SPRING 2015
HARVARD T.H. CHAN SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH
Campaign Update
A TRANSFORMATIONAL GIFT On September 8, 2014, the School announced a $350 million unrestricted endowment gift from The Morningside Foundation, established by the family of the late Mr. T.H. Chan and spearheaded by his sons Gerald Chan, SM ’75, SD ’79, a School alumnus, and Ronnie Chan. This gift provides a sustainable financial platform upon which the School’s work can be built, ensuring the School’s strength into the future by supporting the people, ideas, and infrastructure that make the School great. In honor of this extraordinary generosity, the School was renamed the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
“The best philanthropic giving comes from the heart, oftentimes a grateful heart. This gift is no exception. I am grateful to this University for the education that I received here. That education changed my life. I am also grateful to my late father who instilled in me the values by which I have lived my life. This gift is a way of memorializing my father and the values that he stood for.” GERALD CHAN, SM ’75, SD ’79, SPEAKING AT THE GIFT ANNOUNCEMENT CEREMONY ON SEPTEMBER 8, 2014
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A MESSAGE FROM THE DEAN ABOUT CAMPAIGN PROGRESS It has been my great pleasure to get to know so many of you during my past six years as dean of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Your deep commitment to the School and its mission has been a continual source of inspiration, and I am proud of all we have accomplished together. Although my tenure at the School will come to an end on August 31, the cause of public health remains close to my heart, and I am dedicated to strengthening the School’s future and to working with you over the next few months to ensure the success of the School’s Campaign. This effort is much bigger than one person—and indeed much bigger than the School. The Campaign targets critical public health issues confronting the wider world and seeks to discover and promote solutions to four major threats to global health: old and new pandemics, harmful physical and social environments, poverty and humanitarian crises, and failing health systems. You have responded to this vision with great generosity. The School received an extraordinary $350 million gift from The Morningside Foundation, and hundreds of other generous donors contributed nearly $296 million to the Campaign as of March 31, 2015. This generosity is a testament to your trust in this remarkable institution as it heads into its second century—trust that the School will be around and sound for the next hundred years, no matter its leader; that the work is vitally important; and that these efforts will continue to have a profound impact on people worldwide. We are both humbled and inspired by this trust. It causes all of us at the School to redouble our efforts, as no single gift—no matter how large— can solve the serious public health problems facing the world today. These efforts require the hard work and sustained support of many, both inside the School and outside its walls. Your past generosity has enabled progress on so many fronts in our shared mission of creating and nurturing healthy communities across the globe. Yet as the Ebola crisis, the obesity epidemic, and numerous other issues demonstrate, the intertwined public health threats that are the focus of this Campaign still loom large throughout the world. This is truly a public health moment, with successes in the field gaining visibility nationally and internationally. The School is seizing this moment, leveraging your support to improve millions of lives worldwide. As I prepare to step into a new role, I remain deeply grateful that you have joined in the worthy and rewarding work to improve the conditions of people living in poverty, people without access to health care, people without the resources to ensure a happy and productive life for themselves and their children. I know that you will be in good hands with my successor, who will be as committed as I to our life-changing work. With heartfelt thanks for your partnership in creating a healthier world,
JULIO FRENK Dean of the Faculty, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health T & G Angelopoulos Professor of Public Health and International Development, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Kennedy School
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POWERFUL IDEAS FOR A HEALTHIER WORLD THE CAMPAIGN FOR HARVARD T.H. CHAN SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH DISCOVERING AND PROMOTING SOLUTIONS TO FOUR MAJOR GLOBAL HEALTH THREATS
Harmful Physical & Social Environments
Old & New Pandemics
Preventing pollution, promoting healthy communities
Developing tools to reverse killer diseases
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Poverty & Humanitarian Crises
Advancing health as a human right
Leading change, changing leaders
Failing Health Systems
The following areas present gift opportunities for all four public health threats: MORNINGSIDE GIFT INITIAL SPENDING PRIORITIES:
PEOPLE
FUNDING STILL NEEDED FOR:*
Students • Institute a loan-forgiveness pilot program for graduates who go on to work in underserved communities in the U.S. or in developing countries around the world
• Student fellowships and financial aid
• Increase student financial aid
Faculty • Support sabbaticals for a number of promising junior faculty • Supplement competitive recruitment packages to attract the next generation of talented faculty members
• Named chair for the Dean • Professorships for department chairs • Junior and senior professorships/ researchers in multiple fields
• Provide a small but meaningful scholarly allowance for faculty who do not receive endowment support
IDEAS
• Create a fund to support groundbreaking research ideas generated by faculty and students • Expand support for educational excellence initiatives
INFRASTRUCTURE
• Begin building maintenance that has been deferred • Renovate aging laboratory space • Renovate learning spaces
• Continuous curriculum innovation • Major public health research initiatives in Africa, China, and India • Activities to foster translation of research into policy, including the School’s Forum and Voices programs
• New building spaces • Large new big-data initiatives • Junior and senior faculty positions in quantitative science
• Expand funding for big-data research, especially in biostatistics and epidemiology
SUSTAINABILITY
• Replenish reserves depleted by the 2008–09 financial crisis and create a buffer for the future
*representative sample of funding opportunities
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OLD AND NEW PANDEMICS
DEVELOPING TOOLS TO REVERSE KILLER DISEASES In today’s world, boarding an international flight can spark the risk of a deadly pandemic, and the underlying genetic and biological causes of conditions such as diabetes, cancer, and Alzheimer’s disease are still not understood. Diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria—which frequently can be prevented and treated with medications and changes in behavior—still kill millions of people across the world. To address these issues, the Harvard Chan School is challenging accepted wisdom and pushing forward the frontiers of knowledge for the common good.
Below: Sarah Fortune, the Melvin J. and Geraldine L. Glimcher associate professor of immunology and infectious diseases, discusses her work on the genetics of tuberculosis with Robert Pozen, who has supported Fortune’s research. Pozen, a former Harvard Business School faculty member, also taught in the Harvard Chan School’s DrPH program.
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Impact and opportunity Harvard Chan faculty, students, researchers, and alumni are on the front lines of efforts to prevent the next global pandemic. Building on lifesaving work that slowed the spread of HIV/AIDS, the School is working to stop killer diseases in their tracks by harnessing cutting-edge technologies, mining big data, and discovering the genetic codes underlying such diseases. Perhaps most important, the School is at the forefront of efforts to identify and stop diseases long before they have a chance to become epidemics.
Selected Funding Opportunities • Fellowships and financial aid—invest in future leaders tracking old and new pandemics by attracting the best students, regardless of their ability to pay • Junior and senior professorships—especially in the Departments of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, Genetics and Complex Diseases, Global Health and Population, Epidemiology, and Biostatistics • Predictive pandemic modeling—finding new ways to forecast, track, and treat pandemics • Defeating Malaria: From the Genes to the Globe— a partnership with the U.N. Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Malaria • Center for Healthy Aging—bringing together faculty experts from across the School to address the challenges of aging for individuals and societies
CONTRIBUTIONS RECEIVED AS OF MARCH 31, 2015:
$82.84M
AMOUNT STILL NEEDED TO REACH INITIAL TARGET:
$24.16M
CAMPAIGN IMPACT: RESEARCH ON METABOLIC DISEASES
The new Sabri Ülker Center for Nutrient, Genetic, and Metabolic Research addresses chronic and complex diseases of a metabolic nature, such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease, which are a major threat to public health in the U.S. and around the world. The Center was made possible by a $24 million gift from Murat Ülker, a leading Turkish entrepreneur, on behalf of the Ülker family and in honor of the late Sabri Ülker. The funds support work led by Gökhan S. Hotamisligil, the J.S. Simmons professor of genetics and metabolism and chair of the Department of Genetics and Complex Diseases. Above: Gökhan Hotamisligil presents Ali Ülker with a lab coat during the announcement of the Ülker gift.
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HARMFUL PHYSICAL AND SOCIAL ENVIRONMENTS
PREVENTING POLLUTION, PROMOTING HEALTHY COMMUNITIES Some of the world’s biggest health challenges emerge as a result of a complex combination of factors, including genetics, poverty or relative affluence, and lifestyle choices, among many others. Chronic conditions like heart and respiratory diseases, diabetes, and certain cancers—not to mention public health crises like gun violence and suicide—are just some of the problems that can be caused and sometimes controlled by human actions. Harvard Chan School experts across multiple fields are addressing these issues and discovering solutions to create healthy societies.
Below: Research by Chensheng (Alex) Lu, associate professor of environmental exposure biology, suggests that the decline in honeybee populations is linked to a group of pesticides. Honeybees are key to agricultural production that supports human health.
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Impact and opportunity Faculty and students at the Harvard Chan School are in the vanguard of efforts to change individual behaviors and to understand and address the big picture: both the physical causes of disease and the effects of toxic social and emotional environments, which can give rise to violence and a host of mental and other health problems.
Selected Funding Opportunities • Fellowships and financial aid—invest in future leaders examining social and environmental factors in health by attracting the best students, regardless of their ability to pay • Junior and senior professorships—especially in the Departments of Environmental Health, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Nutrition, Global Health and Population, Epidemiology, and Biostatistics • Healthy Lifestyles and Chronic Disease Initiative— turning the tide of the global obesity epidemic and slowing the rise in cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer through a combination of basic science and behavioral and nutrition research • Injury Control Research Center—research to support evidence-based policy approaches to reducing gun violence, texting while driving, and other dangerous behaviors • Research on air and water pollution—investigating and mitigating heath risks associated with these hazards and providing scientific evidence for sound environmental and health policies
CONTRIBUTIONS RECEIVED AS OF MARCH 31, 2015:
$62.55M
AMOUNT STILL NEEDED TO REACH INITIAL TARGET:
$47.45M
CAMPAIGN IMPACT: RESEARCH ON CHEMICALS IN THE ENVIRONMENT
The School has begun a new research and education program to explore multiple chemical sensitivities—in which exposure to certain chemicals appears to trigger persistent and lifelong toxic effects in some people—thanks to a $5 million bequest from Marilyn Brachman Hoffman (above). Hoffman closely followed the work of faculty members John Spengler, an expert in indoor air pollution, and Joseph Brain, who studies the health effects of inhaled gases, particulates, and microbes. Spengler and Brain are leading the Marilyn Brachman Hoffman Program for Chemicals and Health.
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POVERTY AND HUMANITARIAN CRISES
ADVANCING HEALTH AS A HUMAN RIGHT Wars, natural disasters, genocide, and other tragedies in recent years have transformed global humanitarian aid into a $160-billion-a-year industry that employs 240,000 people in thousands of organizations across more than 100 countries. But too often, would-be humanitarians are ill equipped to deal with the difficult and dangerous situations they find on the ground—armed militias, blocked roads, earthquake-damaged buildings, or masses of displaced people on the move. Harvard Chan faculty are engaged in a range of efforts to address these and other humanitarian issues.
Below: Patrick Vinck and Phuong Pham, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative faculty members, developed the KoBoToolbox, a system for securely collecting research data on mobile phones that has been adopted by the U.N. for use among responders during humanitarian disasters.
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Impact and opportunity From documenting the plight of Rohingya refugees in the Thailand-Burma border region, to studying the impact of poverty and racism on health in the U.S., to equipping current and future humanitarian leaders with the knowledge they need to operate effectively in crisis situations, the Harvard Chan School is working to improve the lives and health of vulnerable people around the world.
Selected Funding Opportunities • Fellowships and financial aid—invest in future leaders addressing poverty and other humanitarian issues by attracting the best students, regardless of their ability to pay • Junior and senior professorships—especially in the Departments of Global Health and Population, Health Policy and Management, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Epidemiology, and Biostatistics • Women and Health Initiative—a portfolio of initiatives to improve health conditions for mothers and children worldwide and advance women’s roles in health systems • François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights—advancing the rights and well-being of people living in the most extreme circumstances worldwide • Research Program on Children and Global Adversity— applied research contributing to evidence-based interventions to serve children and families in adversity across the globe
CONTRIBUTIONS RECEIVED AS OF MARCH 31, 2015:
$71.84M
AMOUNT STILL NEEDED TO REACH INITIAL TARGET:
$40.16M
CAMPAIGN IMPACT: TRAINING HUMANITARIAN LEADERS
A $5 million grant from Jonathan Lavine, MBA ’92, and his wife, Jeannie Lavine, AB ’88, MBA ’92—co-chairs of the Campaign—will enable the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative to significantly expand its ongoing efforts to train the next generation of humanitarian leaders. Under the new Lavine Family Humanitarian Studies Initiative, some 250 students per year—an increase from 100—are now learning how to provide aid effectively, efficiently, and safely through courses, simulated trainings in rural and urban settings, and case studies. The expanded Initiative serves as the foundation for the Humanitarian Academy—the first global center of its kind—that coordinates Harvard-wide efforts in humanitarian issues and helps define a new field.
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FAILING HEALTH SYSTEMS
LEADING CHANGE, CHANGING LEADERS The Ebola epidemic in West Africa demonstrated the complex nature of health systems and the terrible consequences of their failures. In the U.S., the health system is inefficient, expensive, and inaccessible to millions. Transforming health systems in this country and around the world will take both powerful ideas and effective leaders to put them into action. The Harvard Chan School is dedicated to both leading change and changing the leaders of health systems.
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Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times/Redux
Below: Mosoka Fallah, MPH ’12 (center), had returned to his hometown of Monrovia, Liberia, not long before Ebola struck that country. As the leader of a community health clinic, Fallah helped launch grassroots public health efforts during the epidemic by winning the trust of residents in Ebola-stricken communities like New Kru Town.
Impact and opportunity School faculty are identifying ways to prevent costly and life-threatening medical errors, determining which prevention programs and medical treatments deliver better care more efficiently, training ministers of health and finance to achieve concrete health policy goals, and ensuring access to affordable care for everyone.
Selected Funding Opportunities • Fellowships and financial aid—invest in future leaders focusing on health-systems reform by attracting the best students, regardless of their ability to pay • Junior and senior professorships—especially in the Departments of Health Policy and Management, Global Health and Population, Epidemiology, and Biostatistics • Ariadne Labs—creating scalable health care solutions that produce better care at the most critical moments in people’s lives • Leadership programs—initiatives including the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative, Center for Public Health Leadership, Ministerial Leadership in Health Program, and Leadership Studio programming • Entrepreneurial solutions to public health problems— joint programs with Harvard Business School to develop commercial self-sustaining health care initiatives for low-income populations
CONTRIBUTIONS RECEIVED AS OF MARCH 31, 2015:
$69.94M
AMOUNT STILL NEEDED TO REACH INITIAL TARGET:
$51.06M
CAMPAIGN IMPACT: HEALTH SYSTEMS INNOVATION
“When I make contributions,” says Mala Gaonkar (above), “I look for who is doing the strongest, most innovative work.” One focus of her philanthropy is Ariadne Labs, led by Atul Gawande, MPH ’99, professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at Harvard Chan School and a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Ariadne Labs is a joint center of both institutions designed to transform how care is delivered around the world. Using rigorous scientific methodology, researchers are designing scalable solutions, such as safe-childbirth and safe-surgery checklists, that have improved health care quality, reduced costs, and helped hundreds of thousands of people avoid injury, death, and other problems in their encounters with health care providers.
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“Dollar for dollar, public health and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health accomplish more to improve people’s health and enable them to live longer, healthier lives than any other investment.” Atul Gawande, MPH ’99 AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR; STAFF WRITER, THE NEW YORKER PROFESSOR IN THE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH POLICY AND MANAGEMENT SURGEON, BRIGHAM AND WOMEN’S HOSPITAL
Photo credits Cover, row 1, left and row 3, right: Tony Rinaldo; row 1, right: courtesy of Catlin Powers; row 3, left: courtesy of Patrick Vinck and Phuong Pham. Page 5: Emily Cuccarese. Page 10: Daniel Berehulak/ The New York Times/Redux. All others: Kent Dayton. 12
“When we signed on as co-chairs of the Campaign for Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in 2013, we could not have imagined the outpouring of generosity in support of public health research and education that the School would receive in just the first year. Your continued generosity creates a beacon of hope both here at home and around the world.” JONATHAN LAVINE, MBA ’ 92, AND JEANNIE LAVINE, AB ’88, MBA ’92 CO-CHAIRS, CAMPAIGN FOR HARVARD T.H. CHAN SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH
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OFFICE FOR EXTERNAL RELATIONS HARVARD T.H. CHAN SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH 90 SMITH STREET BOSTON, MA 02120 617-432-8470 / 1-844-484-2774 (TOLL FREE) CAMPAIGN@HSPH.HARVARD.EDU WWW.HSPH.HARVARD.EDU/CAMPAIGN