Newsmakers

Kalow to accept HMS community service award

Bruce Kalow, a pediatrician at Broadway Health Center in Somerville, Mass., will receive a Dean’s Community Service Award from Harvard Medical School (HMS) today (Nov. 4) at the School’s sixth annual awards ceremony. Unanimously nominated for the award by his peers at Broadway Health Center (part of Cambridge Health Alliance), Kalow is being honored for his volunteer work over a 16-year period as the consulting pediatrician for New Day, a residential program opened in 1988 to meet the needs of pregnant or early postpartum women recovering from alcohol and drug addictions.

HSPH, Spengler named to plane cabin safety consortium

The Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) has been named a member of a new, federally established consortium that will investigate the health and safety of air quality, including chemical and biological risks, in airplane cabins. Akira Yamaguchi Professor of Environmental Health and Human Habitation John Spengler has been named a co-principal investigator on the project, which is called the Center of Excellence for Airliner Cabin Environment Research.

An expert on indoor air quality, Spengler was a member of the National Academy of Sciences committee whose report on the health consequences of environmental tobacco smoke helped lead to a smoking ban on domestic flights.

The new consortium was established by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and is headed by Auburn University. The center includes HSPH and Purdue University, which will co-lead technical-related efforts, as well as Boise State University, Kansas State University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.

Deschler named director of Head and Neck Surgical Oncology

Assistant Professor of Otology and Laryngology Daniel G. Deschler has been appointed director of Head and Neck Surgical Oncology at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, effective Nov. 1. Professor of Otology and Laryngology Joseph B. Nadol Jr., who is head of the Department of Otology-Laryngology at the infirmary, made the announcement.

A graduate of Creighton University and Harvard Medical School, Deschler joined the medical staff of the infirmary in 2000 and serves as associate coordinator of medical student education for otolarynaology and on numerous hospital committees.

IOM honors McCormick

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academies honored member Marie Clare McCormick, the Sumner and Esther Feldberg Professor of Maternal and Child Health at the Harvard School of Public Health, for her outstanding service to the institute at an Oct. 19 awards ceremony in Washington, D.C. McCormick received the David Rall Medal, awarded to an IOM member who has demonstrated distinguished leadership as chair of a study committee or other similar activity. Specifically, McCormick was honored for her “exemplary leadership” of the Committee on Immunization Safety Review. She also served as co-chair for the Committee on Perinatal Transmission of HIV.

IOM members Floyd E. Bloom, chair of the department of neuropharmacology at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., and Lawrence S. Lewin, founder of Lewin and Associates Inc., which became the national health care and human services consulting firm known as the Lewin Group, were also honored.

HBS’s Herzlinger wins book-of-the-year award

“Consumer-Driven Health Care: Implications for Providers, Payers, and Policymakers” (Jossey-Bass, 2004), by Regina E. Herzlinger, the Nancy R. McPherson Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School (HBS), has received a Book of the Year Award from the American Journal of Nursing. The book won the award in the category of history and public policy.

Gates appointed to Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee

W.E.B Du Bois Professor of the Humanities Henry Louis Gates Jr. will serve as the newest member of the Postmaster General’s Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee, effective January 2005. Established in 1957, the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee receives more than 50,000 cards and letters in support of stamp subject proposals annually. The committee, composed of 14 members whose backgrounds reflect a range of educational, artistic, historical, and professional expertise, is responsible for making subject and design recommendations to the postmaster general.

– Compiled by Andrew Brooks