Campaign Update Spring 2015

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Campaign Update SPRING 2015

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“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

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.

A TRANSFORMATIONAL GIFT

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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 them-

selves 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

A MESSAGE FROM THE DEANABOUT CAMPAIGN PROGRESS

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THE CAMPAIGN FOR HARVARD T.H. CHAN SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

DISCOVERING AND PROMOTING SOLUTIONS TO FOUR MAJOR GLOBAL HEALTH THREATS

POWERFUL IDEAS FOR A HEALTHIER WORLD

HarmfulPhysical& Social

Environments

FailingHealth Systems

Advancing healthas a human right

Developingtools to reversekiller diseases

Preventing pollution,promoting healthy

communities

Leading change,changing leaders

Poverty & Humanitarian

Crises

Old & NewPandemics

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The following areas present gift opportunities for all four public health threats:

*representative sample of funding opportunities

MORNINGSIDE GIFT INITIAL

SPENDING PRIORITIES:

FUNDING STILL NEEDED FOR:*

PEOPLE 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

• 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

• Provide a small but meaningful scholarly allowance for faculty who do not receive endowment support

• Student fellowships and financial aid

• Named chair for the Dean

• Professorships for department chairs

• Junior and senior professorships/researchers in multiple fields

IDEAS • Create a fund to support groundbreaking research ideas generated by faculty and students

• Expand support for educational excellence initiatives

• 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

INFRASTRUCTURE • Begin building maintenance that has been deferred

• Renovate aging laboratory space

• Renovate learning spaces

• Expand funding for big-data research, especially in biostatistics and epidemiology

• New building spaces

• Large new big-data initiatives

• Junior and senior faculty positions in quantitative science

SUSTAINABILITY • Replenish reserves depleted by the 2008–09 financial crisis and create a buffer for the future

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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.

DEVELOPING TOOLS TO REVERSE KILLER DISEASES

OLD AND NEW PANDEMICS

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 opportunityHarvard 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

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.$82.84M

$24.16M

CONTRIBUTIONS RECEIVED

AS OF MARCH 31, 2015:

AMOUNT STILL NEEDED TO

REACH INITIAL TARGET:

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PREVENTING POLLUTION, PROMOTING HEALTHY COMMUNITIESSome 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.

HARMFUL PHYSICAL AND SOCIAL ENVIRONMENTS

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 opportunityFaculty 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.


• Fellowships and financial aid—invest in future leaders exam-

ining social and environmental factors in health by attracting

the best students, regardless of their ability to pay


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

$62.55M

$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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ADVANCING HEALTH AS A HUMAN RIGHTWars, 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.

POVERTY AND HUMANITARIAN CRISES

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 opportunityFrom 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.



addressing poverty and other humanitarian issues by

attracting the best students, regardless of their ability to pay


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 world-

wide 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

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.$71.84M

$40.16M





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LEADING CHANGE, CHANGING LEADERSThe 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.

FAILING HEALTH SYSTEMS

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.

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Impact and opportunitySchool 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.



focusing on health-systems reform by attracting the best

students, regardless of their ability to pay


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

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.

$69.94M

$51.06M





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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 ’99AWARD-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.

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“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 ’92CO-CHAIRS, CAMPAIGN FOR HARVARD T.H. CHAN SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

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)

[email protected]

WWW.HSPH.HARVARD.EDU/CAMPAIGN

Documents

Campaign Update Spring 2015