Dean Barry Bloom

Dear HSPH Community,

Welcome to the new academic year. I hope that all members of our community had some time for renewal over the summer and, whether you are here for your first days of school at HSPH or are continuing long years of service, that you do so with a sense of excitement and possibility for facing the challenges of public health.

This year I am confident that we will continue as a School to make contributions to many of those pressing issues–from AIDS to obesity to violence–in Boston, the nation, and the world. And we will continue to embrace and enhance our capacity to tackle these issues by incorporating the advances of technology and genetics to stay at the cutting edge of our fields.

But I would like to highlight a more institutional issue that I think will be an important part of our agenda at the School for the future. The short-hand for this issue may be called "Allston," but it is in fact a much larger challenge of envisioning public health in the future context of the University, with an opportunity for creating greater integration, collaboration, and citizenship within the University at large. The Harvard Initiative for Global Health will be one important locus of this activity in which HSPH can contribute. Faculty-proposed, University-wide initiatives in science and technology will be vetted in the fall and will define another major area of emphasis for more integrated work. Over the summer, the master planners for Allston were named, and we have already had some chances to meet with the principals from Cooper Robertson. I will be systematic in bringing these developments to the School community as they progress.

At HSPH, I plan to continue activities that reach out across Harvard to find the areas of most fruitful collaboration for us, and to nurture and support them. One aspect of this will be to devote the Dean’s Distinguished Lecture series for this year to inviting speakers from other parts of the University with key roles in thinking about the future. I hope that this will stimulate a set of conversations and enhance relationships that will keep our population perspective, our preventive approaches, and our concern for the underserved as important elements in thinking about relevant areas of research and training in the future across Harvard. I look forward to your participation.

Finally, to each and every one of you, my appreciation for what you do and my wishes for a productive and fulfilling year.

Sincerely,

Barry R. Bloom