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Dr. Hugh H. Tilson 2008 Baker Lecture speaker

Dr. Hugh H. Tilson is the featured speaker for the 9th Annual Ned E. Baker Lecture in Public Health. As one of the original members of the Institute of Medicine’s “Report on the Future of Public Health,” Tilson will address the impact of the report 20 years later.

Tilson earned his medical degree from Washington University (St. Louis) in 1964 and a doctorate degree in public health from the Harvard School of Public Health in 1972. He spent 15 years in public service including city/county public health officer and human services director for Multnomah County in Portland, Ore., and state public health director for North Carolina. He was president of NACHO in 1976. His pioneering work in Portland’s “Project Health” is widely cited as a prototype for national healthcare financing under a “managed competition” model. He spent 15 years with the Wellcome Foundation (now GSK) as a pharmacoepidemiologist, where he is widely recognized for his pioneering work with safe use of acyclovir and zidovudine.

Upon his retirement from GSK in 1996, he joined the clinical faculty of UNC School of Public Health in Chapel Hill. In addition to serving on the original IOM Report on the Future of Public Health, he also has worked with and chaired several IOM committees, most recently advising on the landmark “Future of Drug Safety” study. He is a Lifetime National Associate of the National Academies of Science. His work in therapeutics continues through his chairmanship of the national steering committee for the Centers for Education and Research on Therapeutics (the CERTs).

A founding member of the UNC Institute for Public Health, he is also a Senior Fellow for Maine's Center for Public Health, where he is credited for creating the Sagadahoc County (Bath) Maine Public Health Department, Maine's first county public health agency. One of the first acts of the Sagadahoc County Maine Public Health Department was to join the National Association for Local Boards of Health (NALBOH), which is one of the sponsors each year of the Baker lecture. He continues to serve as a volunteer county health officer for the department.

This lecture will be Web cast to approximately 30,000 off-site viewers and a live audience of approximately 100. The lecture and reception are free and open to the public. CEUs are approved for nursing, social work and registered sanitarians. For more information about CEUs, contact Jennifer Wagner at jawagne@bgsu.edu.