PROVIDENCE – One of the leading local voices in health care during the COVID-19 pandemic will be leaving the Ocean State to lead a health institution at another Ivy League university.
Dr. Megan L. Ranney, the current associate dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, will leave Brown at the end of this academic year and become the next dean of the Yale University School of Public Health, Yale and Brown announced Tuesday. Ranney, Yale says, will on July 1 succeed interim dean Melinda Pettigrew – who took over temporarily last year as former dean, Dr. Sten Vermund, returned to full-time teaching and research at Yale.
In her time at Brown, Ranney has held faculty positions at Brown’s Warren Alpert Medical School since 2008 and at the School of Public Health since it was formed in 2013. She first arrived at Brown in 2004 and has served as an attending physician at both The Miriam Hospital and Rhode Island Hospital since 2008, Brown said.
Ranney also in 2019 was the founding director of the Brown-Lifespan Center for Digital Health, which Brown says creative minds from the university and its affiliated hospital partners collaboratively design, test and deploy digital solutions to challenges that affect the health of patients and populations.
Ranney also has been a leading voice for health care on various topics, including as a medical analyst on CNN about COVID-19, mental health, injuries from shootings and working conditions for health care providers, Brown said. Back in October, Ranney was elected to the National Academy of Medicine as a member of its 2022 class.
“I am beyond honored to join Yale as dean of the School of Public Health, and I am looking forward to working with the faculty, students, staff, alumni and larger New Haven community,” Ranney said in a statement with Yale. She also said it has been an “honor” to be part of Brown for close to 20 years and is “immensely grateful to my colleagues and teachers in emergency medicine and at the School of Public Health, and to President Christina [H.] Paxson, whose model of leadership is part of what inspired me to move into higher education leadership.”
James Bessette is the PBN special projects editor, and also covers the nonprofit and education sectors. You may reach him at Bessette@PBN.com. You may also follow him on Twitter at @James_Bessette.
