Jeremy Greene Named Director of the Department of The History of Medicine

Dear Colleagues

I am delighted to announce the appointment of Jeremy Greene, M.D., Ph.D., as the director of the Department of the History of Medicine and the eighth William H. Welch Professor. He succeeds Randall Packard, Ph.D. Dr. Greene is currently a professor of the history of medicine and of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and he holds the Elizabeth A. Treide and A. McGehee Harvey Chair in the History of Medicine.

He has also been serving as the interim director of the Department of the History of Medicine as well as the director of the Center for Medical Humanities and Social Medicine.

Dr. Greene has focused much of his research on the history of prescription drugs. His most recent book, Generic: The Unbranding of Modern Medicine, has been a focal point for current policy proposals to address rising prices of off-patent drugs. The Society for Social Studies of Science awarded his first book, Prescribing by Numbers: Drugs and the Definition of Disease, the Rachel Carson Prize, and the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy honored the book with an Edward Kremers Award. He has also published Prescribed: Writing, Filling, Using, and Abusing the Prescription in Modern America; Therapeutic Revolutions: Pharmaceuticals and Social Change in the Twentieth Century and The Pharmaceutical Studies Reader. Dr. Greene’s scholarship has received international recognition in the field of history of medicine, including the Roy Porter Prize from the Society for the Social History of Medicine, the Shryock Medal and the J. Worth Estes Prize from the American Association for the History of Medicine, and grant support from the National Library of Medicine, the National Science Foundation and several private foundations. He has published widely in scholarly, clinical, public health and policy journals, and his work has been featured in the Atlantic, Slate, the Washington Post and on National Public Radio. He is currently working on a book about how instantaneous communications through electric, electronic and digital media are changing medical knowledge, clinical practice and patient expectations.

Dr. Greene received an M.D. as well as a Ph.D. in the history of science from Harvard University, and completed a residency in internal medicine at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He has testified before Congress about prescription drug prices, and he worked with the Maryland state legislature to help pass a 2017 law prohibiting price gouging of off-patent drugs. Dr. Greene continues to practice primary care medicine at a community health center in East Baltimore.

Please join me in congratulating Jeremy Greene on his new role.

Sincerely,

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