Dean Barry Bloom presents Richard Menschel with the HSPH Volunteer Leadership Award.

The Leadership Council met initially on October 28 for the conferral of the Julius B. Richmond Award, followed by a dinner at which Richard Menschel, senior director of Goldman Sachs, received the Second Annual HSPH Volunteer Leadership Award for his dedication and long-time service to HSPH and Harvard University. Kennedy School of Government (KSG) Professor David Gergen and HSPH Professor Robert Blendon then provided a keynote address on "Health Care and the Elections." The Leadership Council is a community of volunteers that includes business leaders, philanthropists, high-ranking public officials, alumni, media figures, and community leaders who bring a broad range of expertise to the School and who have a strong interest and commitment to activities at HSPH. The gathering provided an opportunity for Council members to learn more about initiatives at the University from President Summers and at the School from HSPH Dean Barry Bloom.

Breaking down traditional barriers that separate researchers from different disciplines is a priority for the University, said President Summers.

President Lawrence Summers

A primary mission of Harvard is training future leaders, said President Summers, pointing out that six of the last eight heads of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as an influential former chief of the World Health Organization, graduated from HSPH.

The University and the School are exploring ways to ensure funding for qualified students, such as establishing the Zuckerman Fellows Program last spring. The program supports candidates who have earned or are pursuing a business, law, or medical degree at Harvard or elsewhere and will commit to earning an additional degree at one of three Harvard graduate schools dedicated to public service: HSPH, Harvard Graduate School of Education, or KSG.

The Office of the President has also established scholarship funds. A recipient last year, Nefertiti Harmon Durant, introduced President Summers at the luncheon. She graduated in June from HSPH, and currently is a clinical fellow in pediatrics at HMS.

Emphasizing the importance of sciences, life sciences, and technology, President Summers asserted that there is a need to rethink the classic "apprenticeship" model of conducting research in which students and postdoctoral fellows train under a professor in an insular lab environment. The power of burgeoning research data must be harnessed through developing new classes of scientific professions, better instrumentation, and more sophisticated interaction with the government.

Nowhere will this be more important than in addressing global disease, he said, particularly when the American pharmaceutical industry has spent more money in the past few years on investigating diseases commonly found in pets than on tropical diseases that affect humans.

"You really do have to ask whether there isn’t a broader social obligation and an obligation that institutions like Harvard have to work in these areas and to work in the most effective ways," said President Summers. "And it’s the Public Health School that is on the frontline of that scientific research against global disease."

Becoming more deeply integrated internationally is another priority of the University. "It is hard to imagine how we could have a commitment as a University to a much deeper engagement with the world–something that I think is very important for our purposes, and frankly is something I think is very important for the contribution we make to our nation–without the crucial involvement of the School of Public Health," said President Summers.

Dean Bloom expounded on the themes elucidated by President Summers. The fundamental mission of HSPH is the generation of new knowledge in innovative research, transmission of that knowledge to the next generation of scholars, and the communication of that knowledge to the public.

That mission is underpinned by work that involves a number of scientific specialties. "Complex problems do not, in fact, allow themselves always the simple solutions, and the tradition at the School of Public Health has always been to strive for interdisciplinary collaborations to address major health problems in populations," Dean Bloom noted.

HSPH researchers have recorded achievements in population sciences, biological sciences, and policy and social sciences. Work from the Departments of Nutrition and Epidemiology compelled the government to rethink the USDA Food Pyramid. A landmark report from the Institute of Medicine led by an HSPH faculty member put a spotlight on the vast number of medical errors in the U.S. and the means by which to prevent them by reforming systems, not punishing individuals. School faculty established a long-running HIV/AIDS research and prevention program in Africa, started 18 years ago. Basic research in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases led to an ability to engineer parasites, providing a means through which to understand drug resistance. Researchers in the Burden of Disease Unit identified the major causes of death and disability in the world. Faculty in the Department of Population and International Health have demonstrated an association between educating children and the five "economic tigers" of Southeast Asia.

Reinforcing President Summers, Dean Bloom emphasized the importance of training students and of finding resources to support them. The HSPH student body is truly global, with members coming from more than 50 countries, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Estonia, Moldova, Nigeria, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, and China.

"These graduates, informed by their training at the School, will in the long run make a difference," he said and pointed to a recent trip he made to China, where he met with officials in the country’s health ministry. Two representatives were trained at HSPH and one was trained at KSG.

"Providing a great education to bright and motivated students, in my view, is the greatest investment we can make in the future," said Dean Bloom.