Julio Frenk, an authority on global health who served as the minister of health of Mexico, will become the new dean of HSPH. Frenk is expected to assume leadership in January 2009, succeeding Barry Bloom, who will step down as dean at the end of December following a decade of service.
“Julio Frenk is admired worldwide for his leadership, vision, and remarkable record of accomplishment in public health,” Harvard president Drew Faust said. “He is a highly influential figure at the crossroads of scholarship and practice, known for his profound concern with how scientific evidence can foster improvements in health systems and policy in -socie-ties around the world. He has a highly multidisciplinary outlook, a strong commitment to reducing disparities in health, and a deep understanding of the power of education and research to change lives for the better.”
Frenk’s appointment as dean follows his service in a series of prominent leadership positions in public health, including as the minister of health of Mexico from 2000 to 2006. In that position, he worked to reform the nation’s health system, with an emphasis on redressing social inequality. He is perhaps best known for his work in introducing a program of comprehensive national health insurance, known as Seguro Popular, which expanded access to health care for tens of millions of previously uninsured Mexicans. A former visiting professor at HSPH, Frenk is currently a senior fellow in the global health program of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, president of the Carso Health Institute in Mexico City, and chair of the board of the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
“I am deeply grateful to President Drew Faust for the honor of appointing me as the next dean of the Harvard School of Public Health,” Frenk said. “For the best part of my professional life, I have maintained intense contact with the School and have benefited enormously from interaction with its faculty. I see this appointment as a unique opportunity to continue to advance the notion that has inspired my entire career, namely, that science and scholarship represent the enlightened way to guide purposeful social transformation for the benefit of every human being.”
