and good afternoon. Class of 2013—Congratulations! We made it! I am honored to stand in front of you today, to describe our achievements, celebrate our diversity, and help prepare us for our journeys ahead.

At last year’s commencement, Dean Frenk, quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson, challenged us to be “trailblazers.” Dean Frenk knew there is no better way to challenge 500 type A over-achievers than a dare. And it worked. I’ve been pondering his words ever since and have tried to determine: What does it take to be a trailblazer?

Like any good Harvard student, I started with a hypothesis and employed a robust method of evidence-finding and logical elimination. So, within a 95% confidence interval, here is what I found about what we’ve learned on blazing new trails.

We learned to set ambitious goals. If you are unhappy with the status quo, don’t aim for minor tweaks, plan for systemic overhaul. Facing high rates of cancer mortality in the developing world, we signed on to the World Cancer Declaration to lower not just one, but 11 types of cancer burdens. Seeing high rates of complications after surgery, we didn’t just aim to increase the use of checklists, we worked to change the culture of operating rooms. Our school was founded 100 years ago. We come from a long history of ambitious goal setters, and HSPH has made sure that we wouldn’t leave without raising the bar.

We learned to collaborate. Through numerous group projects, we learned that the best public health solutions are products of multidisciplinary collaboration. For example, in our Spring Challenge this year, to reduce bicycle accidents in Boston, we needed knowledge on neighborhood walkability from Social and Behavioral Science students, insight[s] on incentive alignments from Health Policy and Management students, and analytical prowess from biostatistics students. Our school was founded as a joint Harvard-MIT program. Facing the enormous challenges to public health at the turn of the 20th century, physicians and scientists worked together to form the first public health school in the US. Multidisciplinary collaboration is in our DNA.

And we learned about leadership. I learned it not only through cases or class lectures. I learned it through you, my classmates. Through you I learned that leadership requires courage, humility, and dedication.

When my friend Mary Sando decided to attend HSPH, temporarily leaving behind her two young children and her husband in Tanzania: that is what courage looks like.

When experienced physicians work diligently with non-MD students to improve patient safety: that is what humility looks like.

When my friend Elisabeth Malin decided to return to school despite the death of her mother: that is what dedication looks like.

HSPH has equipped us with the skills, the knowledge, and tools to make our own paths—and we owe it to our family and loved ones, our professors and mentors, ourselves, and the people we will serve, to do so.

Two roads diverged in a wood. We didn’t take either: we created our own, and that will make all the difference.

Thank you.

photo: J.D. Levine

Dean Frenk—Julio—and your family; graduating students of the class of 2013, and your families and partners and friends; Miss Liang, for that amazing speech; distinguished members of the faculty; all members of the entire School of Public Health community:

Thank you for inviting me to speak to you today.

It’s a pleasure to see some familiar faces and friends here today. I’m happy to see John Brownstein, from the Harvard Medical School and Flu Near You, who we’re partnering with on some really interesting work on digital disease surveillance. John is proof that you can be a PhD and do practical things in public health.

I particularly want to welcome Andy Epstein. You may have known her husband Paul Epstein who sadly died a year and half ago. Paul Epstein founded the Harvard Center for Health and the Global Environment. He taught classes at the School of Public Health on climate and health and he set the gold standard for combining science and advocacy…and love.

Paul and Andy and my wife Girija and I came together when we were interns in San Francisco around the time of the Summer of Love. You may have heard about it in your history books.

Coming here today I’ve been thinking about that time, in the late 60’s and 70’s when Paul and Andy and Girija and I were activists. We had dedicated ourselves to change the practice of medicine, to make health care work for the poor, the vulnerable, the weak. We were activists and we were optimists.

All of you are at some level activists, at some level optimists. Do you remember the first time you decided on a career in public health, in serving the people, as an activist for social justice?

I know the very minute the virus of activism infected me.

On Nov. 5, 1962, the Reverend Martin Luther King visited the University of Michigan. It was a dramatic time. The world teetered on the brink of nuclear madness during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Federal troops were on patrol after the first black student was admitted to Ole Miss. And Bob Dylan was singin’ “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall.”

I was a completely clueless sophomore, locked in my own selfish bubble. But I went to hear Martin Luther King as he spoke that day in a way that made us feel it was our destiny to become activists. We jumped on stage and stayed there as his soaring rhetoric and the truth of his life, his example, called everyone who heard him to a life of service to social justice, a life that for me became public health.

A small group of us sat around him for several hours, listening, mesmerized. We could not let him go.

He said that “the arc of moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice” He was not the first to speak of the arc of the moral universe bending towards justice. Albert Einstein talked of it. Theodore Parker, a Unitarian Minister, was probably the first. Fittingly he lived not far from where we sit, in Boston. Fittingly, he was an abolitionist, a changemaker, an activist. A troublemaker of our kind.

But for me, when I heard Martin Luther King say, “The arc of the moral universe is long but it tends towards justice,” it might have been the anthem of the 60’s. It struck home. We all signed up for the cause. We marched in Selma, Alabama, Mississippi, and Washington D.C. for freedom, social change, and civil rights. We marched against secret wars in Southeast Asia.

We had sit-ins and teach-ins and joined an alphabet soup of civil rights organizations: CORE, SNCC, and NAACP. We learned non-violence, to sit in at the lunch counter at Woolworth’s, and absorb body blows without hitting back. In medical school, I joined the Medical Committee for Human Rights, which had been started here at Harvard, put on a white coat with an ostentatious stethoscope, and joined a cadre of medical students, nurses, and public health activists and we marched with Martin Luther King, surrounding him as if our white coats could protect him. One day in Chicago, at an antiwar march, hundreds of us were arrested marching with Martin Luther King. It was such an honor to be arrested with Martin Luther King. There we so many of us they could not put us in regular jail. They had to make a pretend jail to keep so many. That’s a lesson for activists who plan to get arrested. Figure out in advance how to go to pretend jail.

We won some and lost some, but we successfully stopped the Vietnam War and passed the Voting and Civil Rights Acts. My generation planted seeds that would later embolden movements for women’s rights and gay rights and yes, we felt that indeed “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it does bend toward justice.”

And that is how I wound up with Paul Epstein and Andy Epstein and half a dozen other activists, deciding we would all do our internships—and perhaps wreck havoc—on the same city. Poor San Francisco, it was not ready for us.

A few days before our internship started, a glossy expensive doctors magazine called World Medical News put a photo of five graduating activist medical students on its cover.

They wrote: “Watch out doctors! Watch out hospitals where they will intern! These young revolutionaries are coming. They will destroy your wealth and privileges.”

I guess they thought they had detected the ringleaders of a conspiracy, and they were not completely wrong. We believed, unlike the AMA of the time, that health care was not a privilege, it was a basic human right. And we believed to deprive anyone of basic health care was immoral as a clinician and as a country. Something about inalienable rights and “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” I still believe that. Don’t you?

I looked at that photo yesterday thinking I was going to see Andy today. I don’t believe we looked menacing at all, just scared kids, like most of my generation—angry about an unjust war, fighting for civil rights.

But the hospital I was interning at thought I was menacing, I guess.

Internships began on July 1st. When I walked into the hospital on my first day that magazine cover picture was everywhere. Hundreds of copies were posted on every bulletin board in the place, each with a bull’s-eye painted around my head. They did not intend that bull’s eye to be a halo!

Several bull’s-eyes had a hypodermic syringe stuck in my nose. Below each one was written: “Presbyterian Hospital Welcomes Its New Revolutionary Intern.” Oh, yes.

And maybe it was a coincidence, but maybe it wasn’t: Instead of the usual intern’s 24 hours on, 24 hours off, the first rotation I was assigned was for 96 hours straight in the intensive care ward. By the end of my 4 days on, I was exhausted, useless, and sure I was making lousy medical decisions and sure the hospital had jeopardized the health of patients to make a political point.

But that was a different era than today, and we were bold. On July 5th we issued a press release. On July 6th we organized an interns and residents union. On July 7th, we went on strike for better patient care. Three days later, the hospital caved in and agreed to our demands for better and more inclusive patient care.

The old guard did not believe that “health care is a right and not a privilege.” Some of those same forces are around today in Congress, trying to undermine or undo the Affordable Care Act. They would exclude 45 million uninsured from getting health care. Who are these people who value profits over public health? They are the same forces that fought the 60’s idea of health as a human right.

I have to admit that though we held the moral high ground, we were very arrogant and pigheaded. Not all of older clinicians saw the anti-war movement and the civil rights movement as a threat to their status. Some looked at us long-haired shaggy hippie doctors and saw a threat to their patients. Once we understood that the middle ground was good and inclusive patient care, we began to work together.

Both sides were right in a way. I soon learned how many of those who were indifferent to the social causes I cared about were actually much better clinicians than me: many worked longer hours, putting their patients’ care at the center of their world.

As for my generation of young radicals, we had prejudged a mostly conservative profession, assuming they couldn’t be good doctors for being out of touch with the great social upheaval of the time, for not understanding the needs of the marginalized, not seeing the patterns and linkages between disease and poverty, the relationship between social justice and life expectancy, and how the battle then as now was about dignity and human rights.

And here is the point as you go forward. Somehow, these two sides of our national health debate—one outward looking at social justice and inclusion and one inward looking inward at high quality patient care that is exclusionary—met then and must meet now on sacred ground, sharing the profound obligation and great joy of improving the health of the people.

The fire of that battle catalyzed great expansion in public health. New areas of study and practice—medical care organization, community medicine, preventive medicine, social medicine—all got created. The EIS corps and epidemiology got a boost when young men could avoid the draft by going to CDC as epidemiologists instead of going to war or going to Canada! The best and the brightest became EIS officers and the CDC became a major player. Much of this centered around Harvard, which played an outsize role in the new alphabet soup of activist public health: MCHR, PSR, SHO, and so many others.

Political activism fueled many public health careers, but in those days there was also the counterculture.

You know of the infamous Alcatraz prison. You may not know that 40 years ago a band of Native Americans invaded, took over Alcatraz, symbolic of their idea of liberating land that once was taken by the US government from the hands of Indians. One woman, a Sioux Indian named Lou Trudell, who was part of that occupation, was nine months pregnant, about to deliver a baby in that cold old prison—where there was no water, no electricity, and no medical care. A newspaper columnist wrote a challenge: Is there no doctor who is willing to go live on Alcatraz and deliver this baby? Of course—I went. I hitchhiked on a local boat, lived on the island with the Indians for almost a month, helped Lou deliver the baby. They named the baby Wovoka after the founder of the Ghost Dance religion. I know that there was no electricity on that cold prison island, but when that Indian baby was born on free Indian land, there was electricity of a different sort. A mystical electricity. It was a deep emotional experience for everyone on the Island, whatever the color of their skin.

After I was lifted by helicopter off Alcatraz to dry land in San Francisco, I was met with dozens of TV cameras asking me “what do the Indians want.” How could I really know? I had never met a Native American until three weeks earlier. Somehow, in a way I still don’t understand, someone at Warner Brothers saw my anxious TV performance and asked me to play a young doctor in a movie called Medicine Ball Caravan—about the Grateful Dead and the Jefferson Airplane and rock bands. I became a rock doc. If you’ve heard the expression “you are either on the bus or off the bus”—I was definitely on the bus. I left medicine for a time to join my dear friend Wavy Gravy’s Hog Farm commune, and traveled on funny painted hippie buses from London to Kathmandu, living for weeks at a time in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and Nepal.

I lament the fact that you can’t take that trip. It was the trip of a lifetime.

My wife and I wound up in a Himalayan ashram for two years. I nearly forgot all about medicine. We studied Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Christian, and Jewish texts. And meditated. And that was the normal career path in those days.

My teacher, my guru, Neem Karoli Baba, was a wonderful and very wise renunciate. And we all thought he could see the future somehow. One day, while I was trying to meditate, my guru yelled my name (he called me “Doctor America”). He said it was my destiny to leave the monastery, leave the mountains, to join the WHO team that was being assembled in New Delhi to eradicate smallpox. He said smallpox would be eradicated, that it was God’s gift to humanity to lift one form of suffering from our shoulders, it was God’s gift because of the dedication of public health workers. How he knew smallpox could be, would be eradicated, I will never understand. And I was 27 and had never seen a case of smallpox, and this was to be my first real job out of medical school.

The first time I saw a village full of people dying of smallpox, it was like an image from Hieronymous Bosch or an engraving from Dante’s Inferno. But this was real. When I arrived in that infected village in a big jeep with a big UN seal on it, a mother rushed up to the jeep carrying a four-year-old boy. She asked me to heal him. But the boy was long dead. Everywhere there were children coughing, covered with excruciating lesions. Parents standing by helplessly, watching them die. Some places we were told the rivers did not run because they were clogged with dead bodies.

Smallpox was arguably the worst disease in human history. It had killed more than half a billion people—really 500 million—in the 20th century. Two dozen kings and queens and emperors and dictators died from smallpox. Wealth and privilege could not protect you from a truly excruciating death. Pustules and scabs cover every inch of your body.

There were no intensive care rooms, no clinical care—no treatment options—only the fight to prevent the next case. One third of the victims die. There were almost 200,000 cases in India the year we began.

To eradicate smallpox we had to find every case in the world, every virus, without exception, and put a ring of immunity around it. So that’s what we did. Over the next few years, 150,000 health workers visited every house in India searching for hidden cases of smallpox. We made more than one billion house calls. And in October of 1977, I got to the most remote bottom of Bangladesh to see what would be the last human infection in nature of Variola Major—the end of a chain of transmission of the disease that lasted more than 5,000 years, that had killed Pharaoh Ramses himself and might have scarred the faces of many of Jesus’ or Moses’ or Buddha’s disciples. A young girl named Rahima Banu in Bhola Island, Bangladesh. When I saw her after her scabs had fallen, and contemplated that perhaps once when she coughed and the last viruses of Variola major fell on the hot parched land of Kuralia village, the last virus died from that chain of transmission going back to Ramses, to biblical times, I cried like a baby, so relieved, so happy the demon of smallpox was dead, so honored to be a small part of it.

In a way, my life was set. I had not yet gone to public health school, I had not yet studied epidemiology formally, I did not yet have my MPH but I knew I would. And I knew I would always be a public health worker. No matter how hard, no matter the long odds, nothing could be more noble.

My mentor was Bill Foege, the legendary epidemiologist who would go on to head CDC and inspired the Gates Foundation commitment to global health. He crafted the strategy of surveillance and containment that saved the world from smallpox. Bill took me to see my first case of smallpox. Bill is very very tall. We would go into villages to vaccinate kids and look for cases of smallpox. But the kids would all hide. Because I spoke Hindi he told me to tell all the children that the “tallest man in the world had come to their villages.” I did, they came, and we grabbed them and vaccinated them. Bill taught me to take the same sense of personal satisfaction watching the epidemic curve drop as I would have watching a child’s fever chart. Hidden in those dry graphs and charts were the stories of hundreds of thousands of individual life and death struggles.

I spent 10 years in India and Asia fighting smallpox. I had been the youngest member of the WHO smalIpox team. I was the last to leave. I turned off the lights and packed up the archives.

Smallpox was the first and, so far, only disease ever eradicated from the world.

I expect and pray that another ancient disease, polio, will soon follow into the dustbin of history before you finish the first years in your new careers. Thanks to WHO and Rotary and the Gates Foundation for sticking with polio, despite the murder of public health workers in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Plus, the Carter Center has such success in another eradicable disease—another ancient biblical disease—called Guinea worm or Dracunculiasis or “the fiery serpent.” Dracunculiasis is written about in the 2nd century B.C. Greek and Egyptian chronicles.

It is a great race to see which of these two ancient scourges will be eradicated first! Polio and Guinea worm, each endemic now in only three or four countries: maybe it will be a photo finish. That would be nice. Because if smallpox is the only disease in history eradicated, it will always be an anomaly, an anecdote, a footnote—but if two or three diseases have been eradicated, that will be a huge boost to global public health workers all over the world.

And then we can go after pandemics. With the new digital disease detection systems like Healthmap and GPHIN and ProMed and Google Flu Trends and Flu Near You and new governance systems like CORDS, I have high hopes we can end pandemics in your lifetimes. It sounds crazy—but so did the idea of eradicating smallpox or polio. This is another race—between inevitable pandemics if we do nothing, and the new technologies that could put pandemics in the same dustbin of history where we have this image of smallpox, polio and Guinea worm sitting in that dustbin, waiting for company.

After we eradicated smallpox, some of the smallpox warriors as we fancied ourselves wanted to do it again, and we started the Seva Foundation to apply the same kind of scale to giving back sight surgically to poor blind people. We took what we learned in smallpox eradication and raised funds from old friends like Steve Jobs. By driving the price of a sight restoring operation to (then) $5, we could deliver service at scale to anyone in the world. Seva, and our partner, the Aravind Eye Hospital, have restored sight to more than 3 million people.

So that’s my story.

Today begins your story, your turn.

Your generation, your adventures. And public health is a great adventure, filled with so many possibilities. If you want, you can work on a much larger scale than individual doctors. Or you can work with a small local health department. Either way you will find joy and satisfaction in your chosen field of public health.

You may fight for animal rights or human rights.

You may work on poor eyesight or mental illness or you may crack the epidemiological or genomic mysteries of cancer or heart disease.

You may challenge the government, corporations, or special interests to right wrongs local or global.

You may seek to lessen the burden on the poor, or battle to bring water, health care, and education to those who need it.

You are a changemaker, part of the warp and weft of social change. You are pathfinders. Whether you work on improving the social justice of public health, like Paul Farmer, or fight the terrible effects of climate change on health, like Paul Epstein, you can be a public health hero.

When you work on public health, when you choose the noble path of working for the health of the public, you inherit the great tradition of those who came before you.

Class of 2013: I wish you amazing, transformative lives and adventures, filled with inspiration, hard work, equanimity, and joy.

Class of 2013: Today you inherit a magnificent tradition and embark on a noble cause.

Every single day, you’ll have the power to change lives.

You’ll give hope and health to your communities and your world, even when the news is bad.

In the 60’s, when my generation was shell-shocked by the assassinations of Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, and Robert Kennedy, and the daily death toll from the war in Vietnam depressed us beyond imagination, a San Francisco radio reporter, Skoop Nisker, ended every news broadcast by urging his listeners, “The news is bad today. But if you don’t like today’s news, go out and make some of your own.”

Class of 2013: From today on, make your own news. The narrative of history is now in your hands.

Class of 2013, new members of the public health community, congratulations! Your teachers, your parents, your partners, and all of us who went ahead of you are proud of you.

I just have one parting request. Listen up!

Whether it was Dr. King or someone else who first imagined the arc of the moral universe bending towards justice, you can be damn sure they did not mean that history bends toward justice all on its own. Look around you. It is far from automatic. It is a battle for the poor, a battle for justice, a battle to lift the health of the public.

Here is what I ask of you: Imagine that arc of history that Martin Luther King inspired is right here with us. The arc of the universe needs your help to bend it towards justice. It will not happen on its own. The arc of history will not bend towards justice without you bending it. Public health needs you to insure health for all. Seize that history. Bend that arc. I want you to leap up, to jump up and grab that arc of history with both hands, and yank it down, twist it, and bend it. Bend it towards fairness, bend it towards better health for all, bend it towards justice!

That’s your noble calling of public health. Welcome.

And thank you.

photo: J.D. Levine

Welcome remarks

Dear graduating students, family members, and friends; dear members of the faculty and of the entire Harvard School of Public Health community:

I am here to give you a very warm welcome—truly.

It is my great pleasure to be among the first to congratulate you as you move from being Harvard School of Public Health students to becoming Harvard School of Public Health alumni.

Congratulations also to the new graduates’ families, friends, teachers, and mentors—to all of you who made this day possible.

This is indeed a joyous occasion. At the same time, we cannot forget the fact that it takes place in the shadow of tragedy. The terrible events around the Boston Marathon revealed both the best and worst of human nature, but let’s focus on the best. Let’s focus on the first responders and bystanders who rushed into harm’s way to help victims. And we saw the life-saving impact of leadership and crisis preparation, both central to our work and mission here at Harvard School of Public Health. Even as we grieve with the victims and their families, we are proud of—and grateful to—HSPH faculty, alumni, and students who contributed to what is now recognized as an extraordinary example of crisis response.

What made the Boston response so effective was that it brought together the desire to help with impeccable preparation. “The training kicks in,” is how one first responder explained his behavior after the bombs exploded.

The training kicks in. Whether your goal is to combat infectious diseases, reform health systems, or respond to emergencies, preparation is essential to success—and as you embark on this new chapter of your public health careers, my greatest hope is that Harvard School of Public Health has prepared you well for the challenges you will face.

The Class of 2013 is outstanding in many ways—some clearly evident now, others that will only come to light in the course of time.

Altogether, 558 of you are receiving degrees today. You come from all over the world—from 74 countries and from 30 states in the U.S. All of you are joining the ranks of remarkable individuals who have made history. Let me tell you about one of them.

In 1917, this School—then known as the Harvard-MIT School for Health Officers—awarded a certificate to a young woman named Linda James, making her the first female to receive a Harvard University credential on the same terms as her male classmates, one of many historic firsts for what is now Harvard School for Public Health. Today, more than 56% of you receiving your degrees are women—a testament to how far we have come over the past century.

Today’s graduates are receiving a wide range of degrees, reflecting your wide-ranging goals and interests—31 Doctors of Philosophy, 2 Doctors of Public Health, 69 Doctors of Science, 280 Masters of Public Health, 167 Masters of Science, and 9 Masters of Arts. Seventeen of you will be continuing on with us to earn another degree.

Already, you have made substantial contributions to public health. You have worked to decrease maternal mortality in Tanzania, provided mental health services in Haiti, explored the roots of childhood obesity and the impact of neighborhoods on health, conducted basic research relating to malaria and cancer, and engaged in countless other projects as wide ranging as they are important.

Many of you have also made profound contributions to the Boston community. I recently learned that nearly two dozen HSPH students provided tutoring to local area public school students during this past year, also raising money through grants to support these efforts, and I suspect this is just the tip of the iceberg. I am so proud of—and grateful for—all you do to make the world a better place, whether you are thousands of miles away, or just around the corner. In public health, as you well know, everything is connected, and every effort counts.

There is also another distinction, one that all of you share: You are graduating in 2013, on the cusp of our Centennial year.

What is now Harvard School of Public Health opened its doors in September 1913, collaborating with MIT to launch the School for Health Officers. It was a time of exciting transformation in public health, with new discoveries relating to sanitation, bacteriology, and the emergence of the new field of scientific epidemiology, and the young school of public health was at the center of it all.

A century later we find ourselves in another time of rapid transformation.

Global travel, technology, and globalized markets have all contributed to creating a world with unprecedented levels of interconnection and interdependence. A disease that starts in Asia or Europe can travel to Africa or the U.S. in a matter of hours.

With the globalization of fast food, smoking, and urban pollution, we are seeing soaring rates of chronic conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and certain cancers.

Health care is increasingly costly—and unevenly distributed. While the wealthiest among us are living longer and better than ever before, the poorest lack the most basic care—and often die as a result.

Health care systems are also more complex than ever before, and the need for outstanding public health leaders to run them effectively has never been so great.

At an alumni event last fall, Harvard University President Drew Faust spoke of this being “a public health moment.” For the reasons I just described, this is absolutely true. There has never been a time when the field of public health was so filled with both dangers and possibilities—a fact reflected in the world-changing work of so many of our alumni.

One of most notable is Donald Hopkins, currently vice president for health programs at the Carter Center and one of the world’s foremost experts in disease eradication. After receiving his master’s in public health here at HSPH in 1970, Don went on to play a key role in the global elimination of smallpox and is now focused on the eradication of Guinea worm—a parasitic disease so intensely painful that it’s been dubbed “the fiery serpent.” The goal is within reach. When Don began his work in 1986, there were 3.5 million guinea worm cases. Today, there are fewer than 600. Donald Hopkins’ contributions were recognized earlier today, when he received an honorary degree, the highest recognition accorded by Harvard University.

But if we live in a world of great opportunities—where it’s possible to triumph over diseases that have plagued humankind for centuries—we also live in a world where the risks have never been greater.

During the years I served as Secretary of Health in Mexico, I kept a quote from Winston Churchill on my desk. While the language is a bit dated—a little bit sexist—the sentiment is still valid. Let me quote:

“To every man there comes in his lifetime that special moment when he is figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered a chance to do a very special thing unique to him and fitted to his talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds him unprepared or unqualified for work which would be his finest hour.”

What a tragedy if that moment finds him—or her, we’ll say today—unprepared or unqualified for work which would be his or her finest hour.

This idea haunted me. I was so afraid that I would fail to rise to the many challenges of my position. I knew that I had been entrusted with a unique opportunity to effect change, and I was determined to do everything I could to assure this didn’t go to waste.

I still have this quote on my desk here at Harvard School of Public Health. The paper is yellowed, but I still read it every single day.

As Secretary of Health, my central commitment was to the people of my country. As Dean of Harvard School of Public Health, that commitment is to students, and every day, when I read that Winston Churchill quote, I think of you. I think of how we’ve been entrusted with preparing you for work uniquely suited to your special talents—for what will be your finest hours. Nothing is more important to me—or to the future of public health.

Being prepared doesn’t mean you won’t feel uncertain. I’ve never gotten beyond that myself. You likely won’t either. What it does mean is striving every moment to develop the skills and knowledge that will allow you to give the very best of yourselves. Progress isn’t created by programs and policies. Progress is created by people. That is why public health leadership has been a central focus of my deanship.

On the surface, leaders look very different—they are women and men, old and young, of all races, nationalities, and religions. They have diverse goals, diverse styles, diverse strategies.

That said, all leaders share certain attributes. Some of the most important are versatility, knowledge that is both broad and deep, the ability to articulate a personal vision, and interpersonal skills such as collaboration and persuasion.

The advantage of versatility is reflected in the remarkable career of today’s remarkable commencement speaker, Larry Brilliant, about whom I’ll have more to say shortly. What we need are T-shaped leaders—leaders with knowledge that is not only deep in a few areas but also extends to many.

Still, it’s important to remember that, while leaders share certain attributes, no two are alike. Every one of you has a path that is yours and yours alone.

Today marks the end of one chapter of your connection to this School, but it is the beginning of another. As graduates of Harvard School of Public Health, you join our vibrant community of more than 12,000 alumni. In this way, you will continue to belong to us even as you leave our campus.

This has always been true—but never to the extent that it is today.

One reason for this is the birth and rapid growth of online learning platforms, and the virtually limitless opportunities they present. Last fall, our School offered one of the first inaugural courses on the edX online learning platform jointly launched by Harvard and MIT. The class—in biostatistics and epidemiology—drew more than 50,000 students from all over the world and our second course, Human Health and Global Environmental Change, is meeting a similarly enthusiastic welcome.

It’s been said that the current innovations around online learning signal the greatest revolution in higher education since the invention of the printing press. Never before have we been able to spread knowledge to so many so quickly. Online learning will never replicate the experience of learning in a living, breathing community of people committed to a shared mission. It will, however, vastly expand the universe of what we are able to do and how and when we are able to do it.

Looking ahead, I urge you to take advantage of this unprecedented opportunity once you graduate. This might mean participating in broadcast quality webcasts from our state-of-the-art Leadership Studio, whose programs have been viewed more than a quarter of a million times in more than 190 countries and territories around the world—and which many of you attended in person during your time as students. Or it might involve taking a class through one of our continuing education programs or through edX—or even serving as a sort of virtual tutor as we envision alumni eventually doing, helping students around the world get the support they need.

Another factor that will support your ongoing connection to this School—to your School—is a growing awareness of the importance of lifelong education. It used to be that education was seen as a sort of tunnel—you entered on one end and emerged—finished!—on the other. Today, the model is different. We have come to see that education must be a never-ending process—and that there will be multiple entry points throughout one’s career.

Our programs for Ministers of Health and Finance are excellent examples of this. The women and men who attend these courses have already reached high positions in their respective countries. And yet, they are eager to return to the university, pursuing the path of lifelong leadership development. Regardless of where your careers take you, I hope you will feel the same.

In a speech that he had planned to give on November 22, 1963, the day of his assassination, President John F. Kennedy wrote that “leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.” I could not agree more. While today marks the conclusion of one stage of your education, you will continue to find new ways to learn throughout your lives. Yes, this is an ending, but it’s also a beginning.

You, the Class of 2013, will always occupy a special place in Harvard School of Public Health history. You are graduating on the cusp of our Centennial year, and as we begin our campus celebration next fall, you will be our newest representatives in the larger world. We also hope to see you back—this time, as alumni—at some of these festivities.

You will be finding your own ways to shape the future of public health. We have done our best to prepare you. Now we offer our heartfelt congratulations and send you on your way.

The British writer George Bernard Shaw wrote that the “true joy in life” comes from “being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one.” That is what I have found—and what I wish for all of you. Looking out into this remarkable gathering, I am filled with admiration—and hope. I have no doubt that the world will be a far better place for what you will bring to it.

Closing remarks

And now, I would like to ask all graduates to rise.

As a sign of your entry into the company of learned women and men, you may now move your mortarboard tassels from right to left.

I am delighted to be the first to welcome you to the community of Harvard School of Public Health alumni.

A commencement is a beginning. You are now on your way. I wish you the very best on all the adventures that lie before you.

Congratulations!

May 31, 2013 — Addressing graduates at the 2013 Commencement Ceremony on May 30, 2013, HSPH Dean Julio Frenk spoke of how, in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, HSPH faculty, alumni, and students contributed “to what is now recognized as an extraordinary example of crisis response.”

That response, Frenk said, came from “impeccable preparation.” He said he hopes the preparation the graduates received at HSPH “kicks in” in the same way that training kicked in for first responders to the Marathon tragedy. “Whether your goal is to combat infectious diseases, reform health systems, or respond to emergencies, preparation is essential to success,” he said.

At the ceremony, held on a hot and humid afternoon before an overflow crowd in a tent in Kresge courtyard, 558 degrees were awarded: 31 Doctors of Philosophy, 2 Doctors of Public Health, 69 Doctors of Science, 280 Masters of Public Health, 167 Masters of Science, and 9 Masters of Arts. Graduates came from 74 countries and from 30 U.S. states. More than 56% of the graduates were women. At a festive reception the evening before Commencement, awards were presented to 13 students, nine faculty, and two staff members.

Time of transformation

Frenk told the graduates that they share a distinction: Their class is graduating in 2013, on the cusp of HSPH’s Centennial year. The School opened its doors during a time of transformation and the same is true today, Frenk said. Disease can spread quickly in today’s increasingly interconnected world; the globalization of fast food, smoking, and pollution has led to soaring rates of chronic conditions; health care is costly and unevenly distributed; and, with health care systems ever more complex, “the need for outstanding public health leaders to run them effectively has never been so great.”

As an example of “world-changing work” by an HSPH alumnus, Frenk cited Donald Hopkins, MPH ’70, currently vice president for health programs at the Carter Center. Hopkins, who received a Harvard University honorary degree earlier in the day, played a key role in the global elimination of smallpox and has worked tirelessly in recent years to eradicate a scourge of Africa’s rural poor, Guinea worm disease. Since Hopkins began working on the painful waterborne disease, cases have dropped from 3.5 million to less than 600 annually.

Frenk stressed the importance of leadership in achieving public health progress—in having “knowledge that is both broad and deep, the ability to articulate a personal vision, and interpersonal skills such as collaboration and persuasion.”

He also urged graduates to continue learning throughout their lives. “It used to be that education was seen as a sort of tunnel—you entered on one end and emerged—finished!—on the other. Today, the model is different. We have come to see that education must be a never-ending process,” he said. He urged the graduates to take advantage of HSPH courses through edX, the online learning platform launched by Harvard and MIT in 2012; by participating in webcasts from HSPH’s state-of-the-art Leadership Studio; or by taking a course from HSPH’s continuing education programs. And he noted that soon they might also serve as “virtual tutors” for other students studying online.

A “uniquely remarkable career”

The Commencement address was delivered by Larry Brilliant, president and CEO of the Skoll Global Threats Fund. Introducing Brilliant—a physician, epidemiologist, philanthropist, and technologist—Frenk said his current role is just one of many in “a uniquely remarkable career.” Brilliant helped run the World Health Organization’s successful smallpox eradication program in Southeast Asia; established the Seva Foundation, an international NGO whose programs have given back sight to more than 3 million blind people in 20 countries; served as CEO for four technology companies; and headed Google’s philanthropic arm, Google.org. Time magazine named Brilliant one of the world’s 100 most influential people in 2008.

Brilliant told graduates that he first felt called to a life promoting social justice when he heard the Rev. Martin Luther King speak at the University of Michigan in 1962. Brilliant went on to what he called a “different” career path: He marched in support of civil rights and social change and against the Vietnam War; joined a commune; traveled on “hippie buses” from London to Kathmandu; and spent two years in a Himalayan ashram.

As a young medical resident, Brilliant and his friends organized a union for interns and residents that went on strike for better patient care—and, in short order, “the hospital caved in and agreed to our demands,” Brilliant said. He said the “fire of the battle” between idealistic young doctors and the medical establishment led to the creation of many new departments in schools of public health, focused on areas such as preventive medicine, social medicine, and epidemiology.

“Nothing could be more noble”

Brilliant talked about working with his mentor—William Foege, MPH ’65, epidemiologist and former head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control—on the fight to eradicate smallpox. Based on Foege’s strategy of surveillance and containment, he said, 150,000 health workers searched for every case of smallpox in the world to put a ring of immunity around it. “We made more than one billion house calls,” Brilliant said. From Foege, Brilliant learned to take personal satisfaction in “watching the epidemic curve drop” instead of watching changes in a child’s fever chart.

In October 1977, in Bangladesh, Brilliant witnessed the very last human smallpox infection. “I cried like a baby, I felt so honored to be a small part of it,” he said. From that point on, he knew he would always be a public health worker. “No matter how hard, no matter the long odds, nothing could be more noble,” he said.

Brilliant said he hopes that other diseases—polio and Guinea worm—will follow smallpox into “the dustbin of history.” He said he also hopes to “end pandemics in your lifetimes.”

By choosing public health, Brilliant told graduates, they are “part of the warp and weft of social change.” He quoted San Francisco radio reporter Skoop Nisker, who ended news broadcasts during the 1960s by saying, “The news today is bad. But if you don’t like today’s news, go out and make some of your own.” Brilliant urged HSPH graduates to do the same. “From today on, make your own news,” he said. “The narrative of history is in your hands.”

Become a trailblazer

Candy Liang, the student speaker, received an MPH in health policy and management. After college, working at a global strategy consulting firm, Liang focused on public health issues such as helping broaden patient access to life-saving drugs. At HSPH, Liang was active in Project Antares, a partnership between HSPH and the Harvard Business School that identifies high-impact public health interventions in a framework of sustainable social entrepreneurship. She also helped improve operations at a telemedicine company in India so that it can provide high quality primary care to urban low-income residents in northern India and was a student ambassador for HSPH’s Office of Diversity. After graduation, she will work for Deloitte Consulting in New York on improving public health through innovation and entrepreneurship.

At last year’s commencement, Liang said, Dean Frenk challenged graduates to be trailblazers—and she outlined what she and her fellow students learned at HSPH to make that happen.

They learned to set ambitious goals, she said. They signed on to the World Cancer Declaration to lower not just one, but 11 types of cancer. They worked to change the culture of operating rooms to reduce post-surgical complications. They learned to collaborate on numerous projects, such as this year’s Spring Challenge aimed at reducing bicycle accidents in Boston. And they learned about leadership.

“I learned it not only through lectures and case studies, but mostly through you, my classmates,” said Liang. She cited the courage of fellow student Mary Sando, MPH ’13, in leaving behind two young children in Tanzania to attend HSPH, and the dedication of Elisabeth Malin, SM ’13, in returning to school after the death of her mother.

Alumni greetings

Elsbeth Kalenderian, MPH ’89, delivered the alumni greetings. She is president of the HSPH Alumni Association and has had extensive experience in the healthcare, human services, and public health fields. Kalenderian currently serves as Chief of Quality at the Harvard Dental Center and Chair of the Oral Health Policy and Epidemiology Department at Harvard Dental School, where she is an associate professor.

Kalenderian listed some of the accomplishments of HSPH alumni—such as helping in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquakes in both Chile and Haiti—and called on the new graduates to take their HSPH training “to wherever you decide to explore, and become the super men and women that this world needs.” She added, “Prove me right when I say you can change the world for the better.”

– Karen Feldscher

photos: Kent Dayton, J.D. Levine

Each year, several awards are presented to graduating students, faculty and staff at the Harvard School of Public Health.

STUDENT AWARDS

Albert Schweitzer Award
Dr. Mary Mwanyika Sando, Master of Public Health

Dr. Fang-Ching Sun Memorial Award
Dr. Anne Marie Newland, Master of Public Health

Edgar Haber Award in Biological Sciences
Mr. Christopher Burton Ford, Doctor of Philosophy

Gareth M. Green Award for Excellence in Public Health
Mr. Ali Chisti, Master of Public Health
Mr. Jonathan Lichkus, Master of Public Health

James H. Ware Award for Achievement in the Practice of Public Health
Mr. Adeel Khan, Master of Public Health

Robert B. Reed Prize for Excellence in Biostatistical Science
Ms. Yuanyuan Shen, Doctor of Philosophy candidate

Student Recognition Awards
Ms. Aimee M. Grace, Master of Public Health
Mr. Harpreet Sood, Master of Public Health

Teaching Assistant Awards
Ms. Sharrelle Monique Spencer Barber, Doctor of Science candidate
Ms. NaNa Keum, Doctor of Science candidate
Ms. Emilie Sela Zoltick, Doctor of Science candidate

Uwe Brinkmann Memorial Travel Award
Dr. Panji Hadisoemarto, Doctor of Science candidate

FACULTY AWARDS

Roger L. Nichols Excellence in Teaching Award
Dr. Arnold Epstein, John H. Foster Professor of Health Policy and Management

Teaching Citations
Dr. Heather Baer, Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology
Dr. Theresa Betancourt, Associate Professor of Child Health and Human Rights
Dr. Joshua Salomon, Professor of Global Health
Dr. Benjamin Sommers, Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Economics

Mentoring Awards
Dr. Steven Gortmaker, Professor of the Practice of Health Sociology
Dr. Paul Gregg Greenough, Assistant Professor in the Department of Global Health and Population
Dr. Xihong Lin, Professor of Biostatistics
Dr. Matthew Miller, Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management

STAFF AWARDS

Staff Recognition Awards
Mr. Donald D. Halstead, Instructor of Writing
Ms. Fawn A. Phelps, Assistant Director, Center for Public Health Leadership