The Bloomberg School of Public Health announced on Oct. 6 that the current dean, Michael J. Klag, intends to step down next year.
According to a Hopkins School of Public Health press release, Klag intends to go on sabbatical starting next July and then return to research and teaching in the departments of Epidemiology and Health Policy and Management.
Klag has been member of the School of Public Health faculty for 32 years. He received his Masters of Public Health from Bloomberg in 1987 and shortly thereafter joined the faculty. Before becoming Dean in 2005, Klag served as the David M. Levine Professor of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine with joints appointments in Public Health.
He was also the School of Medicine’s Vice Dean for clinical investigation, responsible for oversight of research involving human volunteers. In that role, he undertook a widely praised restructuring of the school’s policies and procedures governing research with human subjects. From 2000 to 2001, he served as interim physician-in-chief of the Johns Hopkins Hospital and interim director of the Department of Medicine in the School of Medicine.
In an email to the Hopkins community, University President Ron Daniels and Provost Sunil Kumar praised Klag for for guiding the school to new achievements in teaching, research and global leadership in public health practice and policy. The school now trains public health leaders and research scientists not only at its headquarters in Baltimore, but also in collaboration with partners in India, China, Spain and Abu Dhabi, and in pioneering distance education programs delivered over the internet. Additionally, more than 10 new centers and institutes and 12 endowed chairs have been established under Klag’s leadership.
Klag is the longest tenured of the University’s current divisional deans and directors.
“For more than a decade, Mike has brought exemplary leadership to the School of Public Health,” President Daniels and Provost Kumar wrote. “During his term as dean, the school expanded its reach around the globe, developed innovative and life-changing research programs and remained a beacon of pride for us as one of the most highly respected public health schools in the world.”
His research has focused on the epidemiology of chronic diseases such as kidney disease. Klag was also influential in founding the Wendy Klag Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities, an epicenter of the nation’s largest epidemiology based autism research. The center was named for Klag’s late first wife.
“I think that having Dean Klag back on the faculty as a full time professor will greatly benefit the student body,” Joudeh Freji, a second year Masters of Science student at the School of Public Health, said. “I’ve heard Klag give talks before and think that he’s an excellent teacher. I’m looking forward to having the opportunity to take classes with someone so instrumental in shaping contemporary public health.”
