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Our School’s past, present, and future

Next week, we mark 100 years since the first class of students graduated from Harvard School of Public Health. Our Centennial Class will graduate in Kresge Courtyard next Thursday, May 29, the culmination of a year of celebration and reflection. It is a Commencement for both the graduates beginning their public health careers and for a School beginning its second century…

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Leading the CDC: A job fit for an HSPH graduate

In just two weeks, graduating students will listen to HSPH Centennial Commencement speaker Tom Frieden, Director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Those inspired by Frieden’s words will be pleased to know that five of the past nine directors of the CDC were HSPH alumni…

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Marching towards equality for women at HSPH

HSPH is proud to have been the first program at Harvard to admit and credential women on the same basis as men during its early years as the Harvard-MIT School for Health Officers. But it wasn’t until nearly two decades after Linda Frances James received her certificate in public health (CPH) that a woman received a degree from the School…

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Jeremiah Mead: Decoding how we breathe

Jeremiah “Jere” Mead, architect of the field of respiratory mechanics, had a 37-year career at Harvard School of Public Health that spanned an era of significant growth for the School. A Harvard College and Medical School graduate, Mead was known as a tinkerer who found fun in experimentation….

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The measure of a healthy life

“Your child is in the 80th percentile for height and 75th for weight.” Nearly every parent of an infant or young child in the U.S. and many other parts of the world has heard words similar to those at his or her child’s well-baby visits and annual physicals…

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A fierce advocate saw HIV/AIDS not just as an infection, but as an injustice

Jonathan Mann, physician and advocate, pragmatist and visionary, transformed the way the world looked at AIDS. As the first head of the World Health Organization’s Global Programme on AIDS, he illuminated the intersection of health and human rights. …

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Hope for tiny lives

In 1963, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy gave birth to a baby boy, premature by five weeks. Almost immediately, doctors realized something was horribly wrong—his underdeveloped lungs were failing him…

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Former Dean Harvey Fineberg, 1984-1997

Dean Harvey Fineberg served from 1984-1997, taking the role during a major turning point in public health history at the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic…

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A visual history of food guides–and how HSPH has shaped them

Harvard School of Public Health’s Department of Nutrition, founded in 1942, has had unparalleled influence on how we eat, including the United States’ Department of Agriculture’s food guides…

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Public health at the threshold of the universe

As the space program began in the United States in the late 1950s, HSPH graduates were there to ensure that humankind was capable of exploring the new frontier…

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A building designed for the needs of our students

Harvard School of Public Health had grand ambitions when it made plans for the creation of the Sebastian S. Kresge Building in the late 1960s envisioning that it would “permit more than a 100 percent increase in student enrollment”…

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Dean John C. Snyder, 1954-1971

We’re all familiar with Snyder Auditorium, the largest classroom at Harvard School of Public Health. But unless we’ve been around for decades, we probably didn’t know the man who gave the room its name–and the School an enduring legacy…

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Paving the way to the polio vaccine

As a wave of polio swept the United States in 1948, 32-year-old Thomas Weller was logging long hours in a lab at Harvard-affiliated Children’s Hospital, trying to develop a new way to culture viruses in test tubes…

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A mother’s crusade for clean water

In 1972, Anne Anderson’s life changed forever. Her 3-year-old son Jimmy, the youngest of her three children, was diagnosed with leukemia—and other children who lived nearby were suffering from leukemia, too…

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Population visionary

When Roger Revelle took the helm of the new Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies (known as the Pop Center) in 1964, he was already one of the world’s most eminent and eclectic scientists…

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Messages for our future generation

What do you want the HSPH community of the next generation to know? When you graduate, retire, or otherwise move on, what do you want to leave behind at the School? Many members of the community…

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Thailand’s “Father of Modern Medicine”

Prince Mahidol Adulyadej of Songkla was the father of His Majesty Bhumibol Adulyadej, the reigning King of Thailand—and one of the earliest and most honored alumni of Harvard School of Public Health…

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Adding years to life–and life to years

Today, it’s conventional wisdom and a scientific truism that regular exercise is one of the healthiest habits around. But public health researchers weren’t always so certain that physical fitness was essential…

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Shattuck House

Since 1960, Shattuck International House has been home to more than 3,000 Harvard School of Public Health Students—about 60 percent of whom have come from outside…

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Tales from a long relationship

Emily O’Connell has had a longer relationship with the Nurses’ Health Study (NHS) than with her own husband…

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Getting the lead out

“Every time you fill up your car with gasoline, you can think of Joel Schwartz,” William Reilly, former administrator of the EPA, remarked several years ago…

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25 years leading the fight against AIDS

In 1981, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a report summarizing the first five reported cases of the mysterious and horrifying illness that would come to be known as AIDS…

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From the depths of time: Dean Frenk speaks to his successor in 2063

Among the ways Harvard School of Public Health is marking its Centennial is the creation of a time capsule that will be embedded in the wall of the FXB building for the next 50 years…

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100 years in 115 pages

Amidst last week’s Centennial festivities came publication of a special double issue of Harvard Public Health magazine, to chronicle the myriad triumphs of the School’s first 100 years…

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Happy 100th birthday, HSPH!

As we celebrate the School’s 100th birthday, it’s a perfect time to reflect on the past century’s public health accomplishments…

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100 years of HSPH deans

One believed that public health “could captivate the imagination of the best medical and engineering brains”…

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A simple solution that has saved millions

A solution of table salt, sodium bicarbonate, glucose, and water. This simple elixir, known as oral rehydration solution (ORS), has saved tens of millions of people since the 1970s…

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Shining a light on medical errors

Lucian Leape has made a career out of other people’s mistakes. Over the past three decades, his research has focused largely on strategies for reducing…

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Walter Willett and the science of eating well

If you were asked to name one person who has changed how we eat and live, the best answer very likely would be Walter Willett, described in a recent…

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New Hope for HIV/AIDS in Africa

By the early 2000s, AIDS was increasingly viewed as a treatable chronic disease in the developed world, but for patients in Africa, it remained a death sentence…

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A student takes the long, long way to HSPH

While some students may have traveled as far, none has likely taken as long to reach Harvard School of Public Health as Thomas Davis, MPH ’54, who spent five months sailing…

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Roger Irving Lee, “Father” of Harvard School of Public Health

In late 1921, with long-awaited funding of $1.6 million from the Rockefeller Foundation, an independent Harvard School of Public Health succeeded the Harvard-MIT School for Health Officers…

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Child health pioneer Martha May Eliot: A woman ahead of her time

She was a trailblazer in maternal and children’s health, the first woman president of the American Public Health Association, and the only woman to sign the founding document…

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Killing off deadly diseases: The legendary Donald R. Hopkins

“There have been few heroes in my life and Dr. Donald R. Hopkins is one.” With these words, President Jimmy Carter paid tribute to a legendary leader in the field of disease eradication…

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A giant step towards cleaner air—and longer lives

Ever since a toxic black cloud dubbed the Great Smog—made up primarily of coal-burning emissions and diesel exhaust—hovered over London in 1952 and killed an estimated 12,000 people…

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Andrew Spielman vs. The Deer Tick

In fall of 1973, residents on the island of Nantucket were treated to a curious sight: a lone scientist traipsing through underbrush, waving a giant white flag…

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Health up high

The warning you hear on every commercial airline flight—“In the unlikely event of a drop in cabin pressure…”—is the result of studies conducted by Ross McFarland, who joined HSPH…

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Graduation then and now

In 1914, the Harvard MIT School for Health Officers—now HSPH—awarded its first certificates to five physicians (all men) enrolled in the new public health program…

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Meet public health pioneer Linda Frances James, the first woman awarded a Harvard credential

In November 1913, the Administrative Board at the Harvard-MIT School for Health Officers voted to admit and credential women…

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Inventing veterinary public health: James H. Steele

James H. Steele, MPH ’42, was on the verge of leaving Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) when then-Dean Cecil Drinker came to the rescue with much-needed financial support…

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A passion for justice: Alonzo Yerby

With the creation of the Medicare and Medicaid programs in 1965, the United States began its first large-scale experiment with a formal national health system. Almost overnight…

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Philip Drinker, polio, and that “damn machine”

To thousands of Americans stricken with polio, it was a miraculous life saver, making it possible to breathe despite paralysis. To Harvard School of Public Health professor Philip Drinker…

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Milton J. Rosenau (1869-1946)

“We find monuments erected to heroes who have won wars, but we find none commemorating anyone’s preventing a war. The same is true with epidemics.”  So observed Milton J. Rosenau…

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George C. Whipple (1866-1924)

The year was 1912. Just one year after being “called to Harvard,” George C. Whipple—newly-appointed Gordon McKay Professor of Sanitary Engineering…

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William T. Sedgwick (1855-1921)

“The titan of a galaxy of giants—the inspiring center of this new movement—was William Thompson Sedgwick,” wrote one-time Sedgwick student Charles-Edward Winslow…

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The founders

“I met [Harvard University] President Lowell today at lunch at the Colonial Club. He asked me to think up some plan for having my department cooperate with the…

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Tracking intractable tropical diseases

“The sun came out early and fiercely…As the hours wore on and noon was reached at times one felt the desire to become a little hysterical and to repress a scream and throw oneself…

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Lab partners, life partners

While academic couples are certainly more common than they once were, the two-career scholarly partnership is far from new, as reflected in the lives of Cecil Kent Drinker…

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Harvard’s first lady

A “very sound and unusual person.” That was how Harvard Medical School Dean David L. Edsall described renowned industrial toxicologist Alice Hamilton in December 1918…

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Day one

Harvard-Tech cooperation at last. This headline—referring to a joint Harvard-MIT project—could be describing the launch of edX, but in fact it dates back 100 years…

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