Dr. Kavanagh to chair Global Health Department

Matthew M. Kavanagh, PhD, has been named chair of the Department of Global Health at Georgetown University’s School of Health.

A political scientist and global health scholar, Matt examines how law and politics produce inequality in pandemics and outbreaks — from HIV/AIDS to Ebola and COVID-19 — and how policies and institutions can better prevent and respond to future health crises. He will continue to direct GHPP in his new role.

He succeeds Jennifer Huang Bouey, MD, PhD, MPH, who led the department since 2021 through a period of significant growth, including the establishment of the School of Health.

Matt has held a range of global health leadership roles. From 2021 to 2022, he served as deputy executive director and special advisor at UNAIDS while on leave from Georgetown. He created and serves on the Global Council on Inequality, AIDS, and Pandemics, continues to advise the United Nations, and established Georgetown’s UN Collaborating Center on HIV Policy and Inequality.

“I am honored to have the opportunity to lead the Department of Global Health in this global moment of rupture and transformation,” Matt says. “Georgetown has been the center of cutting-edge thinking and policy-shaping research and, in today’s rapidly evolving global public health landscape, there is more need for that than ever. Our department — with physicians, economists, epidemiologists, lawyers, outbreak-response leaders, climate researchers, policy experts and more — is poised to play an important role in the evolution of the still-young field of global health.”