A billionaire just gave Harvard University the biggest donation it’s ever received, and all $350 million of it will go to the School of Public Health.
It’s one of the university’s lesser-funded schools, according to the Boston Globe, which reported that the school’s endowment as of 2013 totaled $1.1 billion – just a small fraction of the university’s nearly $33 billion endowment.
The funding will be released over several years and, according to school officials, will allow the public health school to increase financial aid, introduce loan-forgiveness programs for students who work in underserved areas, help recruit faculty and provide seed funding for research projects.
Behavioral Health, Interoperability and eConsent: Meeting the Demands of CMS Final Rule Compliance
In a webinar on April 16 at 1pm ET, Aneesh Chopra will moderate a discussion with executives from DocuSign, Velatura, and behavioral health providers on eConsent, health information exchange and compliance with the CMS Final Rule on interoperability.
In the announcement, Harvard’s president, Drew Gilpin Faust, noted that the world’s slow response to the Ebola outbreak underscores how public health has been under-resourced. “We’re all realizing how important public health is as we become more global and diseases are shared across boundaries,” she said.
University officials told the media that the school plans to focus on studying four areas: pandemics, harmful physical and social environments, humanitarian crises and failing health systems worldwide.
The donation came from the Morningside Foundation, a philanthropy run by the family of billionaire alumni Gerald Chan. He earned master’s and doctorate degrees from the Harvard University School of Public Health in the ’70s and went on to have a successful career in real estate and investment.
Harvard’s School of Public Health has had a role in the research behind eradication of the polio virus, understanding the transmission of HIV and safe surgery checklists.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Read more in-depth about the gift in Harvard Magazine.
