James Hammitt

George Gray, lecturer in risk analysis, will serve in the new post of executive director at HCRA.

The Center is widely considered an international leader in the development and application of the tools of decision science to help identify reasoned approaches to public health and environmental risks.

Hammitt succeeds John Graham, the founding director of HCRA and now administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs within the Office of Management and Budget, part of the Executive Office of the President of the United States.

"Everyone who knows James Hammitt is impressed by the extraordinary breadth and depth of his scholarly and intellectual work and the originality of his work," said HSPH Dean Barry Bloom. "We are indeed privileged to have him as a senior member of our faculty and leader of one of the really special interdisciplinary Centers within the School."

"The public, government and private sector have become more sophisticated about risk and its perception," said Hammitt. "We intend to focus on developing conceptual tools of decision sciences that are practical and useful in a broad range of topics."

George Gray

"Both Jim and I want to continue to work on efforts that will help individuals and societies make better choices based on evidence and analysis," said Gray.

Last year, he co-authored Risk: A Practical Guide for Deciding What’s Really Safe and What’s Really Dangerous in the World Around You with David Ropeik, director of risk communication at HCRA. The book was recently recommended for holiday gift-giving by The Wall Street Journal columnist Tara Parker-Pope in the newspaper’s "Health Journal."

Hammitt has indicated several objectives for HCRA, including contributing critical thinking to the management of a broader range of public health risks while continuing work on environmental pollution; food safety; and the prevention, detection and treatment of a wide range of health impairments, including cancer, heart disease and infectious diseases.

An example of a current HCRA project is a study of mercury levels and the safety of eating fish. Fish is a good source of protein and is generally considered part of a healthy diet. Yet some seafoods carry high levels of mercury, including the popular swordfish, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Should people stop eating swordfish or limit their consumption, as pregnant women are advised to do? Should mercury sources be placed under stricter government control? What if the sources turn out to be natural ones, such as eroding rocks? This balance between risk and benefit, between warnings and advice, is the focus of HCRA.