Dean’s Report FY23
To foster collaboration, nurture physicians and scientists in training, and help cement HMS’s preeminence as a global leader in discovery, education, and compassionate care, we are embarking on capital projects that creatively and efficiently use the space we have available. We’ve expanded our dry and wet lab footprint, identified next steps for campus-wide sustainability and green energy initiatives, and completed our master plan for renovating the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine as a center for academic life, community building, and interactive learning.
Construction has begun on transforming the Gordon Hall of Medicine, our signature campus building, into a flexible co-working space. This design will create a positive work community for our administrative units while saving millions in annual lease costs — money that will be funneled into advancing our research, education, and service mission.
These projects are driving increased momentum toward the HMS campus of the future. By 2040 or 2050, we estimate needing another 500,000 gross square feet of space to accommodate what we envision for the Longwood campus: a vibrant epicenter for life sciences and health sciences at Harvard.
Our Office for Faculty Affairs is supporting faculty development in part by streamlining and demystifying the promotions process. As a result, the number of successful promotions managed by the office is rising every year, and with the number of promotions among women and faculty from populations traditionally underrepresented in medicine (URiM) also rising.
In academic year 2023, 50 faculty were promoted to full professor (40 percent women, 12 percent URiM); 210 were promoted to associate professor (46 percent women, 6 percent URiM); and 406 were promoted to assistant professor (54 percent women, 11 percent URiM). Women now make up 46 percent of all HMS faculty, and individuals from populations URiM constitute 8 percent of the faculty.
HMS aspires to have its leadership reflect the breadth of our communities. The trends are positive, with the number of Quad and affiliate department chairs doubling since FY22 for those from traditionally URiM backgrounds and an increase of 11 percent for women.
Harvard Catalyst received a seven-year grant from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, a National Institutes of Health funding agency, to support clinical and translational researchers across Harvard and academic health care centers. Each of Harvard Catalyst’s programmatic initiatives — education, informatics, mentoring, funding support for investigators, community-engaged research and dissemination, and ensuring diversity, equity, and inclusion across the spectrum of clinical research, including study participant populations — have at their core a mission to support investigators and affiliated institutions in the conduct of translational science and to identify and overcome any translational blocks that may impede their career paths as clinical researchers.
SMART IRB, a Harvard Catalyst initiative to efficiently facilitate multisite studies across the U.S., secured three-year funding. The initiative includes over 1,100 participating institutions working to streamline IRB review and accelerate the research process, thus making a greater impact on human health.
Our clinical care providers are working to transform the U.S. and global health care systems so that well-being and vitality are ascendant for all people, and so that no disease is ever a death sentence. HMS embraces its responsibility to nurture and support clinical care providers, while channeling their expertise toward inspiring the next generation of change-making care providers.
To follow through on that charge, we are magnifying the work of our Center for Primary Care to reinstate the primacy of primary care as an appealing field for future health care professionals, positioning HMS at the apex of health care leadership and practice transformation, and working to weave health equity into everything we do — from basic science to global health delivery, from the micro to the macro.
The relationship between basic science and health equity is an important one. A revolutionary discovery by Stuart Orkin, the David G. Nathan Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics, enabled the design of a potentially curative CRISPR-based treatment for sickle cell disease, a genetic condition marked by misshapen and malfunctioning red blood cells. As of November 2023, this approach is now on the brink of FDA approval and could help transform the lives of the 20 million people worldwide affected by this devastating disease.
While COVID-19 vaccines were a major victory of modern bioscience, the lack of equitable global vaccine distribution was a major failure of public health. We must ensure that sickle cell therapies are accessible, affordable, and distributed equitably in regions like sub-Saharan Africa, where millions live with the disease.
On the macro end of the spectrum, where research and theory translate into global action, an external review recently lauded our Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, calling it a “jewel” of the academic community. The department’s new strategic plan centers on the core values and aspirations integral to the department under the visionary leadership of the late Paul Farmer, whose life and scholarship will be permanently embedded in everything we do.
Earlier this year, Cummings Foundation gave $50 million to establish the Paul Farmer Collaborative of HMS and the University of Global Health Equity in Rwanda. The gift supports both institutions equally and formalizes their alliance in continuing Farmer’s transformative work.
Vikram Patel was named chair of the department on Sept. 1 and became the first incumbent of the Paul Farmer Professorship and Chair of Global Health and Social Medicine. Patel amassed a distinguished portfolio of scholarship in global mental health, has tremendous intellectual energy, and is well-known for creating consensus and building effective teams. He is a fitting successor and shares Farmer’s belief that academic engagement is key to delivering quality and equitable health care to all.
Now in its fourth year, the HMS-led Massachusetts Consortium on Pathogen Readiness (MassCPR) has grown into a multi-institutional, multinational research collaboration involving hundreds of investigators at 17 participating institutions in Massachusetts and 667 collaborating institutions in 58 countries. MassCPR researchers continue to generate important new insights that have opened up new avenues for research and discovery beyond SARS-CoV-2.
This year, MassCPR announced four working groups with broadened mandates: post-infectious clinical syndromes; diagnostics, surveillance, and epidemiology; biospecimens and data network, which two private funders have committed $12.5 million to support; and variants and vaccines. Under a new grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, administered through the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, MassCPR will receive $7 million over five years to lead pathogen genomics education and training for the nation’s public health workforce, develop novel diagnostic devices, and create uniform documentation for research activities