Yale Daily News

The search for the first dean of an independent Yale School of Public Health is underway. 

In a Monday email to faculty, University President Peter Salovey unveiled the members of the committee that will help him select Dean Sten Vermund’s successor, who will lead the school as it enters a new era of independence following more than a century of oversight by the School of Medicine. Three senior faculty members at the Yale School of Public Health detailed the significance of the incoming dean’s responsibilities and the pressures on the role during the ongoing pandemic.  

Associate professor of epidemiology Gregg Gonsalves ’11 GRD ’17, professor of radiology and biomedical imaging Howard Forman and professor of medicine Harlan Krumholz ’80 all stressed that whoever succeeds Sten Vermund will be faced with the important job of realizing the school’s independence and putting to best use the millions of dollars of new endowment funds the central University transferred to SPH. 

“Now we need a dean of an extraordinary caliber,” Gonsalves said. “Someone who can manage the complex transition to a newly independent institution, but who also is a leader in public health, has a vision for public health in the 21^st century, and can raise the additional funds we’ll need to upgrade infrastructure — including the possibility of a new building for YSPH — who can free our students of loan debt by enhancing financial aid and help us rise into the ranks of the very top schools of public health in the U.S.” 

The search committee will be chaired by associate dean of research and Susan Dwight Bliss Professor of Epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, Melinda Irwin. The 11-person committee includes the current dean of the Yale School of Medicine and professors of public health, global affairs, epidemiology and medicine.

Salovey also announced that the University has retained the Boston-based search firm Isaacson Miller to help the committee with its search — breaking recent precedent, when various search committees have not been assisted by outside firms. 

Senior faculty described, in stark terms, the significance of the incoming dean. The job before them, according to the professors, is complex and requires a vision for public health in the present moment. And, they said, the dean must be capable of raising funds and launching a new era in the School’s future. 

Krumholz elaborated, writing that SPH needs someone with “vision and energy.” He presented the role of the incoming dean as incredibly broad, bordering on the philosophical: Whoever succeeds Vermund needs to be able to “ignite people’s imagination” about the role of public health in society and must embrace both the use of data science and the “power of community.” He added that the new dean needs to connect the school with the broader University, in recognition of the contemporary significance of public health. 

“There is a need for someone with ambition to see the promise of what can be done at Yale fulfilled,” Krumholz said. “It is a big job ahead.”

For Forman, successfully raising funds for the School of Public Health is one of the most central tasks the incoming dean will face. He pointed in particular to the prospect of securing a new building for the School, which would require significant further fundraising. The School of Public Health is currently spread across several buildings, and many classes are taught in basements.

Forman noted that Vermund himself would have “done a great job” navigating the School through the complex coming years. 

“I was disappointed to see him stepping away from that position,” Forman said. “I don’t want to, in any way, infer that I don’t think he could, because I do think he could handle this transition.”

Earlier this year, it was revealed that Vermund had been pushed from his position as dean. At the time, faculty expressed concern about leaving the SPH without stable leadership.

Both Gonsalves and Forman stressed the significance of the new funds directed to ameliorating the School’s structural deficit and how SPH’s dependence on the School of Medicine limited its operations. The School of Public Health was previously structured similar to a department within the School of Medicine, with the medical school overseeing budgets and hiring. In Forman’s view, in particular, the interconnectedness with the School of Medicine worsened the SPH’s financial woes. 

“I think the new announcement by President Salovey could usher in a new era for public health at Yale,” Gonsalves wrote in an email to the News. “Giving the school independence and financial resources to start its new journey is a real breakthrough.”

Forman detailed how an institution such as SPH has three potential streams of income: tuition, research grants and external funding such as an endowment. In Forman’s portrayal, the first two often provide little in the way of profit for SPH and, thus, the third becomes the most significant, with a heavy reliance on the School of Medicine which, Forman said, was a “difficult position” for the SPH. The School of Medicine has a much larger endowment than the School of Public Health and also makes money from clinical procedures. 

“The School of Public Health was never adequately financed,” Forman told the News. “If you want to adequately finance the School of Public Health … you’ve got to come up with an endowment. And raising an endowment for a school that is a department within the Medical School is also a difficult proposition.”

When raising money for SPH within the School of Medicine, there was a concern among donors, Forman explained, that the funds would go towards closing the School of Medicine’s deficit, rather than be directed to specific programs at the SPH. 

Because of these challenges, Krumholz was particularly optimistic about Yale’s new investment in SPH’s endowment, describing it as a watershed moment for the University. 

“An independent Yale School of Public Health has the possibility to become the leading institution in the world, leveraging the strengths of Yale, and setting a path toward immense impact,” Krumholz told the News. 

Forman explained the details of the new announcement from University President Peter Salovey, saying that of the total amount pledged, the School of Public Health will have “relatively easy” access to $200 million, which he said is the exact amount necessary to see the School function in the way he hoped. 

“[The investment] wipes away the structural deficit, it allows you to provide financial aid, at least at a slightly better degree than we had before, and it allows the school to make strategic investments in programs that previously had to be approved by the Medical School or more likely would not have been approved for lack of funds,” Forman told the News. 

Vermund’s term will end on June 30. In his message to the School of Public Health community, Salovey wrote that over the course of his tenure, the dean has “enhanced YSPH’s contributions around the world.”

“I am grateful to him for his contributions to the school, to Yale, and to the health and well-being of so many communities world-wide,” Salovey wrote.

The School of Public Health was founded in 1915.