Service and Leadership

Our mission at Harvard Medical School is to alleviate suffering and improve health and well-being, not just for a select few but for all. The medical profession is founded on the premise that every person deserves to be treated with dignity, and HMS takes up the mantle of health equity with pride and resolve. We recognize that biomedical education, clinical service, and scientific discovery require not only high standards and critical thinking but also a commitment to fairness, which helps explain why others look to us to lead and collaborate.

As one demonstration of this conviction, the Office for Diversity Inclusion and Community Partnership (DICP), Center for the History of Medicine at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, and New England Journal of Medicine arranged three symposia to discuss research published by the journal — including several articles authored by HMS faculty — examining the historical roots of injustice in medicine. Gatherings like these help us grapple with our past, engage in the moral practice of learning together, and change medicine for the better.

The potency of our School’s partnerships extends to strengthening the health of communities. A standout example is a joint grant that the Institute for Health Equity Research, Evaluation, and Policy at the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers received this July from the Harvard & The Legacy of Slavery Initiative through its inaugural Reparative Partnership Grant Program. DICP is the designated Harvard University partner for the grant and will collaborate with the institute, the Brockton Neighborhood Health Center, and Boston’s Codman Square Health Center to invest in community-led scholarship that addresses health inequities among people descended from those harmed by slavery.

Outside institutions recognized exemplars of leadership in health equity at HMS. Joan Reede, dean for diversity and community partnership, was awarded the 2024 W. Montague Cobb Lifetime Achievement Award by the W. Montague Cobb/National Medical Association Health Institute for her significant impact on the health of underserved populations and her commitment to advancing health equity and increasing diversity in the biomedical sciences throughout her career.

The legacy of global health pioneer Paul Farmer continued to have profound impacts. Forty years of collaboration among the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Partners In Health, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Haiti’s Ministry of Public Health and Population laid the groundwork for resilience and hope when Haiti experienced its worst political unrest and violence in decades this past spring. The local staff of a dozen hospitals with deep ties to HMS provided crucial health care to some of the island nation’s most vulnerable people. This long-term leadership and investment in local capacity building offered a master class in providing health care in times of crisis.

Serving populations in need is also accomplished through scholarship in health care policy. This work is increasingly important as the U.S. health care system faces threats such as rising costs, a stringently regulated reimbursement environment, and economic concerns about private equity takeovers of hospitals. To carry forward our research in this area, Nicole Maestas, the John D. MacArthur Professor of Health Care Policy in the Field of Economics, assumed the role of head of the Department of Health Care Policy in the Blavatnik Institute at HMS on Nov. 1, 2024. In Maestas, the department will have a discerning advocate for understanding how to leverage the complex interaction of social, economic, and medical factors to improve health policy and enhance people’s ability to participate in society in meaningful ways.

Sincere gratitude goes to Barbara McNeil, the Ridley Watts Professor of Health Care Policy, who founded the department in 1988 — the first of its kind at a medical school — and served as its head for a remarkable 36 years. Through her exceptional service, including twice serving as interim dean of HMS, McNeil built a solid foundation and created an enduring legacy.

This year saw additional paragons of service and leadership in basic and clinical research. In a first-of-its-kind medical procedure, HMS physician-scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital transplanted a genetically edited pig kidney into a human. The surgery marked a major milestone in the quest to alleviate critical short- ages of human kidneys for patients with end-stage renal failure and to reduce health disparities associated with organ failure and transplan-tation. The kidney was provided by eGenesis, a xenotransplantation therapy company co-founded by George Church, the Robert Winthrop Professor of Genetics at HMS, and Luhan Yang, former HMS research fellow in genetics.

Our community was deeply saddened by the death of the transplant recipient, Rick Slayman, two months later. There was no indication his death resulted from the transplant. He will be remembered as a beacon of hope and courage for transplant patients and their loved ones, surgeons, and researchers worldwide.

The HMS-led Massachusetts Consortium on Pathogen Readiness (MassCPR) continued to help guide the nation in pandemic preparedness. Its latest ambitious endeavor aims to create infrastructure for its collaborating institutions to collect and share biospecimens and electronic health record data — with the fullest patient privacy protections in place — to advance infectious disease research. MassCPR also announced funding for eight trainee-led research projects in academic year 2025 as part of its focus on infectious agents that are a global threat and to develop future biomedical science leaders.

Harvard Catalyst launched several new initiatives that support the next generation of clinical and translational researchers and the communities they serve. To address one roadblock commonly faced by junior investigators, the center awarded approximately 50 investigators subsidized time to use Harvard’s core research resources, which are often obscure or difficult to access. To support diversity and community inclusion in research, the annual summer program for visiting medical students brought nine budding physician-scientists from across the U.S. and Puerto Rico to work on mentored research projects with HMS faculty. The Clinical and Translational Research Academy First Grant Bootcamp, a 15-week program for early-stage investigators, helped its first cohort to develop the writing skills necessary to secure a competitive first grant.

Cautious and creative use of artificial intelligence offers another avenue for HMS to recruit and retain top talent and augment the best science, patient care, and education and training. The inaugural Dean’s Innovation Awards for the Use of Artificial Intelligence granted a total of $2.2 million to 33 projects exploring how generative AI can open scientific frontiers, transform medical and graduate education, and improve administrative efficiency.

Leadership includes shaping global conversations on emerging topics in medicine and biomedical research. To that end, the Office of Communications and External Relations welcomed eight local, national, and international science and medical journalists to a media boot camp focused on the promise of AI in biomedical discovery. Interactive sessions with 11 faculty members and postdocs from the HMS and Harvard community equipped the reporters to cover this area of research in more informed and inspiring ways.

While the effects of our collaborative work reverberate globally, leadership begins at home. We celebrated dozens of community members this year for their outstanding mentorship, teaching, advocacy, and service. HMS worked with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences to establish a core for mentoring excellence, which provides monthly programs for any Harvard faculty member involved in mentoring.

HMS celebrated the promotion of 663 faculty in academic year 2024. This includes 80 promoted to full professor (45 percent women, the same percentage as the entire faculty, and 9 percent from groups underrepresented in medicine, higher than the faculty percentage of 8 percent), 180 to associate professor (40 percent women, 8 percent URiM), and 403 to assistant professor (50 percent women, 11 percent URiM).

The Office for Faculty Affairs continued to optimize and demystify the academic promotion process. A new online tool, CV Generator, aims to reduce administrative burdens and delays for appointments and promotions and help faculty strengthen their dossiers. The launch of a professorial-only title — professor of clinical X, where X represents the academic department — recognizes faculty who have made a national impact on the practice of medicine through contributions that transcend peer-reviewed scholarship.

The way we attend to one another determines the extent of our success and the effect we have on the world. The dean’s office organized several breakfasts this spring to generate ideas on fostering a deeper sense of community at our School. The anticipated completion of the skylighted atrium in Building C (to be renamed the Bertarelli Building), which will integrate new gathering spaces into our historic campus fabric, and the Gordon Hall of Medicine renovation, which will create centralized co-working space for administrative departments, will provide fresh ground for connection.