School of Public Health Dean

Galea appointed inaugural Margaret C. Ryan Dean of planned WashU School of Public Health

Sandro Galea, MD, DrPH, one of the world’s most influential public health leaders, has been named the inaugural Margaret C. Ryan Dean of the university’s planned School of Public Health, effective January 2024. In addition to the new deanship, Galea will also hold the Eugene S. and Constance Kahn Distinguished Professorship in Public Health.

In this critical leadership role, Galea will help shape and launch WashU’s first new school in 100 years. The school is part of Here and Next, WashU’s 10-year strategic plan to make both the university and St. Louis a global hub for solving society’s deepest challenges.

With the launch of the new school, WashU will build on its existing public health strengths in research, teaching and clinical practice, and expand its commitment to the field. The school will concentrate on researching and advancing solutions to pressing issues and building partnerships for real-world impact in critical areas such as infectious disease; mental, global and environmental health; and dissemination and implementation science.

Now is the time for public health leadership. And leadership is the business of a great university like WashU.

Sandro Galea

Galea’s wife, Margaret E. Kruk, MD, MPH, has also joined the WashU faculty. At WashU, she will serve as a distinguished professor in health systems and medicine in the Department of Medicine and as director of the university wide QuEST Center. 

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About Sandro Galea

Sandro Galea is a population health scientist and physician. He is the Robert A. Knox Professor and Dean at the Boston University School of Public Health. Prior to his appointment at Boston University, Galea served as the Gelman Professor and Chair of the Department of Epidemiology at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. He previously held academic and leadership positions at the University of Michigan and at the New York Academy of Medicine.

In 2025, Galea will become the inaugural Margaret C. Ryan Dean of the School of Public Health and the Eugene S. and Constance Kahn Distinguished Professor in Public Health at WashU.

His tenure as Dean of the Boston University School of Public Health has been marked by expansion and innovation. The school launched a new Master of Public Health curriculum, on on-line Master of Public Health, lifelong learning, a public health communication initiative, and a student-alumni mentoring program among others. He has invested substantially in the school’s diversity, equity, and inclusion, agenda, centered around a 10-point plan of action. During this time the school doubled its research funding portfolio, doubled development revenue, developed new Centers of Excellence, rose to 6^th in the global US News rankings, and received full 7-year re-accreditation. The School of Public Health now has the second largest research portfolio at Boston University, after the School of Medicine.

Galea’s scholarship is about the social causes of health, mental health, and the consequences of trauma. His work has been principally funded by the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and several foundations. He has been engaged in more than $100 million of extramurally funded research. He has published about 1,000 scientific journal articles, 75 chapters, and 20 books and his research has been featured extensively in current periodicals and newspapers. His work has been cited 100,000 times and his h-index is 150. His most recent book, Within Reason: A liberal public health for an illiberal time, was published by University of Chicago Press in 2023. Harvard Public Health summarized the book as walking “the fine line between constructive criticism, hope, and action.” His public writing and other work are summarized at www.sandrogalea.org

Galea serves frequently on advisory groups to national and global organizations, including for example the World Health Organization, the World Economic Forum. He currently serves as the Chair of the Board of the Boston Board of Health, and of John Snow Inc, a global public health consultancy. He formerly served as chair of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s Community Services Board and as a member of its Health Board. He is past-board Chair of the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health, past-president of the Society for Epidemiologic Research and the Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science. 

Galea is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine. He was named one of TIME magazine’s epidemiology innovators, a top voice in healthcare by LinkedIn, and has for more than 10 years been listed by Thomson Reuters/Clarivate as one of the world’s most cited scientists. Galea has received several lifetime achievement awards for this research, including the Michael J McGinnis Award from the Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science, the Wade Hampton Frost and the Rema Lapouse Awards from the American Public Health Association, and the Robert S. Laufer Award from the International Society for Traumatic Stress.

Galea was born and raised in Malta; his first language is Maltese. He immigrated to Canada with his family as a teenager and subsequently immigrated to the US at the turn of the century. He has a medical degree from the University of Toronto, graduate degrees from Harvard University and Columbia University, and honorary doctorates from the University of Glasgow and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He has practiced medicine in rural and remote parts of the world including serving as a field physician for Doctors Without Borders in Somalia.

We would like to extend our heartfelt gratitude to the members of the Interdisciplinary Consulting and the Nominations and Recruitment Committees for their invaluable contributions to the search for our new dean of the School of Public Health. Identifying a leader of this caliber required a unique approach, and your dedication and expertise were instrumental in this process.

Leveraging our vast public health network, our committees sourced over 100 potential candidates, facilitated virtual town hall sessions, and managed an online nomination submission form. Thank you to the following groups for your unwavering commitment and exceptional service: