Alumni News: Winter/Spring 2026
Alumni honors, career moves, and items of note
Dustin Duncan, SM ’07, SD ’11, is the force behind the Black Professors Study. Recently launched, the initiative is the first integrated epidemiologic, governance, and legal dataset on Black faculty in the United States. Duncan, who serves as associate dean for health equity research at Columbia University and principal investigator of this study says, “The initiative applies population health methods to examine how institutional and legal structures shape the health and career trajectories of Black faculty.”
Susanne Mitschke, MPH ’25, has been named to Inc. Magazine’s Female Founders 500 list for the second consecutive year—this time in the Artificial Intelligence & Data category. Mitschke founded Citruslabs, a decentralized full-service contract research organization that designs and manages IRB-approved clinical trials for consumer health and wellness brands. “What started as a clinical research company has evolved into an AI-driven platform disrupting how consumer brands generate scientific evidence, from supplements and skincare to functional foods and pet health,” she said.
The Senate confirmed Caroline Pogge, DrPH ’19, as Brigadier General in the Army.
Bookshelf
99 Ways to Die and How to Avoid Them, by Ashely Alker, SM ’09
In this “Anthony Bourdain-style greatest hits tour of death,” Ashely Alker, an emergency medicine doctor and self-described ‘death-escapologist,’ provides practical advice and stories from her experiences in life and medicine.
Jessica and the River Fairies, by Jeffrey Blander, SM ’00, SM ’04, ScD ’08
Blander’s fifth book and second children’s title, Jessica and the River Fairies is inspired by his late mother and co-author, Ann Blander and a short bedtime story she wrote for him as a child.
In Memoriam
Bill Foege, MPH ’65, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) who led the United States’ early response to the AIDS epidemic and developed the vaccination strategy that helped wipe out smallpox in the 1970s, has passed away at the age of 89.
In 1994, Foege received the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Alumni Award of Merit, the highest honor presented by the Alumni Association to an alum of the School; in 2006, he received the Julius B. Richmond Award alongside Anthony Fauci; and in 2022, he joined several former CDC directors to speak on a panel at the School.
For all his accolades, Foege has been called the “grand old man of public health.”
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