Julio Frenk, PhD, MD, MPH
Key Focus Areas: Higher education reform, health system reform, public policy, institution-building, international cooperation, strengthening health systems
Julio Frenk is chair of the Center’s External Advisory Board. He serves as President of the University of Miami, where he also holds appointments as Professor of Public Health Sciences at the Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine, as Professor of Health Sector Management and Policy at the Miami Herbert Business School, as Professor of Sociology at the College of Arts and Sciences, and as Professor of Health Studies at the School of Nursing and Health Studies. Frenk’s global work has included leadership positions in all relevant aspects of public health and higher education: research, teaching, analysis of public policies, institution-building, international cooperation, and national public service. He has also been involved in various initiatives to reform higher education.
Prior to joining the University of Miami, Frenk served as Dean of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the T & G Angelopoulos Professor of Public Health and International Development, a joint appointment with the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Frenk was appointed Federal Secretary of Health of Mexico in 2000, a position he held for the full presidential term. There he pursued an ambitious agenda to reform the nation’s health system and introduced a program of comprehensive universal coverage. He was the founding director-general of the National Institute of Public Health in Mexico, served as executive director in charge of Evidence and Information for Policy at the World Health Organization, and was a senior fellow in the global health program of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Frenk received a joint PhD in Medical Care Organization and in Sociology from the University of Michigan.