Alumni News Fall 2020

Smiling graduate embraces a fellow classmate

1982

Ronald Deprez, MPH, died April 21 at age 75. He spent his early career as a policy analyst for the Maine Legislature. In 1988, he founded and served as president of the Public Health Resource Group, a multidisciplinary health care consulting organization in Portland, Maine, where he developed the first comprehensive community health needs assessment process in the U.S. He also founded and served as executive director of the Public Health Research Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to helping communities overcome adverse health conditions. He was an associate research professor at the University of New England in Portland and an adviser to the World Health Organization in Switzerland and collaborated on projects in China and in multiple countries in Africa. He lectured throughout the U.S. and overseas on chronic-disease-practice improvements, surveillance systems, and population health assessments and published widely.

1983

Jacques Carter, MPH, received the Founders Alumni Award from Georgetown University School of Medicine in February. An attending physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, Carter was honored as a “dedicated primary care physician and public health advocate; convener of the African American Alumni community; tireless mentor and visionary teacher.”

1990

Anne Becker, PhD, SM ’05, became Harvard Medical School’s dean for clinical and academic affairs on April 1. Becker, the Maude and Lillian Presley Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine in the Blavatnik
Institute at Harvard Medical School, is an accomplished clinician and researcher with expertise in psychiatry and medical anthropology. Her research and clinical interests include the diagnosis and treatment of eating
pathologies and the impact of social and cultural factors on eating-disorder risk and presentation, mental health, and other health-risk behaviors. She is the founding director of the Eating Disorders Clinical and Research Program at Massachusetts General Hospital.

1992

Kathleen Jagger, MPH, became president of Newman University, in Wichita, Kansas, on July 1. Jagger recently served as acting president at Thomas More
University in Crestview Hills, Kentucky, where she created the school’s Institute for Ethical Leadership and Interdisciplinary Studies. She previously served on the faculty of DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, and Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky.

2001

Andrea Reid, MPH, became associate dean for student and multicultural affairs in the Program in Medical Education at Harvard Medical School (HMS) on July 1. She will also be the director of diversity and faculty development for the Massachusetts General Hospital’s division of gastroenterology. Reid earned an MD at HMS in 1988 and trained in internal
medicine and gastroenterology at Mass General. A former faculty member at HMS and the Mass General Department of Medicine, Reid has served since 2009 as a gastroenterologist and hepatologist at the VA Medical Center in Washington, DC.

2006

Melody Goodman, PhD, contributed to a recent Self magazine video, The Unequal Burden of Asthma. Goodman, whose work focuses on racial and socioeconomic health disparities across diseases, is associate dean for research and associate professor of biostatistics at New York University’s School of Global Public Health.

Eric Tchetgen Tchetgen, PhD, is the recipient of the 2020 Myrto Lefkopoulou Distinguished Lectureship from the School’s Department of Biostatistics. He served on the School’s faculty from 2008 to 2017 before becoming the inaugural Luddy Family President’s Distinguished Professor in the department of statistics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He remains an adjunct professor of biostatistics and epidemiologic methods at the Harvard Chan School. His lecture will be delivered remotely this fall.


Julie Henry
Julie Henry

Julie Emery Henry, MPH ’91, a longtime and devoted supporter of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, died on August 28 at age 85. Henry volunteered in 1969 at Children’s Hospital in Boston, later joining the staff to work with families of children with cystic fibrosis. She earned a master’s degree in social work from Simmons College in 1983, entered a fellowship program at McLean Hospital, and held social work positions at Faulkner Hospital and Children’s Hospital. Following her MPH studies, she joined New England SERVE at the Rhode Island Department of Health on a program helping children with special needs.

A lifelong advocate of community service, Henry was president of the board of directors of Ellis Memorial; a trustee of the James Jackson Putnam Children’s Center; president of the board of directors of North Bennett Street School; a founding member of Trinity Hospice of Greater Boston; a trustee of New England Deaconess Hospital; director of CareGroup; a trustee and director of Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital; and a member of the Visiting Committee and Dean’s Council at the Harvard Chan School. Henry established several scholarships at the School, including the Julie E. Henry Fund for Maternal and Child Health. Henry deeply valued the School, its mission, and the many people with whom she forged lasting relationships.


2011

Miguel Marino, PhD, was one of 10 scholars named as 2020’s Emerging Leaders in Health and Medicine by the National Academy of Medicine in June. Marino is an associate professor of biostatistics in the department of family medicine at Oregon Health & Science University. His research focuses on development and implementation of novel statistical methodology to address critical community and primary care research questions.

2014

Megan Srinivas, MPH, was named one of InStyle magazine’s “badass” health care workers in June. An infectious-disease specialist in the small Iowa town of Fort Dodge, Srinivas has been speaking out about inadequate personal protective equipment and testing in communities like hers during the coronavirus pandemic and advocating against state representatives who are trying to cut budgets for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Peter Wahl, SD, is now vice president of scientific affairs at Corrona, an autoimmune and inflammatory diseases real-world evidence and registry company serving the life science industry. Before starting this role in June, he led a genomics initiative at Optum Life Sciences.

2017

Nicole Cooper, DrPH, was named head of health care policy for Lyft in July. Prior to the appointment, she was vice president of social responsibility at UnitedHealthcare. Cooper previously served as an Obama administration political appointee and was part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) team responsible for implementing the Affordable Care Act. At HHS, Cooper also served as a policy adviser to key leaders in the agency, including the chief of staff at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the deputy assistant secretary for minority health.

2018

Clifton Wilcox, MPH, successfully managed the COVID-19 outbreak on the Navy destroyer USS Kidd in April 2020. He gave a presentation on the response to the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and had an oral history recorded by the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery. He is an occupational and preventive medicine provider at Naval Hospital Jacksonville and served as the Navy Regional Southeast public health emergency officer. As of late June, he was deployed on the USS Ronald Reagan to support COVID prevention.


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Photos: Josh Levine, Courtesy of Paula Ivey Henry