Announcement Regarding Linda Fried, Dean of the Mailman School of Public Health
Dear members of the Columbia community:
I write to share that Linda P. Fried, MD, MPH, has informed me that she will be stepping down as Dean of the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and Senior Vice President of Columbia University Irving Medical Center at the end of the academic year. I am pleased that after leaving the Dean’s office, Linda will return to the faculty and continue as Director of the University-wide Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center.
Over her 16-year tenure as Dean, Linda established the Columbia Mailman School as one of the world’s top institutions for public health education and science. The transformed and innovative MPH curriculum has become the national accreditation standard and includes programs to address global mental health, pandemic prevention, maternal mortality, opioid addiction, health in the context of forced migration, and new health systems for the future. At the same time, the scientific stature and impact of the School has grown, providing cutting edge knowledge and leadership on topics ranging from climate change to environmental and reproductive justice. The level of NIH funding received by the School has roughly doubled during Linda’s time as Dean; the School now ranks third among schools of public health for NIH prime funding.
More than half of Columbia Mailman’s 250 full-time faculty were recruited during Linda’s tenure, producing a new generation of public health scholars at Columbia. With support from the Board of Advisors, the School’s endowment has almost tripled and has supported the creation of 17 new endowed chairs under Linda’s leadership. She takes special pride in the fact that nine of the faculty members she recruited and mentored have since gone on to become school deans themselves or hold senior leadership positions at other universities. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Columbia Mailman faculty and scholars were at the forefront of the response to the crisis. For her leadership and service on the University’s COVID-19 Task Force, Linda was awarded a 2022 Nicholas Murray Butler Medal.
The many groundbreaking initiatives launched during her tenure include the Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion, the TRAILS AI Lab, the interdisciplinary program on Climate Change and Health, the Brody Center for Population Mental Health, the Center on Innovative Exposomics, and the Butler Columbia Aging Center. In her final year as Dean, she is launching the Community Health Equity Collaborative, a new office within the Columbia Mailman School to foster partnerships with the local community that will develop a novel model for enhancing health equity and better community health outcomes.
Linda has always been guided by a bedrock understanding that improving individual health outcomes requires that we solve the health problems of whole populations. When she came to Columbia in 2008, Linda had effectively reinvented the field of healthy aging—scholarship that she continues today, not only through the Butler Columbia Aging Center, but also through her recent service as co-chair of the National Academy of Medicine’s International Commission for developing a Global Roadmap for Healthy Longevity.
There will be opportunities to celebrate Linda in the months ahead. For now, please join me in congratulating her on her exceptional accomplishments as Dean of the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and thanking her for her extraordinary service to Columbia.
All my best,
Katrina Armstrong
Interim President, Columbia University in the City of New York
Chief Executive Officer of Columbia University Irving Medical Center
Executive Vice President for Health and Biomedical Sciences