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HSPH-NIEHS Colloquium Series: Kenneth Olden, PhD

May 11, 2022 @ 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm

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Join us for our colloquium series on Re-envisioning the Environment: Diverse Voices in Environmental Health.  This month, we welcome Kenneth Olden, PhD.

The title of this presentation is: “Social Determinants of Health as Targets of Precision Medicine”

This presentation will be held both in person in Building 1, 1302 and via Zoom.

Join Via Zoom

BIOSKETCH

Dr. Kenneth Olden recently retired from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency where he served as Director of the National Center for Environmental Assessment from 2012-2016. He leaves a strong legacy of promoting excellence in environmental health research and chemical risk assessment. Ken started his distinguished career in medical research as a postdoctoral fellow from 1970-1974 in physiology and biochemistry at the Harvard School of Medicine in Boston, MA. He then moved to the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health as a Senior Staff Fellow in the Laboratory of Molecular Biology. In 1977, Ken was promoted to the Rank of Tenured Independent Investigator; becoming the first African American to achieve such a rank in the National Institutes of Health. In 1979, Dr. Olden was appointed Professor in the Department of Oncology and Scientific Director of the Howard University Cancer Center at the Howard University Hospital in Washington, DC. Six years later (1985), he was promoted to the position of Director of the Cancer Center and Chair of the Department of Oncology.

From 1991-2005, Ken served as Director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), in the National Institute of Health (NIH), and the National Toxicology Program (NTP) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Again, he made history in this role as the first African American to direct one of the Institutes in the National Institutes of Health. In 2005, Ken resigned as Director of NIEHS and NTP to take a leave of absence from the NIH ( 2005-2006 )  to develop an internal mechanism to review and award grants to support extramural research at the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Disease Research, and to spend  the 2006-2007 academic year at the Harvard School of Public Health as the first Yerby Visiting Professor. From 2008-2012, Ken served as Founding Dean of the School of Public Health at the City University of New York (CUNY). In this capacity, he integrated four existing programs in the CUNY system to create a system-wide School of Public Health, recruited new faculty and staff, got the school a five year accreditation, and transitioned the school to a new campus in East Harlem.

Ken has published extensively (220 papers) in peer-reviewed literature, chaired or co-chaired numerous national and international meetings, and has been an invited speaker at more than 250 symposia. Ken has been the recipient of a long list of honors and awards including the Presidential (William J. Clinton) Distinguished Executive Rank Award; the Presidential ( William J. Clinton) Meritorious Rank Award; the Toxicology Forum Distinguished Fellow Award; the HHS Secretary’s Distinguished Service  Award; the American College of Toxicology Distinguished Service Award; the City of Medicine Award in 1996; Tar Heel of the Week (august 1, 1993), Guest Scientist of the Princess Takamatsu Cancer Research Fund in 2004, and the National Minority  Health Leadership award in 2012. He is also the recipient of the four most distinguished awards in public health: the Calvert award (2002); the Sedgwick Medal (2004); the Lautenberg Award (2004), and the Julius B. Richmond Award (2005). In 2012, he received the Cato T. Laurencin Lifetime Research Award from the National Medical Association. In 2015, Dr. Olden was awarded the Sackler Prize by ‘Research America’ in recognition for sustained leadership in prompting Community-Based Participatory Research, and the HESI Innovation Prize for his leadership in promoting health equity.in 2021.

Consistent with the above record of accomplishment, Ken was elected to membership in the National Academy of Medicine of the US National Academy of Sciences in 1994.

Details

Date:
May 11, 2022
Time:
1:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Event Category: