Sandro Galea, MD, MPH, DrPH
Kicks Off the Opening Plenary on Tuesday, April 8!

Sandro Galea, MD, MPH, DrPH a physician, epidemiologist, and author, is dean and Robert A. Knox Professor at Boston University School of Public Health. He previously held academic and leadership positions at Columbia University, the University of Michigan, and the New York Academy of Medicine. He has published extensively in the peer-reviewed literature and is a regular contributor to a range of public media, about the social causes of health, mental health, and the consequences of trauma. He has been listed as one of the most widely cited scholars in the social sciences. He serves as chair of the Boston Board of Health, is past chair of the board of the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health and past president of the Society for Epidemiologic Research and of the Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine. Galea has received several lifetime achievement awards. Galea holds a medical degree from the University of Toronto, graduate degrees from Harvard University and Columbia University, and honorary doctorates from the University of Glasgow and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. In 2025, Galea will become the inaugural Margaret C. Ryan Dean of the School of Public Health and the Eugene S. and Constance Kahn Distinguished Professor in Public Health at Washington University in St. Louis.

Presentation Title: Why health? Data, Determinants, and Decision-making For Better Health.

Why health? Why do we embrace health as a good worth pursuing? The post-COVID moment has created space for a reevaluation of first principles to support a new engagement with a changing world. This means tackling the question of “why health?” with an eye towards getting at the essentials of what it means to be healthy and to promote health in populations. How we answer the question can help shape our priorities and practices in the years ahead. This presentation will offer an organizing framework for how we can think of health, highlighting foundational values; the cost-benefits of health; the potential; and limits, of science; the actions that generate health; and uncomfortable ideas for health. It will focus on how data can be applied to these definitional questions ensuring that those who work in health can advance a vision of health that improves life for all.