The three recipients of the 2015 CUGH Global Health Distinguished Leadership Awards were Lincoln C. Chen is President of the China Medical Board (CMB), Julio Frenk is Dean of the Faculty at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, and Thomas L. Hall, former Executive Director of the Global Health Education Consortium (GHEC).

Lincoln C. Chen

Lincoln C. Chen is President of the China Medical Board (CMB). Celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2014, the CMB was endowed by John D. Rockefeller as an independent American foundation dedicated to advancing health in China and neighboring Asian countries.

Dr. Chen was the Taro Takemi Professor of International Health at the Harvard School of

Public Health, Director of the University-wide Harvard Center for Population and Development

Studies, and the founding Director of the Harvard Global Equity Initiative. He is currently a member of the HSPH Visiting Committee and co-chair of the Harvard FXB Center on Health and Human Rights. Dr. Chen served as Executive Vice-President of the Rockefeller Foundation and Representative of the Ford Foundation in India and Bangladesh. He also served as Special-Envoy of the WHO Director-General on Human Resources for Health, founding board chair of the Global Health Workforce Alliance, and founding member of the Advisory Board to the UN Secretary-General of the United Nations Fund for International Partnerships.

Dr. Chen currently chairs the Board of Trustees of BRAC USA, an affiliate of the world’s largest

anti-poverty NGO. He is also a board member of the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation

(University of Washing), UBS Optimus Foundation, and the Public Health Foundation of India. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the World Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Council of Foreign Relations. He graduated from Princeton University, Harvard Medical School, and the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health.

Julio Frenk

Since January 2009, Julio Frenk is Dean of the Faculty at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. He is also the T & G Angelopoulos Professor of Public Health and International Development, a joint position with the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. 

Dr. Frenk served as the Minister of Health of Mexico from 2000 to 2006, where he reformed the nation’s health system, focusing on social inequality. He is perhaps best known for his work in introducing a program of universal coverage, known as Seguro Popular, which has expanded access to comprehensive health services for 52 million previously uninsured Mexicans. He was the founding director-general of the National Institute of Public Health of Mexico. 

In his current position, Dr. Frenk has led the development and implementation of a new educational strategy at the School of Public Health, established a new Division of Policy Translation and Leadership Development, and launched a comprehensive review of the research strategy, among other achievements. 

Dr. Frenk holds a medical degree from the National University of Mexico, as well as a Master of Public Health, and a joint doctorate in Medical Care Organization and in Sociology from the University of Michigan. 

In addition to his scholarly works, which include more than 145 articles in academic journals, he has written two best-selling novels for youngsters explaining the functions of the human body. 

In September of 2008, Dr. Frenk received the Clinton Global Citizen Award for changing “the way practitioners and policy makers across the world think about health.”

Thomas L. Hall

Thomas L. Hall is the co-chair of the Education Committee of the Consortium of Universities for Global Heath (CUGH). He is the former Executive Director of the Global Health Education Consortium (GHEC). Dr. Hall is a Professor Volunteer at the Univ. of Calif. at San Francisco, where he teaches global health and “Foundations of Patient Care”. His MD and MPH are from Harvard and his DrPH in international health is from Johns Hopkins. At UNC he directed the Carolina Population Center. Non-academic positions include medical director of a rural hospital in Puerto Rico, director of a regional health planning agency (Seattle), and Chief Medical Officer (Research) in New Zealand. He has lived overseas for 10 years and consulted extensively with WHO, the World Bank and many countries on health workforce planning. 

Dr. Hall has had 8 “health-related careers,” one in clinical medicine, 5 in public health, and most recently, university-based global health and medical school education. These jobs included containment of health care costs in the US, slowing the world’s population growth rate, slowing the HIV epidemic, and introducing a measure of rationality into health workforce planning. 

Tom’s commitment to global health and medical education throughout his carrier has been exemplary. He has mentored countless students, innovating, supporting and creating new ways to advance global health education.