Dean George Q. Daley addressing the 2023 master's graduates.
Today, we recognize more than 250 graduates from nine different master’s programs at Harvard Medical School. Outside the U.S. and Canada, some of the countries you call home include Ghana, Korea, Malaysia, and Malawi. No matter where you’ve been, no matter where you are headed, each of you has contributed intellectually to the HMS community, and I hope that you have made the absolute most of your time here at Harvard.
You’ve researched mistreatment toward patients in labor, and you’ve investigated the use of targeted protein degradation to enhance CAR T-cell therapies. You’ve increased the accessibility of genomics visualization tools, and you’ve explored the effectiveness of private sector tuberculosis services in Peru. You have done truly impressive work!
And despite your varied interests and aspirations, you all have one trait in common — and that is courage.
Many of you took a mid-career pause to begin your master’s programs here at HMS. Not only was that courageous, it was a bold and admirable decision, especially in the midst of a pandemic.
In spite of the associated risks, sacrifices, and uncertainties of spending time and resources to further your education, you chose to better yourselves for the betterment of humanity.
The fruits of your labor will help us build more resilient health care systems here and around the world.
Our master’s programs represent nine distinct and powerful lenses through which to view the health care sector. Whether you’re graduating with expertise in bioethics; biomedical informatics; clinical investigation; clinical service operations; global health delivery; health care quality and safety; immunology; media, medicine, and health; or medical education, the fruits of your labor will help us build more resilient health care systems here and around the world.
Indeed, the COVID-19 pandemic has been a brutal reminder that our world is only as healthy as the infrastructures and policies that govern it. In examining the social determinants of health, in seeing how the disparate elements of our health care system are inextricably linked, we are able to treat not just individuals — but whole societies, too.
And that is my charge to you, as you leave this campus to enact change worldwide: discover what it means — from where you sit — to treat society at large.
We know all too well, of course, that modern society needs healing. The therapeutic regimen for many of its current ailments will be complex, and it will require expansive thinking as well as a collaborative approach to public health and medicine.
My experience overseeing the Massachusetts Consortium on Pathogen Readiness ... showed me that collaboration generates a tsunami of new knowledge.
My experience overseeing the Massachusetts Consortium on Pathogen Readiness, which forged a collective scientific brain trust around the immediate challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, showed me that collaboration generates a tsunami of new knowledge.
It also made me realize that there is virtually no area of biomedicine that can’t assemble world-class teams from a wide variety of specialties, so let us do that.
Let us redouble our efforts to care for society through innovative methods of collaboration and resource sharing. Let us democratize mathematical modeling of infectious disease, expand access to health data, devise novel techniques in medical education, and empower communities to make population health a priority.
Today, I’m excited to hear from Rebecca Weintraub Brendel, director of our Master of Science in Bioethics program.
I recently had the pleasure of appointing Dr. Brendel as the new director of the HMS Center for Bioethics, a major leadership role she will undertake beginning in June.
I am sure Dr. Brendel’s remarks will foreshadow the great work she intends to do at the helm of the center, and the transformative change that all of you will be setting forth to achieve when you leave here today.
Indeed, the courage that brought you all here sets the tone for excellence in your careers and in your service to the community.
You are the sense-makers, the dreamers, and the storytellers who will redefine health care for the second half of the 21st century, and you are the healers who will tend to our society every step of the way.
You are the sense-makers, the dreamers, and the storytellers who will redefine health care for the second half of the 21st century, and you are the healers who will tend to our society every step of the way.
I salute you and wish you the best of luck. Congratulations again, master’s graduates!
And now, it is my pleasure to introduce Dr. Rebecca Brendel.
In addition to her appointments within the bioethics programs at HMS, Dr. Brendel bases her clinical work in psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital. She has served in multiple roles at MGH over the past decade, including as medical director of the One Fund Center for Boston Marathon bombing survivors and as clinical director of the Red Sox Foundation/MGH Home Base Program for post-9/11 service members and their families. She currently serves as a member of the American Medical Association Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs and as president of the American Psychiatric Association.
