Andrea Baccarelli has been managing change since he started as dean of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in January 2024.
On his very first day, Baccarelli entered an environment where the war in Gaza exerted pressures across campus. More recently, rapid shifts in federal policies have raised immediate implications for the Chan School. With about 60 percent of its revenue coming from research grants, primarily from the federal government, the School would face a significant blow to its budget if deep cuts proposed by the National Institutes of Health and other agencies were implemented. Baccarelli has convened a financial planning group of senior leadership, including academic department chairs, to plan for the potential effects.
Amid these challenges, Baccarelli has been developing plans to expand Harvard Chan School’s reach by nurturing high-quality, interdisciplinary, solutions-focused science. In this edited conversation with the Gazette, Baccarelli discusses this vision and his approach to current funding uncertainties.
You recently introduced your “AAA Vision” for Harvard Chan School. What does it look like?
Our work is all about saving lives through the highest quality science. That hasn’t changed since our School was founded 112 years ago. We have an exceptional track record. For instance, scientists at our School created a low-cost, easy-to-ship rehydration solution that has saved more than 25 million children from death due to diarrheal disease. They engineered infertile mosquitos to eradicate malaria and are developing new therapies to treat diabetes. Rooted in this record of excellence, the AAA Vision is a strategic path to expanding our impact still further. The three As, which grew out of my listening tour, stand for agile, accessible, and accountable.
Agility is all about being able to pivot quickly to respond to new opportunities. As a School, we must be more entrepreneurial. That will require forging collaborations — inside and outside of Harvard — with all sorts of people who are not traditional partners for public health, like engineers and industry CEOs. The way I see it, we all share an interest in developing solutions to problems with immense human and economic costs, like rising rates of Alzheimer’s disease and the spread of multi-drug-resistant infections. Public health is all about taking on these challenges, and we stand ready to work with anyone who can help.
The second A, accessibility, relates to both education and research. I hope to significantly expand our educational offerings by creating more short courses and certificate programs and by delivering more content online. There’s a tremendous need for public health knowledge in just about every profession, and Harvard Chan School has the potential to be a hub for people who want to expand their skills at any stage of their careers.
On the research front, we need to keep working to get our findings in front of pharma executives, biotech investors, entrepreneurs, policymakers, the public, and potential collaborators — to make our science accessible. After all, our goal is not just to advance knowledge in the abstract, but to develop solutions that will make a real difference in people’s lives.
The final A is for accountable. We must be accountable to our mission, delivering the very best education and conducting the highest-impact research to improve health for all communities. We must also be accountable to our values. Public health starts at home, and I am committed to building a pluralistic and inclusive community where everyone feels welcomed and valued.
The uncertainties driven by shifts in federal policy are especially acute at Harvard Chan School, which relies heavily on federal grants. What impacts are you seeing at this point?
Unfortunately, we have had more than a dozen federal grants terminated so far because they do not align with new priorities at the National Institutes of Health and other agencies. Those terminations have abruptly cut off important research.
Like the rest of the University, we are also closely monitoring the proposed NIH cut to facilities and administration funding. F&A funding is often called “indirect” funding, but there’s nothing indirect about it. It truly is essential funding for research. A cut of the size the NIH has proposed — to a flat rate of 15 percent — would be devastating. It would have huge impacts on our ability to do critical research in fields like preventing cancer, slowing neurodegeneration, and identifying dietary factors that contribute to longevity.
As dean, how are you considering addressing this gap in federal funding to support research at the School? Can philanthropy make up the difference?
Philanthropy plays a very important role in supporting our research and education mission, but it’s unrealistic to imagine it could make up for our long-standing partnership with the federal government. That said, we are working hard to connect with potential donors to explain why our work matters. In fact, I just got back from a trip to Europe where I talked to supporters in several countries. The top message I shared was that our research has tangible impacts in the real world, helping to shape policies and programs that keep us healthy. And donors can make that research happen.
As one example, private philanthropy just funded a 10-year study of the health impacts of wildfires. This is groundbreaking work: A multi-institutional team led by Harvard Chan researchers is assessing all the pollutants that people living near the Los Angeles wildfires have been exposed to, mapping how these toxins spread or dissipate over time, and tracking the short- and long-term health effects. It’s an incredibly important study, made possible entirely by a generous donor who loves L.A. and wants to protect the public’s health. I hope to encourage more such partnerships with philanthropists who are aligned with our mission of using science to build a world where everyone can thrive.
Returning to the AAA Vision: Can you share a bit more about how you’re approaching accountability and what that looks like with respect to the mission?
Yes, In fact, it’s fundamental to what we do at the Harvard Chan School.
We must put in place processes that ensure that our School’s courses and degree programs consistently offer the highest level of excellence. As a starting point, I recently appointed a faculty working group to review processes and criteria for appointing and renewing instructors. At Harvard Chan School, instructors are non-ladder appointees who play a crucial role in classroom teaching. I tasked this working group to ensure rigor and consistency in how our instructors are appointed and renewed and ensure they have the excellent academic credentials and specific expertise they need to teach classes with the depth and rigor our students deserve. We will then go through a similar process for each tier of academic appointment at Harvard Chan School — lecturers, research scientists, adjuncts, etc. To complement this initiative, I also plan to strengthen our internal review processes for courses and degree programs to ensure they consistently meet the highest academic standards.
To a similar end, I have also relaunched periodic reviews of our centers and programs to ensure the highest quality of scholarship and teaching excellence. For instance, late last summer we initiated a comprehensive review of our FXB Center for Health and Human Rights. We have appointed a blue-ribbon panel of experts to conduct this review, which will conclude this spring. The charge to the review panel is to rigorously evaluate the FXB Center’s current status and future potential, offering candid, forthright, and thorough feedback, including any shortcomings or areas of concern, to ensure the Center meets — and is held to — the highest standards of excellence expected of a University-wide center at Harvard. While this review is ongoing, we have halted the formal collaboration between the FXB Center and Birzeit University. This allows the panel to objectively evaluate partnerships and collaborations and ensure the center exemplifies academic excellence in alignment with our mission. We will conduct similar periodic reviews of all our centers and programs.
I’m also putting a lot of focus on building a pluralistic culture that is accountable to our values. From my earliest messages to the community, I have tried to make clear that all of us can expect to be exposed to speech that we disagree with, even speech that offends us, during our time at Harvard. That’s to be expected at any university with a commitment to free speech and academic freedom. Of course, I have zero tolerance for any speech or conduct that constitutes discrimination or harassment — such behavior is wholly unacceptable and will be addressed decisively at our School. But I’ve emphasized how important it is to be open to learning from people with different views — and how important it is to be able to communicate respectfully and with integrity.
To build those skills, my team and I launched an initiative called Harvard Chan LEADs, which stands for Learn and Engage Across Differences. We created a new module for orientation to engage students in these values as soon as they arrive on campus. Since then, we have hosted quite a few workshops and events, including special trainings to help faculty foster respectful conversations in the classroom, even when the topics are divisive.
I’m also launching the Harvard Chan Citizenship Awards. This award will be given each year to three people — a student, a staff member, and an academic appointee — who best represent our values and who have done the most to create a culture of pluralism and inclusivity. It’s all part of making sure we are accountable to our mission, our values, and one another.
What are some of the key ways you’re mobilizing around the other two As, agile and accessible?
We have taken some promising steps toward making both our education and our research more accessible. On the education front, I set up a working group to assess opportunities for expanding our non-degree offerings. On the research front, our Center for Health Communication has launched an innovative project to connect our faculty to social media creators, with the goal of expanding the amount of scientific content on platforms like TikTok.
In terms of agility, I’m very excited to be collaborating with Harvard Business School, Harvard Medical School, and Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences on a research project that models the kind of interdisciplinary problem-solving I’d like to see more of. Our goal is to develop new models for prioritizing and incentivizing preventive healthcare in the U.S. We could save a lot of money and prevent a lot of suffering with a shift to prevention, so this is a project with immense potential.
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