After conducting a global search, leaders at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health concluded that their next dean was already on the faculty.
Johns Hopkins University president Ron Daniels announced this week that Keshia M. Pollack Porter has been selected to serve as the school’s 12th dean. She will start Aug. 1.
Pollack Porter will replace Ellen J. MacKenzie, who announced last September that she would step down on June 30, 2025, after more than seven years as dean. MacKenzie has spent more than five decades at the Bloomberg School and will remain on the faculty.
Pollack Porter is an internationally-recognized scholar and health policy expert who has been a member of the Bloomberg School faculty since 2006. She came to the school as a PhD student in 2002 and currently serves as Bloomberg Centennial Chair and Professor in the school’s Department of Health Policy and Management.
“Our aim was to find someone with distinguished academic credentials, proven administrative experience, and exceptional leadership qualities who would honor the Bloomberg School’s storied history while fostering innovation and collaboration around a shared and ambitious vision for the school’s future at a moment of unique challenge for higher education and the field of public health,” Daniels wrote in a message to faculty, staff, and students. “I am delighted to report that we found the perfect leader in Keshia Pollack Porter.”
According to the university’s in-house news source, The Hub, the search process was led by an 18-member committee chaired by Provost Ray Jayawardhana, with support from Park Square Executive Search.
“Keshia is an eminent public health scholar, an admired teacher and mentor, and principled leader who brings deep knowledge of the opportunities and challenges facing the Bloomberg School as she takes on the deanship,” Jayawardhana told The Hub. “Throughout the search process she impressed the committee with her wide-ranging curiosity, profound sense of mission, and eagerness to engage with new ideas and perspectives. Keshia radiates a concern for others and for ensuring that the work…we do here improves lives beyond our campus.”
“I am beyond honored to become the 12th dean of the Bloomberg School of Public Health,” Pollack Porter told The Hub. “I am thrilled to partner with faculty, staff, students, alumni, the university and the larger global and local communities to promote optimal health and well-being for all. The work that we do in public health is now, more than ever, critically important. I am confident that together we will build on the Bloomberg School’s renowned history and continue to pioneer new research, translate and disseminate knowledge to inform policy and practice, and educate today’s and tomorrow’s leaders.”
Pollack Porter in 2000 earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Tufts University, where she now serves as a university trustee, and in 2002 earned a master’s degree from the Yale School of Public Health, specializing in chronic disease epidemiology. In 2005, she completed her PhD in health and public policy at the Bloomberg School. Before joining the Bloomberg School faculty, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship jointly sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
According to The Hub, Pollack Porter joined the Bloomberg School faculty as an associate professor in 2006 and became a full professor in 2017. She directs the Institute for Health and Social Policy and served as the school’s vice dean for faculty from 2019-2022. Since 2019, she has also led the Health Policy Research Scholars, a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, that trains doctoral students from various disciplines to effectively apply their research to help build healthier and more equitable communities.
As chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management, a role she’s held since February 2022, Pollack Porter has strengthened faculty mentoring and development and recruited faculty in areas such as data science and population health, health services research, advocacy and health equity. She has also worked to increase connections with alumni, created opportunities for faculty, staff, and student engagement, and promoted the department’s use of the Hopkins Bloomberg Center in Washington, D.C., to bridge the gap between policy and practice, and to encourage engagement with policymakers and decision-makers in the nation’s capital.
Throughout her career, The Hub said, Pollack Porter “has distinguished herself as a leader in advancing policy change that promotes safe, healthy, and equitable environments” at the local, state and federal levels. She has led numerous federally-funded studies, published more than 200 peer-reviewed articles and reports, and influenced public health practice through leadership roles with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Academies, among others.
Her scholarship draws on injury epidemiology and health impact assessment to identify policies that create safe, healthy and equitable environments for people. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine; a three-time winner of the Bloomberg School’s Advising, Mentoring, and Teaching Recognition Award, and a 2018 recipient of the Johns Hopkins University Distinguished Alumna Award.
“Provost Jayawardhana and I are eager to see Keshia guide the Bloomberg School into its next era of global preeminence,” Daniels wrote in his announcement. “We know her tireless pursuit of excellence, entrepreneurial spirit, and enduring commitment to the mission of the Bloomberg School will serve the school and our entire university well during this critical moment and for many years to come.”
“I’m thrilled that Dr. Pollack Porter has been appointed to be the next dean of the Bloomberg School,” The Hub quoted MacKenzie as saying. “I know she will do a terrific job.”
