Alumni Spotlight: Keshia Pollack Porter

Dr. Keshia Pollack Porter, PhD, MPH ‘02, has always seen the bigger picture of public health, so it’s no surprise that she would become a dean. Although she majored in chronic disease epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health (YSPH), she did her thesis work with faculty affiliated with occupational medicine and environmental health. She becomes dean of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health on August 1.

The appointment didn’t surprise her mentor while at YSPH, Dr. Mark Schlesinger, PhD, professor of public health (health policy). When they talked about her future, “Keshia asked that we discuss not so much her 'career' but rather how she could have the most meaningful impact on the world,” Schlesinger said. “Keshia’s envisioned future wasn’t constrained by being trained in one department. She saw her future impact as inevitably crossing those boundaries, because her commitment to reduce harm from injuries called for approaches that would transcend such academic distinctions.”

A noted health policy expert, Pollack Porter has chaired the health policy and management department at Hopkins since 2022 and has advanced policy changes that promote safe, healthy, and equitable communities. A health policy tool she created, a legislative health note, brings health considerations to decisions in non-health sectors like transportation and housing. She steps down as chair in July but will continue as a professor.

She will continue to run the Health Policy Research Scholars program, a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation that trains doctoral students from various disciplines to advance health equity through policy. That program will welcome its ninth and final cohort in fall 2025 and conclude in 2029.

Her ties to YSPH include her research area, and also the bonds she formed with classmates. Pollack Porter brought classmate Dr. Susan Chemerynski, ScD, MPH ’02 over from the Food and Drug Administration to become Jacob I. and Irene B. Fabrikant Chair in Health, Risk and Society. Chemerynski said it has been special to work with Pollack Porter again, calling her a leader who has “created a warm, collaborative, and inclusive environment that lifts people up and supports them to thrive.”

As dean, Pollack Porter hopes to help make public health’s impact more visible. “Our colleagues in engineering are building things. People can see robots doing something. People don’t see the [car] crashes that aren’t occurring. They take public health for granted and don’t realize how it has helped to create safe environments to live, work, learn, play, and pray in – all of it.”

Her goal, she says, is when you ask "What is public health?" the answer should be "Public health is everywhere."

She spoke with Jane E. Dee

Despite the reductions in federal funding for public health, the problems haven’t gone away. We must continue to support programs, policies, and practices that will help advance the public’s health. That’s the new reality. We must stay focused on our mission because people’s lives depend on it.

How do we help ensure that our faculty, staff, and students not only get through this moment—I want them to be able to thrive through this moment and consider how we emerge stronger on the other side of this turmoil. I am asking how do we help to inform what the future of public health will look like in this country? That’s really what I hope we can do in the coming months and coming years.

COVID-19 amplified and highlighted the mistrust that was already brewing. We must ask if we are communicating in a way that resonates with people. How can we listen and embrace humility? We need to understand why people think the way they do and not be so judgmental versus saying ‘You’re wrong.’

We do that by understanding people’s core values, by saying my goal is not to change that person’s mind, but to understand their perspective and to offer another perspective. We need to have real dialogue, which I think has been lacking. Once you have this dialogue, you can find some commonalities. It is difficult and necessary to truly advance public health.

My team at Johns Hopkins created a policy analysis tool that encourages local, state, and national organizations to include health considerations in policy decisions across multiple sectors, such as housing, energy, transportation, and education. The work is grounded in the understanding that the conditions in which we live influence our well-being. What we’re trying to do is say when you’re making decisions in these other sectors that impact health, let’s elevate those health concerns.

I am a first-generation college student. I never thought growing up that I would get into an Ivy League school. I received the Opportunity Scholarship that covered my tuition and made going to YSPH possible, without taking out more loans.

I was in the Chronic Disease Epidemiology Department (CDE), but I studied worker health and safety with Mark Cullen who was in occupational medicine, and I fell in love with health policy through my interactions with Mark Schlesinger. Their instruction and mentorship helped me see how science could inform policy decisions, which has been critical to my scholarship and my career.

I appreciate how I was challenged in the classroom, and the size of the program [then about 115 students per class], which supported strong relationships. I have maintained friendships with [many of them]. I’m grateful for my public health training at Yale and have been able to build on it in my subsequent training in public health.

This interview has been edited and condensed.