Each spring, the Harvard School of Public Health presents the Alumni Award of Merit to three graduates who embody professional excellence, leadership, and dedication to the field of public health. With recipients selected by committee from nominations submitted by fellow alumni worldwide, the award is the highest honor the School can bestow on a graduate. The 1999 winners described below have followed diverse career paths in epidemiology, tropical medicine, and occupational health, underscoring public health’s broad scope.

This year the selection committee also added a fourth award, the Alumni Award of Special Recognition, which was conferred posthumously to Jonathan Mann, MPH’80, for his pioneering work in health and human rights. Mann was founding director of the World Health Organization’s Global Program on AIDS and the School’s François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights. Mann and his wife, Mary Lou Clements-Mann, were killed in aSwissair plane crash off the coast of Nova Scotia last September (see Harvard Public Health Review, Fall 1998).

In 1947 Leonard Kurland was a medical doctor in the U.S. Public Health Service, working as Massachusetts’ tuberculosis control officer, when he was given a new assignment: to go to Harvard for his master’s in public health. It was a move, he said, that changed his career.

"Dean James Simmons and the professor of epidemiology, Dr. John Gordon, asked me to select a dissertation topic," explains Kurland. "Even though I was doing tuberculosis work, I really wasn’t enthralled by it. I was interested in the geographic distribution of disease, so I picked as my topic the epidemiology of multiple sclerosis." As it turned out, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) was looking for someone to direct a program on multiple sclerosis, and Kurland’s dissertation was selected as the basis for the international study. Kurland would spend the next three years conducting multiple sclerosis studies in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and New Orleans for the NIH. Through this research, he also completed his DR.P.H. dissertation at Johns Hopkins, which led to a fellowship in neurology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

At that point, he began his most ambitious and renowned undertaking: the Rochester Epidemiology Project, which he led for 35 years. This database captures the medical records of all the residents of Olmsted County, Minn., dating back to 1935, making it one of the world’s best sources of incidence rates, long-term trends, outcomes, and risk factors of disease. "The medical and surgical index is one of the finest in existence," says Kurland. The database has generated over 1,000 studies by visiting scientists, students, and Mayo Clinic staff.

Concurrently, Kurland took on the position of chief of the epidemiology branch of the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Blindness from 1955—1964. During that time, he organized much of the research on neurodegenerative diseases in Guam and developed a series of neurological research projects in Japan. He remained active with the NIH over the following two decades on a consultant basis.

In 1964 Kurland retired as a commissioned officer of the Public Health Service and joined the Mayo Clinic as chair of the Department of Medical Statistics, Epidemiology, and Population Genetics, where he stayed until his retirement in 1995.

As he approaches his 78th birthday, Kurland continues to mentor young staff members at the Mayo Clinic, hopes to write more on the Rochester Project, and looks ahead to new challenges.

Educated in Britain, Adetokunbo Lucas came to the School in 1963 with a medical degree and diplomas in public health and in tropical medicine and hygiene under his belt. "When the time came for me to acquire more skills in statistics and epidemiology, it seemed like a good opportunity to broaden my perspective at an American university," he explains.

After Harvard awarded him a masters of science in hygiene, Lucas returned to his homeland to teach clinical and community medicine at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, where he was soon appointed head of the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine. "I had the privilege of watching the development of academic medicine," he remarks. "The challenge was to adapt curricula that we copied from abroad to suit local needs." Over the years, he also played an active role on various national and state bodies in connection with health care in Nigeria. Most notably, Lucas chaired the committee that designed its national health policy.

Lucas’s greatest challenge and success was establishing the World Health Organization’s Special Program for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR), run in collaboration with the United Nations Development Program and the World Bank, in 1976. "It was an exciting assignment that brought me into contact with leading scientists throughout the world," he says. Under his ten-year directorship, the program awarded 2,400 grants in 100 countries, spawning the development of new products, some of which are being applied successfully to combat leprosy, onchocerciasis, and other tropical diseases.

For the following four years, Lucas chaired the Carnegie Corporation’s grant program to strengthen human resources in developing countries. He has been on the faculty of the School since 1990, when he was appointed professor of population and international health.

Lucas chaired the Council of the International Epidemiological Association from 1971—1974, presided over the International Federation of Tropical Medicine from 1988—1992, and currently chairs the Global Forum for Health Research. Still involved in international activities, he says, "I now have the good fortune of watching solutions being applied to problems that were identified and tackled in the earlier phase of my career."

Armed with a master’s in education from Harvard and several years experience doing advocacy and policy work in occupational and environmental health, Letitia Davis came to the School in 1976, she says, "to get scientific background and training to give weight to my voice in the policy arena." She left eight years later with a doctorate in occupational health. "It’s a field in which there are endless opportunities to learn how the world works and to meet people from all walks of life," Davis observes.

In 1986 Davis established the Massachusetts Department of Public Health’s Occupational Surveillance Program and has worked as its director ever since. Over the years she has developed numerous programs that have become prototypes for such work in other states and that have provided the foundation for regulatory policies. One project is a registry for adult lead poisoning in Massachusetts, which provides a database for the study--and consequently the intervention and correction--of lead hazards.

Davis also oversees two programs that are funded by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health: the Massachusetts Sentinel Event Notification System for Occupational Risks (SENSOR) and the Fatality Assessment, Control, and Evaluation program (FACE). In her work with SENSOR, Davis initiated a program to identify cases of occupational asthma and to control or eliminate asthma risk. With FACE, she created the Occupational Fatality Review Panel in collaboration with the Department of Work Environment at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. The panel reviews fatal occupational injuries to identify engineering solutions to prevent similar accidents in the future.

Recently, Davis established a surveillance system for injuries to working teens. She also coordinates educational activities to improve the health and safety of young workers, targeting parents, employers, and educators, as well as the teens themselves.

What makes occupational health so appealing to Davis is that "the scientific issues are infinitely challenging and changing with the changing workforce. The issues of social justice are very explicit in occupational health, which helps mark a clear course."

-- Alisa Masson