The Julius B. Richmond Annual Lectureship has been established by the School of Public Health.

The inaugural Richmond lecture, award ceremony, and dinner will take place Friday, Nov. 21, at the Boston Park Plaza Hotel. Donna Shalala, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, will be the honored speaker.

Richmond is professor of health policy emeritus at the School of Public Health, and the John D. MacArthur Professor of Health Policy Emeritus at the Medical School.

In addition to his many achievements and abundant scholarly research in pediatric medicine and child development, Richmond was the first national director and architect of the Head Start program in the Johnson Administration (1965-66) and assistant secretary of health and U.S. Surgeon General (1977-81), appointed by President Jimmy Carter.

The lectureship has been established by the School of Public Health's Division of Public Health Practice. Deborah Prothrow-Stith, director of the Division and professor of public health practice at SPH, says, "The Richmond lectureship allows us to honor our esteemed colleague Julius Richmond for his outstanding work and the generation of practitioners he has inspired. The lectureship also provides a context for bridging the academic community to our grass-roots constituents -- practitioners -- particularly around the issues of violence prevention and adolescent health. I anticipate that this lectureship, with its focus on building a partnership between academia and the practitioner community, will set the stage for many years of productive collaboration in public health practice."

The Division of Public Health Practice, established in July 1997,

continues the School's commitment to the application of rigorous science to prevention. The organization of research and training, classroom experience, and internship opportunities by the Division of Public Health Practice enables students access to a wide array of faculty members and community practitioners, and deepens their knowledge of public health problems. The new Division extends the tradition of public health, which has always been problem-oriented, and also ensures that the academic community connects to its neighborhoods and expands opportunities for service by students.