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Medical anthropologist and physician Paul Farmer is the Kolokotrones University Professor, Harvard University; Chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School; and a founding director of Partners In Health (PIH), an international non-profit organization that provides direct health care services and undertakes research and advocacy activities on behalf of those who are sick and living in poverty. Dr. Farmer’s work focuses on community-based treatment strategies for infectious diseases in resource-poor settings, health and human rights, and the role of social inequalities in determining disease distribution and outcomes. He is Chief of the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) in Boston, and served for ten years as medical director of a charity hospital, L’Hôpital Bon Sauveur, in rural Haiti. Dr. Farmer and his colleagues in the U.S. and abroad have pioneered novel, community-based treatment strategies that demonstrate the delivery of high-quality health care in resource-poor settings. Dr. Farmer is also the UN Deputy Special Envoy for Haiti, under Special Envoy Bill Clinton.

Dr. Farmer has written extensively about health and human rights, and about the role of social inequalities in the distribution and outcome of infectious diseases. His most recent book is Partner to the Poor: A Paul Farmer Reader. Other titles include Pathologies of Power, Infections and Inequalities, The Uses of Haiti, and AIDS and Accusation. In addition, he is co-editor of Women, Poverty, and AIDS, of The Global Impact of Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis, and of Global Health in Times of Violence. Dr. Farmer is the recipient of the Carter Award for Humanitarian Contributions to the Health of Humankind from the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, the Salk Institute Medal for Health and Humanity, the Duke University Humanitarian Award, the Margaret Mead Award from the American Anthropological Association, the American Medical Association’s Outstanding International Physician (Nathan Davis) Award, the Heinz Award for the Human Condition, the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, and, with his PIH colleagues, the Hilton Humanitarian Prize. In 1993, he was awarded a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Award in recognition of his work. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

 

Educational History

• 1990: MD Harvard Medical School
• 1990: PhD Harvard University (anthropology)
• 1982: AB Duke University

Medical anthropologist and physician

Courses Taught

• Introduction to Social Medicine
• Health, Culture, and Community: Case Studies in Global Health (Harvard FAS)

Research Interests

• Health and human rights
• Role of social inequalities in the distribution and outcome of disease
• Treatment of HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis (including multidrug-resistant tuberculosis) in resource-poor settings

Building comprehensive primary health care systems in resource-poor settings in resource-poor settings

(Source, Harvard.edu)

Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D. is the former director of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). On August 17, 2009 he was sworn in as director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Dr. Collins led the successful effort to complete Human Genome Project (HGP), a complex multidisciplinary scientific enterprise directed at mapping and sequencing all of the human DNA, and determining aspects of its function. A working draft of the human genome sequence was announced in June of 2000, an initial analysis was published in February of 2001, and a high-quality, reference sequence was completed in April 2003.

From the outset, the HGP ran ahead of schedule and under budget, and all the data is now available to the scientific community without restrictions on access or use. Building on the foundation laid by the HGP, Dr. Collins is now leading NHGRI’s effort to ensure that this new trove of sequence data is translated into tools and strategies to advance biological knowledge and improve human health.

Dr. Collins received a B.S. from the University of Virginia, a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Yale University, and an M.D. from the University of North Carolina. Following a fellowship in Human Genetics at Yale, he joined the faculty at the University of Michigan, where he remained until moving to NIH in 1993. His research has led to the identification of genetic variants associated with type 2 diabetes and the genes responsible for cystic fibrosis, neurofibromatosis, Huntington’s disease and Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences.

On Nov. 5, 2007, Collins received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civil award, for his revolutionary contributions to genetic research.

On August 1, 2008, Dr. Collins left his position as director of the National Human Genome Research Institute to explore other writing and professional opportunities. He will continue with NHGRI’s Division of Intramural Research as a Special Volunteer

Harold Varmus, M.D., co-recipient of a Nobel Prize for studies of the genetic basis of cancer, was nominated by President Obama as Director of the National Cancer Institute on May 17, 2010. He began his tenure as NCI Director on July 12, 2010. He previously served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) and as Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Much of Varmus’ scientific work was conducted during 23 years as a faculty member at the University of California, San Francisco, Medical School, where he and Dr. J. Michael Bishop and their co-workers demonstrated the cellular origins of the oncogene of a chicken retrovirus. This discovery led to the isolation of many cellular genes that normally control growth and development and are frequently mutated in human cancer. For this work, Bishop and Varmus received many awards, including the 1989 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. Varmus is also widely recognized for his studies of the replication cycles of retroviruses and hepatitis B viruses, the functions of genes implicated in cancer, and the development of mouse models of human cancer (the focus of much of the work in his laboratory at MSKCC).

In 1993, Varmus was named by President Clinton to serve as the Director of NIH, a position he held until the end of 1999. During his tenure at NIH, he initiated many changes in the conduct of intramural and extramural research programs; recruited new leaders for most of the important positions at NIH; planned three major buildings on the NIH campus, including the Mark O. Hatfield Clinical Research Center ; and helped to initiate the five-year doubling of the NIH budget.

At MSKCC, Varmus emphasized opportunities to harness advances in the biological sciences to improve the care of patients with cancer. Under his leadership, the scientific programs were reorganized and enlarged; a new research building, the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Research Center, was constructed; and new graduate training programs were established in chemical biology and computational biology (as part of a new Tri-Institutional Research Program with Rockefeller University and Weill-Cornell Medical College) and in cancer biology (through MSKCC’s first degree-awarding program in the Louis V. Gerstner, Jr. Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences).

Varmus has authored over 300 scientific papers and five books, including an introduction to the genetic basis of cancer for a general audience and a memoir, The Art and Politics of Science, published in 2009. He has been an advisor to the Federal government, pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms, and many academic institutions, and was appointed by President Barack Obama as co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). He served on the World Health Organization’s Commission on Macroeconomics and Health from 2000 to 2002; is a co-founder and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Public Library of Science, a publisher of open-access journals in the biomedical sciences; chaired the Scientific Board of the Grand Challenges in Global Health at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation from 2003 to 2008 and now chairs the Foundation’s Global Health Advisory Committee; and is involved in several initiatives to promote science in developing countries, including the Global Science Corps, through the Science Initiatives Group. He was also a member of the Funding Committee of the Empire State Stem Cell Board and serves as co-chair of the Institute of Medicine’s committee on “The U.S. Commitment to Global Health.” He has been a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences since 1984 and of the Institute of Medicine since 1991, and has received the National Medal of Science, the Vannevar Bush Award, and several honorary degrees and other prizes, in addition to the Nobel Prize.

A native of Freeport, Long Island, Varmus is the son of Dr. Frank Varmus, a general practitioner, and Beatrice Varmus, a psychiatric social worker. After graduating from Freeport High School, he majored in English literature at Amherst College and earned a master’s degree in English at Harvard University. He is a graduate of Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, worked as a medical student in a hospital in India, and served on the medical house staff at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center. He began his scientific training as a Public Health Service officer at NIH, where he studied bacterial gene expression with Dr. Ira Pastan, and then trained as a post-doctoral fellow with Dr. Bishop at the University of California, San Francisco.

Source cancer.gov

(source:APHA website))Dr. Adewale Troutman identifies himself through his commitment to social justice, human rights, community activism, health equity and national and global health.  His life’s work has been a testimony to this fact.  Dr. Troutman has over 40 years of dedication through action to the principles of universal freedoms and the elimination of racism, injustice and oppression.  His unique educational background has been a major factor in this quest.  Dr. Troutman has an MD from New Jersey Medical School, a Masters in Public Health from Columbia University, Masters in Black Studies from the State University of New York in Albany, and as of October 2009, board certification from the National Board of Public Health Examiners.  He is a residency trained Family Physician graduating from residency at the Medical University of South Carolina.  His career has included clinical emergency medicine, hospital administration, academic and public health practice.  He served as an Associate Professor in the University of Louisville’s School of Public Health and Information Sciences while directing the Metro Louisville Department of Public Health and Wellness.

Dr. Troutman’s experience includes special consultancies with the World Health Organization in Thailand and Japan, health assessment missions in Angola, Jamaica and Zaire and training in India and Austria.  His commitment to Justice has evolved into his nationally recognized efforts to create health equity and the supremacy of the social determinants of health, the founding of the first Center for Health Equity at a local health department and the creation of the Mayors Healthy Hometown Movement. He is also credited with the passage of one of the strongest anti-smoking ordinances in the country.

Dr. Troutman has had multiple publications including “What if We Were Equal”, co-authored with former Surgeon General and Assistant Secretary of Health, Dr David Satcher.  His awards and recognitions include the Medistar physician of the year award, the St Stephens Community Man of the Year Award, the Ottenheimer Award for Social Justice, The Power to End Stroke Award and numerous others.

He is featured in the nationally televised PBS series; Unnatural Causes; Is Inequality Making Us Sick?  Dr Troutman serves a member or past member of the National Board of Public Health Examiners, the Academy for Health Equity, the Health and Human Services Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Health Promotion Disease Prevention Healthy People 2020, the Health and Human Services Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Infant Mortality, the Board of Directors of Public Health Law and Policy, the Executive Board of the American Public Health Association, the African American Heritage Center and the National Association of County and City Health Officers. Lastly Dr. Troutman is an active member of the Black Caucus of Health Workers (BCHW) and he has also served as a former BCHW President.

 

(me  with Dr.Berkman, Dr.Susan Ladwig, Dr. Theodore Brown and Dr. Benjamin)