2006
School of Public Health Names Alumnus of the Year
The UC Berkeley School of Public Health selected Dr. Harrison C. Spencer, president and CEO of the Association of Schools of Public Health (ASPH), as Alumnus of the Year. Spencer will be honored at the School's commencement ceremony on Saturday, May 13.
The School chose Spencer for the award on the basis of his many accomplishments throughout his career, particularly for the leadership he has provided the 37 accredited graduate schools of public health as president of ASPH. Spencer became the first fulltime president and CEO of ASPH in July of 2000.
As ASPH president, Spencer has drawn on his experience serving as dean of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and his work prior to that as dean of the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in New Orleans. He has focused much of his career on communicable disease prevention and eradication. He served as an EIS Officer and at the field station in El Salvador for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and founded and directed a CDC research station in Kenya. Dr. Spencer has also held important roles as the senior medical officer at the Malaria Action Program of the World Health Organization, and as chief of the Parasitic Diseases branch of the CDC.
Spencer received his M.P.H. from UC Berkeley in 1972. He also received a medical degree from Johns Hopkins University, a diploma in tropical medicine and hygiene from the University of London, and he is board certified in internal and preventative medicine. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 2003.