Keusch to Step Down as Director of the Fogarty International Center and NIH Associate Director for International Research

Bethesda, Maryland �� Gerald T. Keusch, M.D., director of the Fogarty International Center (FIC) and NIH Associate Director for International Research for the past five years, announced today that he will step down from these posts to become Assistant Provost for Global Health at the Boston University Medical Campus and Associate Dean for Global Health at Boston University School of Public Health. He will hold academic appointments as Professor of Medicine and Professor of International Health. Sharon Hrynkow, Ph.D., who has served as FIC Deputy Director since 2000, will serve as Acting Director of the Center beginning January 1, 2004. Dr. Hrynkow will lead the Center while a search for a new Director is initiated.

I leave NIH with the feeling that the agenda for research on global health problems is even more important than when I came to Bethesda in 1998, and that NIH is one of the great places in the world to focus the necessary resources, both intellectual and financial, Dr. Keusch said. At FIC we adopted the motto, Science for Global Health. This past May, at the symposium on global health that celebrated the Centers 35th anniversary, leaders from around the world came together to endorse the need and to reinforce the urgency of the agenda. It is clear that NIH has been in the forefront in global health because NIH can and because NIH cares. I look forward to promoting our common health agenda, now from academia and from Boston, where my family has been these five years.

Jerry Keuschs commitment to global health and his vision of reducing health disparities between rich and poor nations serves as a model to us all, said NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D. His leadership in global health has benefited the whole of NIH, as well as scientific institutions around the world.

During Dr. Keuschs tenure, FIC developed and supported major new initiatives to combat critical global health challenges. These include the start of major research and research capacity programs targeting the non-communicable diseases, such as the growing epidemic of tobacco-related illness; mitigating growing divides between the rich and poor nations by building capacity in genetic sciences; a focus on the impact of health on economic development and of economic development on health; and the clinical care research agenda in HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. In all, more than 15 new programs were developed and administrative changes made to streamline others. In addition, Dr. Keusch led the Multilateral Initiative on Malaria and helped to establish the Disease Control Priorities Project at the FIC.

Dr. Keusch is an internationally recognized expert in infectious diseases. Among other areas, his research has focused on molecular pathogenesis of enteric infections and vaccine development and on the effects of malnutrition on immune response and host defenses.

A graduate of Columbia College in 1958, Dr. Keusch earned an M.D. from Harvard University Medical School in 1963. He was professor of medicine in the Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases at Mount Sinai Hospital and School of Medicine in New York from 1970-1979. Just prior to coming to NIH, Dr. Keusch was chief of the combined Division of Geographic Medicine and Infectious Diseases at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston.

FIC is the international component of the NIH. It promotes and supports scientific discovery internationally and mobilizes resources to reduce disparities in global health. NIH is an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Press releases and other FIC-related materials are available at www.fic.nih.gov.