May 25, 2022 – Jesse Bump and Nancy Turnbull are the 2022 recipients of a new award recognizing outstanding teaching in public health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
The Sastry Award for Outstanding Teaching in Public Health recognizes up to two faculty members each academic year for their significant impact on students and the ways they have, through excellent teaching, inspired students to reach their public health goals. Any student, alumni, faculty member, department chair, colleague, or dean, individually or collectively, may nominate an individual for a Sastry award. Each award recipient receives $10,000.
Bump is a lecturer on global health policy and executive director of the Takemi Program in International Health. The overarching goal of his research is to analyze the evolution of ideas and institutions that promote better societal performance in health. His work has focused on the special opportunities to build health systems and advance social protections during and after widespread disruption by infectious disease epidemics, colonial extraction, conflict, industrialization, globalization, and other processes.
Turnbull is senior lecturer on health policy and senior associate dean for educational programs. In the latter role, Turnbull helps lead the School’s MPH and DrPH programs, field education and practice, and a range of other school-wide activities. She is also the director of educational policy in the Department of Health Policy and Management and serves as the faculty field of study director for the MPH-65 program in health policy. Turnbull’s professional interests include health insurance, insurance regulation, and expanding health care coverage.
The nominations for both Turnbull and Bump included many superlatives.
“If the purpose of education is to challenge us to think critically and erode ignorance, Jesse has served that purpose brilliantly,” wrote one person who nominated Bump. Another wrote, “I am certain that his teachings will stay with me for life.”
Of Turnbull, one nominator wrote, “She is indeed one of a kind, and I greatly appreciate her humanity, resourcefulness, and excellence to help students to thrive in all circumstances.” Wrote another, “She is the ultimate advocate, connector, mentor, and role model in public health.”
The Sastry Awards were established through the generosity of Dr. Srinivas Sastry, MPH ’90. Sastry, an ophthalmologist with a clinical practice in Bethesda, Maryland, chairs Harvard Chan School’s Board of Dean’s Advisors and is a member of the School’s Nutrition Round Table Steering Committee. Sastry established the Sastry Harvard iLab Innovation Fund at Harvard Chan School, the Sastry Global Health and Health Policy Fund at Harvard University, and the Sastry Fund for Student Innovation at Harvard Medical School.
“I’m so grateful that one of our amazing alums created this award to honor the excellent teaching of our faculty,” said Erin Driver-Linn, dean for education. “The many and profoundly moving nominations we received demonstrate the generosity and respect our faculty have for students, as well as the ways that an individual teacher can make a huge impact in a student’s life—sometimes by listening, sometimes by challenging, always by caring.”