Newsmakers

HSPH professor, health policy expert, elected to IOM

Katherine Swartz, professor of health policy and economics at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), has been elected to the Institute of Medicine (IOM). Established in 1970 by the National Academy of Sciences, the institute provides independent, scientifically informed analysis and recommendations on human health issues. Elected members commit to spending a significant amount of time as volunteers on IOM committees, which engage in a broad range of studies on health policy issues.

Swartz focuses her research on the population of people without health insurance and on efforts to increase access to health care coverage. She recently wrote “Reinsuring Health: Why More Middle-Class People Are Uninsured and What Government Can Do,” which describes why members of the middle class are more likely to be uninsured today than 25 years ago.

Swanee Hunt inducted into Women’s Hall of Fame

Swanee Hunt, founding director of the Women and Public Policy Program at the Kennedy School of Government (KSG) and an adjunct lecturer in public policy at the School, was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, N.Y., on Oct. 14. She joins 217 other women, including her sister Helen LaKelly Hunt, a 1994 inductee.

Hunt was selected for her efforts as a social reformer to achieve gender parity as a means to end war and help rebuild societies. As an ambassador to Austria from 1993 to 1997, Hunt launched “Vital Voices: Women in Democracy,” a conference convening more than 300 women leaders from 39 countries. The conference evolved into a U.S. State Department initiative led by Madeleine Albright and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Hunt’s efforts at Harvard to end the Bosnian war, meanwhile, led to the creation of the Women Waging Peace Network.

Yale honors E.O. Wilson with Verrill Medal

Pellegrino University Professor Emeritus E.O. Wilson received the Addison Emery Verrill Medal from Yale’s Peabody Museum of Natural History on Wednesday (Oct. 17) in New Haven, Conn. Awarded by the curators and trustees of the museum, the medal was established in 1959 to honor “some signal practitioner in the arts of natural history and natural science.” Wilson was given the award for his career-spanning efforts to educate the public about the ecological consequences of human behavior.

As part of the ceremony, Wilson participated in a free and open panel discussion moderated by Edward P. Bass, fellow of the Yale Corporation, titled “A Fireside Chat with Peter H. Raven and Edward O. Wilson: The Future of Life on Earth.” Raven is a world-renowned conservationist and professor of botany at Washington University.

— Compiled by Andrew Brooks