Alumni Award Recipients 2018

Three outstanding individuals nominated by their peers received the School’s highest alumni honor at this year’s Alumni Award of Merit celebration, held on September 20 at the School.
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Richard W. Clapp, MPH ’74, DSc

Richard ClappDuring a career of more than 40 years, Richard Clapp has dedicated his research to communities affected by cancer clusters linked to environmental pollution and workplace hazards and has stood up to powerful polluting industries, holding them to account.

Clapp is currently an emeritus professor of environmental health at Boston University School of Public Health and an adjunct professor at the University of Massachusetts–Lowell. In 1974, the year he received his MPH, he was serving as deputy director of the Prison Health Project of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. He was later instrumental in founding the Massachusetts Cancer Registry and served as its first director.

In wide-ranging investigations, Clapp has studied the prevalence of breast cancer on Cape Cod and among Marines at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and served as an adviser for the residents of Woburn, Massachusetts, site of a notorious childhood leukemia cluster. He has identified excess cancers in Vietnam veterans, demonstrated the health dangers from the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts, and showed that workers at an IBM semiconductor plant in San Jose, California, contracted certain cancers at a higher rate than the national average. In the face of heated debate, he has consistently bridged the gaps between science and policy and between policy and action. Watch video

Roger Glass, AB ’67, MD ’72, MPH ’72, PhD

Roger GlassRoger Glass conducted pioneering research documenting the epidemiology and global burden of rotavirus and worked to prevent this infection through the development and use of vaccines. In large measure because of his work spanning four decades, rotavirus vaccines are now used in more than 100 national immunization programs, significantly reducing diarrheal hospitalizations and deaths and improving the health of millions of children worldwide.

Starting out as a medical officer at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Glass went on to serve as a scientist at the International Center for Diarrheal Disease Research in Bangladesh. Back in the U.S., he joined the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Laboratory of Infectious Diseases, where, where he focused on the molecular biology of rotavirus. In 1986, he became chief of the Viral Gastroenteritis Unit at the CDC’s National Center for Infectious Diseases. In 2006, he returned to the National Institutes of Health, where he currently serves as associate director for international research and director of the Fogarty International Center—a bridge between NIH and the greater global health community, supporting research and training for investigators working in low- and middle-income countries. Extending his efforts beyond the lab, Glass has collaborated with local communities and maintained field studies in Bangladesh, Brazil, China, India, Israel, Mexico, Russia, and Vietnam. Watch video

Alice H. Lichtenstein, MS ’75, SD ’79

Alice LichtensteinA distinguished and respected nutrition scientist, Alice H. Lichtenstein has forged vital links between nutrition science and public policy. Beginning in her undergraduate years at Cornell, where she received a bachelor of science degree in nutrition, she went on to earn a master of science in nutrition from Pennsylvania State University and master of science and doctor of science degrees in nutritional biochemistry from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

While maintaining close ties to Harvard Chan, Lichtenstein has been at Tufts University since 1988, starting out as an assistant professor in the school of nutrition. Currently the Stanley N. Gershoff Professor of Nutrition Science and Policy, she directs the Cardiovascular Nutrition Laboratory in the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging. Her findings have contributed to current dietary recommendations on healthy eating patterns for the prevention of cardiovascular and other chronic diseases.

Lichtenstein’s laboratory was among the first to document the harmful effects of trans fatty acids—work that helped lay the foundation for the labeling and subsequent banning of partially hydrogenated fat by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Lichtenstein currently chairs the American Society for Nutrition’s public policy committee and, in 2018, was inducted as a fellow of the society. Watch video
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Three Alumni Mid-Career Awards were presented to recognize achievements in various areas of public health and various stages of public health careers.

The Emerging Public Health Professional Award recognizes early-career public health achievements and contributions of graduates who received their degree within the past 10 years and who are role models for current and future public health professionals through early-career leadership and selfless dedication in public health, the advancement of the science of public health, or demonstrated excellence and creativity in community practice of public health.

Lucas de Toca, MD, MPH ’13

Lucas De TocaOver the past five years, Lucas de Toca served as chief health officer for the Miwatj Health Aboriginal Corporation in East Arnhem Land, a primarily Aboriginal region located in Australia’s Northern Territory. This remote health service, controlled and predominantly staffed by the local Aboriginal community, provides comprehensive primary and public health services across six locations to more than 10,000 Indigenous residents. As the top public health official in the region, he had strategic oversight of health service delivery and planning of primary and public health services.

In April 2018, de Toca became a principal adviser and assistant secretary in the Australian Department of Health, where he is leading a federal task force addressing an outbreak of syphilis in northern and central Australia, as well as other Indigenous health initiatives. He holds an MD degree from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain, part of which he completed at the University of Sydney, Australia. At the Harvard Chan School, he focused on health systems policy and leadership in health and human rights.

The Public Health Innovator Award recognizes a significant innovative contribution to public health made by an alumna/us for a new idea or approach to public health delivery, via the science, practice, or teaching of public health.

Jason Arora, MPH ’14, MD, MA

Jason Arora

Jason Arora is recognized around the world as one of the primary drivers behind the field of value-based health care, an innovative approach to health care design and delivery in which financing for health care is based on improved patient outcomes. In 2017, he joined the medical technology company Medtronic as a director of value-based health care, overseeing work in this area across Latin America and focusing on the use of technology to drive inflection points in value creation—and thus, greater sustainability in health systems.

Arora also serves as a global health expert at the World Economic Forum and as a global leader at the Center for Healthcare Innovation. He holds degrees in medicine and medical sciences from Oxford University and practiced as a medical doctor in the U.K. before winning scholarships to study public health at the Harvard Chan School. After completing his MPH degree, he joined the International Consortium for Health Outcomes Measurement, a value-based health care startup co-founded by the Boston Consulting Group, Harvard Business School, and Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet. Arora has advised national governments, leading hospitals, and research organizations; published widely; and has been invited to speak to live audiences of thousands and virtual audiences of millions across Europe, the Americas, and Africa.

The Leadership in Public Health Practice Award recognizes a graduate who has served as an outstanding example of effective leadership in the practice of public health in the public or private sphere; demonstrated selfless service and leadership in the practice of public health; made significant contributions to the adoption/uptake of public health principles at the local, state, regional, national, or international level; and/or shown significant leadership in a government, nongovernmental, or other public service organization.

Shevin T. Jacob, MPH ’03, MD

Shevin Jacob

Since 2006, Shevin Jacob has been conducting research on severe infections among adults from resource-constrained settings, with a primary focus on adult sepsis in Uganda, where he currently lives. He is also medical director and co-founder of Walimu, a Uganda-based nongovernmental organization that supports the Ugandan Ministry of Health in improving quality of care for severely ill patients in health facilities.

Jacob serves as a consultant to the World Health Organization (WHO) and has co-developed WHO guidelines and training curricula on triage and emergency management of severe illness and on the front-line clinician’s role in disease surveillance, infection prevention and control, and outbreak response. In 2014–15, during the height of the Ebola outbreak, he was deployed by WHO to West Africa. He served as a front-line clinician supporting national staff working in Ebola treatment units in Guinea and Sierra Leone, as the WHO national training program lead for Liberia, and as an adviser to the Liberian Ministry of Health and Social Welfare on its clinical response strategies. Through the WHO Emerging Disease Clinical Assessment and Response Network, he continues to play a role in global epidemic preparedness.

Jacob trained in infectious diseases at the University of Washington (UW) Department of Medicine and remained a faculty member there until 2017, when he moved his academic home to the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in the U.K. He is currently senior clinical lecturer in sepsis research and maintains an affiliate assistant professor appointment at UW.

Madeline Drexler is editor of Harvard Public Health.

Photo: Kent Dayton/Harvard Chan School