Linda Fried MD, MPH

Dr. Linda P. Fried, Dean of the Mailman School of Public Health (since 2008) is a public health leader in the fields of epidemiology and geriatrics. She has dedicated her career to the science of healthy aging and defining how to transition to a world where greater longevity benefits people of all ages. An internationally renowned scientist, she has done seminal work in defining frailty as a clinical syndrome and illuminating both its causes and the potential for prevention as keys to optimizing health for older adults. Her scientific discoveries have transformed medical care and public health globally, and our understanding of how to build successful societies of longer lives. Under Fried's visionary leadership, the Mailman School continues to be a leader in transforming the health of populations and is one of the top five NIH-funded schools of public health.

Fried led the School to build the nation's first program on climate and health and a multidisciplinary program that delivers economic evidence on the value of prevention. Fried opened the Columbia Center for Aging and elevated Columbia's leadership role in research, policy and programming to support healthy cities. As a leader in public health education, she initiated Columbia/Mailman's innovative interdisciplinary public health curriculum that emphasizes a life-course approach to prevention of disease and disability. She has worked to enhance the Mailman School faculty's effectiveness in optimizing the impact of their scientific research.

As Dean, Fried is invited annually to participate in global and national policy and leadership activities for creating healthier societies. Fried is also the designer and co-founder of Experience Corps, an evidence-based program in which older volunteers serve in public schools in 22 cities. Acting as tutors and mentors, the older volunteers help boost students' academic success while bolstering their own health through the scientifically-designed program.

Fried also led the evaluation of this innovative intervention that demonstrated its effectiveness in preventing physical disability and cognitive decline among older adults while making schools more successful and providing evidence for the potential win-wins of an aging society. Before coming to Columbia in 2008, Fried founded the Johns Hopkins Center on Aging and Health, directed the Division of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology, and the Program in the Epidemiology and Biostatistics of Aging and held joint appointments in the Johns Hopkins Schools of Medicine, Nursing, and Public Health. Fried is the recipient of numerous awards. Most recently, she was the recipient of the 2016 Inserm International Prize in Medical Research. She was named by the U.S. Congress as a "Living Legend in Medicine" (2004).

In 2012, Fried was profiled by The New York Times as one of 15 world leaders in science. In 2014, Global publisher Thomson Reuters named her "one of the most influential scientific minds of the past decade." Last year, she was named to the PBS Organization's "Next Avenue 2015 Influencers in Aging," a list of thought-leaders who are changing how we age and think about aging in America. Fried is an elected member of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine, as well as the Association of American Physicians, the elected society of the U.S. leading physician scientists.

Dean Fried was the 2016-17 President of the Association of American Physicians, the first Dean of a School of Public Health to be President of AAP. She is also Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum's Global Council on the Future of Human Enhancement and on the Steering Committee for their Council on Human Centric Health.