Interview with Sandro Galea

Sandro Galea is dean of Boston University’s School of Public Health. The author of more than 1,000 journal articles and 24 books, he has been named one the world’s most influential scientific minds by Thomson Reuters. In January he will join Washington University in St Louis as inaugural dean of its planned School of Public Health.

Where and when were you born?
I was born and raised in Malta in the early 1970s and 1980s, at a time of tremendous political and economic turmoil. When I was a teenager, my parents moved us to Canada, which was really a way for me and my sister to be able to have a pathway to go to university.

How has this shaped who you are?
Our family is big, but we never had marks of distinction – no doctors or lawyers or priests. And as a child who showed some academic promise, it was always channelled that my path would be one of those professions. I went to Canada programmed that I would become a doctor.

Have you had a eureka moment?
Yes, in medical school. I was doing a lot of electives, things like neurosurgery. And I met a community health doctor who challenged me, saying that if I wanted to do all these great medical things, I should get exposure to working in communities. Because of her, in my first year of medical school I went to work with homeless youth. And that changed my life, leading me to a relatively new residency in Canada, intended to train physicians to work in rural remote areas. I wanted to become a doctor who could do medicine anywhere.

And then?
I worked in northern Canada as a general practitioner, along with my future wife, Margaret. We then worked with Doctors Without Borders – I went to Somalia and Margaret to Lebanon. Around 1999, Margaret and I had this epiphany – that we were doing all this medicine but, ultimately, were we really helping people? The University of Toronto had offered wonderful clinical training, but it was very traditional. And I had heard through the grapevine about a friend of a friend who had a master’s of public health and I thought that sounded good. I didn’t really know what my intention was, to be honest – maybe go back to medicine. But I fell in love with the idea that one could create a healthier world.

Should US schools of medicine be sharing more of their corporate largesse with schools of public health?
I’ve used the metaphor of soccer. To win games, a soccer team needs 10 players in the field and one goalie. The goalie is medicine. When the ball is coming at you very quickly, you want a good goalie, one who is agile, who can stop the ball. But you don’t win the game with just the goalie; you win the game with the 10 outfield players.

Do schools of medicine understand that?
They are understanding that much more than they ever have. I was in medical school 30 years ago, and it was only in my third year of medical school, in a lecture off-campus, that anybody showed me a graph showing that poverty was linked to health. I had no idea. My education was so biomedically focused that it never even crossed my mind that anything outside the body affected health. Today’s medical students know this from day one.

Then why do schools of public health remain so underfunded?
Two reasons. One is historical – medicine in the US since the 1960s has risen to a place of tremendous prominence, tremendous profitability. Two, there is a public conversation that sees doctors as the actors in medicine, rather than understanding that health is much more than medicine.

After 10 years fighting that on the front line, why expect things to change?
Several reasons. Number one is that, despite our challenges, this remains a better time in history to be alive than ever. I chose to make the move to Washington University for a couple of reasons. One is that the task of creating a school of public health from the ground up is exciting. The other is the fact that it’s in St Louis. Missouri is a red state where there is real division away from the ideas that are core to public health. And I came to a point in my life – I’m 53 – where I thought the challenge was too good to pass up. It is about building a school of public health in a deeply red state that performs very poorly on multiple health indicators. It’s about creating conversations about the ideas that animate the work of public health, in a place where belief systems are misaligned with that.

That sounds ambitious
I don’t know the area, I don’t know Missouri. I enter it with abundant humility about how much I need to learn, and with a deep sense of the fact that it is good for me to learn this. I have said many times that I’m in the business of public health, not in the business of half the public’s health. And I need to understand how half the public thinks if I am to get better at thinking about the role that public healthcare can play.

What are the best and worst things about your job?
I’m sitting here today, and I’m paid to think – it’s hard to explain how inconceivable that was for me as a kid growing up in Malta. The privilege that goes with that – I’m aware of it every day. As for the worst, there’s not a lot of bad things about my job. I have a hard time with academic complaint. I think we have a good life, and I think society treats us well – I would like us to inhabit that. That doesn’t mean one shouldn’t always strive to improve our lot, but our responsibility is to improve the lot of so many people who have it much worse than we do.

What would you like to be remembered for?
I would like my tombstone to say, “He tried”. In our shockingly short lifespans, there’s only so much we can achieve, and I would like to give it my all.

paul.basken@timeshighereducation.com

CV

1988-90 Undergraduate in cell and molecular biology, University of Toronto
1990-94 MD, Toronto
1994-96 Family medicine resident, McMaster University
1996-97 Emergency medicine resident, Toronto
1997-98 Emergency physician, Geraldton District Hospital
1998-99 Project physician, Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders, Somalia
1999-99 Emergency physician, Wallaceburg District Hospital
1999-2000 Master’s of public health, Harvard University
2000-03 Doctor of public health, Columbia University
2000-05 Medical epidemiologist, New York Academy of Medicine
2003-05 Assistant professor of clinical epidemiology, Columbia
2005-09 Professor of epidemiology, University of Michigan
2010-14 Professor of epidemiology, Columbia
2015-present Dean of public health, Boston University

Appointments

Maurie McInnis will be the next president of Yale University and will succeed Peter Salovey in July. Currently the president of Stony Brook University, the Yale alumna has also served as provost of the University of Texas at Austin and vice-provost of the University of Virginia. John Bekenstein, chair of Yale’s presidential search committee, said that the cultural historian was “a compelling leader, distinguished scholar and devoted educator”.

Mosa Moshabela has been appointed vice-chancellor of the University of Cape Town. Deputy vice-chancellor for research and innovation at the University of KwaZulu-Natal since 2021, he will succeed interim vice-chancellor Daya Reddy in October. A medical doctor by profession, he chairs the governing board of South Africa’s National Research Foundation. Norman Arendse, chair of UCT’s council, said that the “outstanding leader” would “work with conviction and vision” to ensure the university’s sustainability.

Francis Petersen is joining the University of Pretoria as vice-chancellor in October, succeeding interim leader Themba Mosia. He currently holds the same position at the University of the Free State.

Phil Allmendinger has been appointed pro vice-chancellor for education at the University of London. Formerly deputy vice-chancellor of the universities of Cambridge and Bath, he is currently chief academic officer of Forward College in Paris.

Doug Thompson has been named inaugural executive director of diversity and engagement in the University of Notre Dame’s Division of Student Affairs. He is currently vice-president for equity and inclusion at Gustavus Adolphus College.

Sir Robert Chote, chair of the UK Statistics Authority and former chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility, will be the next president of Trinity College, Oxford, and will take up the post in September 2025.

Steve Waksman is joining the University of Huddersfield on a Leverhulme international professorship grant. He is currently Elsie Irwin Sweeney professor of music and professor of American studies at Smith College in Massachusetts.