State of the School Address Offered 10-Year Retrospective, Annual Report, and Q&A Segment

For the seventh successive year, the HSPH community gathered in the Kresge cafeteria to hear about the School’s recent accomplishments and future goals. The State of the School Address took place on Wednesday, October 8, 2008. HSPH Dean Barry R. Bloom, who will step down as dean in January 2009, offered a concise 10-year perspective of his time at HSPH. James H. Ware, Dean for Academic Affairs, delivered an Annual Report. A Q&A with the audience followed.

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Dean Bloom thanked the approximately 350 members of the HSPH community who attended the event. He said, “It is you who inspire us to do better” in fulfilling the School’s potential to make a real difference in the world.

ANNUAL REPORT
New Faces and Changes of Leadership

Dean Ware reviewed various changes of leadership around the School over the past year. Lisa Berkman, former chair of the HSPH Department of Society, Human Development, and Health (SHDH), now directs the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies. Ichiro Kawachi has taken over the role of chair of SHDH. Eileen Nielsen came aboard as the Director of Compliance, and Vicki Johnson was hired as the School’s Financial Controller. Delia Wolf serves as the new director of the Human Research Administration. Dale Trevino joined the School as the new director of the Office of Diversity, established last year. Human Resources has expanded in the past year. Dean Ware welcomed HR members Linda Picard, Diane Stacey-Wood, Omar Saldaña, Ellen Gilmore, and Ronnie Mae Weiss. James Smith will serve as the School’s new Assistant Dean of Alumni Affairs.

Dean Ware also reviewed eight new faculty appointments made in the last year: Eric Tchetgen Tchetgen, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology; Alkes Price, Assistant Professor of Statistical Genetics; Maria Glymour, Assistant Professor of Society, Human Development, and Health; Chensheng (Alex) Lu, Mark and Catherine Winkler Assistant Professor of Environmental Exposure Biology; Tiffany Horng, Assistant Professor of Genetics and Complex Diseases; Kenneth Hill, Professor of the Practice of Global Health; Gunther Fink, Assistant Professor of International Health Economics, and Daniel Halperin, Lecturer on International Health.

NEW DEPARTMENT NAME

In 2008, the Department of Population and International Health changed its name to Global Health and Population to reflect a broadening of the challenges in public health in the 21st century.

EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS AND STUDENT LIFE

In 2007, HSPH faculty members Nancy Kane and Nancy Turnbull were jointly appointed as associate deans for educational programs. Their goal has been to develop and execute a long-term plan focused on the coordination, integration, and improvement of the School’s professional and academic educational programs.

Said Dean Ware: “We’re committed to improving student advising, the quality of the classroom experience, mentoring, our field experiences, and practica. What’s so wonderful about what’s happening in the Office for Educational Programs is the comprehensive thinking about how to improve student life.”

INCOMING DEAN JULIO FRENK

In January 2009, Dr. Julio Frenk will become the Dean of HSPH. A longtime friend, Dean Bloom described Dr. Frenk as “a visionary in public health.”

Said Dean Bloom: “He was the founding dean of one of the great schools of public health outside of the United States — the Institute for Public Health in Mexico … [He] led policy at WHO, and then was Minister of Health in Mexico … [He] has brought healthcare reform to provide basic healthcare to 50 million people.”

Dean Ware commented: “We’re enormously pleased that he is coming to the School after serving as Minister of Health for Mexico … He’s a person with deep knowledge of global health and global health systems. And he has been visiting the School one week each month, and we’ve really enjoyed his visits here and are looking forward to his leadership as Dean.”

A REFLECTION ON THE LAST DECADE

Dean Bloom recounted that he was asked to become the head of HSPH in the summer of 1998 and that he assumed the role on January 1, 1999.  “A lot of things changed in the world, and at Harvard, during that 10 years, which is fun to reflect on,” he said.

A sampling from the past decade:

In the world …
•    The Human Genome Project was completed, changing the way people think about risks to health.
•    The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, and the anthrax attacks that followed put public health on the map in the U.S. and in other countries.
•    The U.S. became engaged in wars.
•    A multiplicity of humanitarian crises, such as Hurricane Katrina, unfolded to which HSPH faculty and students have responded.
•    In this country and in the world, the standard of living increased, but disparities in income, health, and social satisfaction widened.

At the University …
•    Four presidents of Harvard were named.
•    HUSEC, the Harvard University Science and Engineering Committee, formed. The purpose of the committee is to bring together scientists from each of the Harvard faculties to solve big problems through interdisciplinary and interfaculty work.
•    Construction on Science One, the first new building at Harvard’s Allston campus, got under way.

At HSPH …
•    HSPH increased financial aid from University and School funds about sevenfold over the past 10 years.
•    The School’s student population grew almost 20%, and the staff population grew 37%.
•    Several departments merged to create new entities, giving the School a total of nine departments in 2008. The number of centers at HSPH decreased from 16 to six in the past decade.
•    The School is in the process of creating three divisions that will bring together departments with common interests – the biological and laboratory sciences, the quantitative sciences, and the social and policy sciences. These overlapping areas were identified early in Dean Bloom’s tenure as core agendas.

FUTURE STEPS

Dean Bloom noted numerous efforts at the School that will help keep HSPH at the forefront of scientific research. To name a few: HIV/AIDS prevention research efforts in Africa, a Center for Public Health Preparedness, a Program in Quantitative Genomics, the Bioinformatics Core, the Genes and Environment Initiative.

“In our faculty, there is no other school of public health that has four MacArthur Geniuses,” said Dean Bloom. “And our faculty get honors all the time ... This is a special place, and the people are so nice, it’s sometimes easy to forget that.”

Q&A

The State of the School Address ended with questions from the audience that touched upon removing bureaucratic barriers between departments, creating office and lab space, and inquiring about Dean Bloom’s plans after he steps down. (He responded that he will continue to be a principal investigator of his laboratory in HSPH Building 1, and he looks forward to the opportunity to spend more time at the World Health Organization, where he chairs a major advisory committee on malaria.)

In describing the School’s impact, Dean Bloom concluded by quoting Albert Einstein when asked what was the greatest discovery in mathematics: “His answer was, ‘compound interest.’ Compound interest doesn’t look too great when you look at the financial situation. But it looks pretty great when you look at the educational system. There is no compound interest like education. And if you look — when I go anywhere in the world where our students end up — they’re in leadership positions in China and in India and all over the world. And that is, in the long run, the greatest impact any educational institution could have.”

— Photos by Suzanne Camarata