Howard H. Hiatt

His early research was on patients with parathyroid disease and then on cancer in animals using concepts and technology of molecular biology.  He was a member of the team at the Pasteur Institute, Paris, that first identified and described messenger RNA, and then he was among the first to demonstrate mRNA in mammalian cells. From 1963 to 1972, he was the first Herrman L. Blumgart Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Physician-in-Chief at Beth Israel Hospital. During his tenure, Beth Israel became among the first of the nation's teaching hospitals both to apply concepts of molecular and cell biology to research in clinical medicine and to develop teaching and research programs in primary care. From 1972 to 1984, while he was Dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, the School strengthened greatly its work in the quantitative analytic sciences, introduced molecular and cell biology into its research and teaching programs, began its program in health policy and management, the first in a public health school, and promoted integration of its teaching and research programs with those in other Harvard Faculties.  Since 1984 he has continued as Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and has been Senior Physician at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital.   There he directed a team of colleagues from the Harvard Faculties of Medicine, Public Health, Law, and Arts and Sciences in a multi-year study of medical injury, medical malpractice, and the tort litigation system. This work was described in a series of articles and a book, A Measure of Malpractice, published by Harvard University Press in 1993 and has been the basis for programs in health care system reform in several states. He began and developed the fellowship program in Research Training in Clinical Effectiveness at Brigham and Women's Hospital, which trains physicians to carry out research on issues of quality and costs of medical care. Along with Drs. Paul Farmer and Jim Yong Kim he started and has served as Co-Chief of the Division of Global Health Equity at the Brigham. The DGHE, which has been led by Dr. Paul Farmer, was in its early years primarily concerned with the management of patients with HIV-AIDS and multi-drug resistant tuberculosis in Haiti, Rwanda, Malawi, Lesotho, Mexico, Peru, Russia and in the United States in Navajo Nation and inner city Boston. The DGHE is now considering involvement in more sites in the United States. From 1991 to 1997, he was Secretary of the Academy where he began and directed the Academy's Initiatives for Children program.