Linda Fried Named New Dean of Mailman School of Public Health

January 16, 2008

Dear fellow member of the Columbia community:

We are very pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Linda Fried as the new dean of the Mailman School of Public Health. She succeeds Dr. Allan Rosenfield, whose twenty-two year tenure as dean has been legendary in improving the school and the quality of life for people around the globe and in our immediate neighborhoods. With our highest gratitude, Allan will remain on the faculty as professor of public health and obstetrics and gynecology. Dr. Fried's appointment as dean and professor of epidemiology will be effective May 2008.

Public health is an essential concern in our society, and in bridging so many disciplines, it is an endeavor that can create synergies in every corner of the University. With someone of Linda Fried's unique experience and accomplishments in public health and medicine as our new dean, Columbia will have an extraordinary leader who will build on the Mailman School's momentum in the years ahead.

Dr. Fried comes to us after a distinguished career of more than two decades at Johns Hopkins University, where she is currently professor of medicine, epidemiology, health policy and nursing and serves as director of the Center on Aging and Health. A renowned geriatrician and epidemiologist, she is internationally recognized for her outstanding clinical work and research in geriatric medicine and gerontology. While also leading Johns Hopkins' Division of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology and the Bloomberg School of Public Health's Program in Epidemiology of Aging, Dr. Fried has focused her own scholarship on the causal factors of frailty as well as on the prevention of disabilities associated with the aging process.

She was named a Kaiser Faculty Scholar in General Internal Medicine and is the recipient of a National Institute on Aging MERIT Award, as well as many other honors, including membership in the Institute of Medicine. Having attended the University of Wisconsin as an undergraduate, Dr. Fried received her medical degree from Rush Medical College and completed her postdoctoral training at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions in geriatrics, general internal medicine and epidemiology. She also received her masters in public health from Johns Hopkins.

She is also co-designer of Experience Corps, a community-based senior volunteer program that serves public school children while promoting better health for the older volunteers by fostering increased physical, cognitive and social activity through intensive civic engagement in public elementary schools.

Please join us in thanking the search committee, led by Dr. Steven Shea, for its outstanding work in identifying a group of fine candidates, and in welcoming Linda Fried to the Columbia community.

Sincerely,

Lee C. Bollinger
President

Lee Goldman
Executive Vice President for Health and Biomedical Sciences and Dean of the Faculties of Health Sciences and Medicine