Randall Packard Stepping Down as Director of Department of the History of Medicine

To the school of medicine faculty and staff

Dear Colleagues,

With deep appreciation, we write to note that Dr. Randall Packard is stepping down from the directorship of the Department of the History of Medicine as of July 1, a position he has held since 2002. 

Randy was an undergraduate at Wesleyan University and received a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. He was a chair of the Department of History at Tufts, followed by a period at Emory University, where he served as chair of the Department of History, and director of the Center for Health, Culture and Society. We were fortunate to recruit him to Johns Hopkins in 2002, to serve as the William H. Welch Professor of the History of Medicine and director of the department.

The Department of History of Medicine, founded in 1929, is the oldest such department in the English-speaking world. Under Randy’s leadership, it extended its preeminence in important ways: the faculty grew and so has the department’s international reputation; the graduate student program has advanced to become one of the premier training programs in the country; and the department has initiated the first online master’s program in the school of medicine under Mary Fissell’s guidance. 

In addition to leading a world-class department, Randy has also contributed to the institution in many important ways, including serving as chair of the Privacy Board for the school of medicine, as a member of the committee that developed the Genes to Society curriculum, and as a member of the advisory board for Johns Hopkins University Press. 

Randy’s own work has been focused largely on the interplay between infectious diseases and society, and his work and influence have been disseminated through four published books, four edited books and numerous articles and presentations. His book The Making of a Tropical Disease: A Short History of Malaria, published in 2007, was recently identified as one of the most significant or influential history books of the last 20 years.

We would also like to thank Jeremy Greene, M.D., Ph.D., for agreeing to serve as interim director of the department. Jeremy received his undergraduate, medical and doctoral degrees from Harvard, and pursued clinical training in internal medicine at the Brigham and Women’s hospital. After serving on the Harvard faculty, Jeremy in 2012 was recruited to Johns Hopkins as a member of the Department of History of Medicine and the division of General Internal Medicine of the Department of Medicine.

We greatly appreciate the many contributions Randy has made to the school of medicine and university over the past 15 years. Please join us in both thanking and congratulating him.

Sincerely,

Paul B. Rothman, M.D.
Dean of the Medical Faculty
CEO, Johns Hopkins Medicine

Landon S. King, M.D.
Executive Vice Dean
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine