Department of Social Medicine

641 Huntington Avenue, 3^rd Floor

Boston, MA 02115

Phone: 617-432-1410

Fax: 617-432-2565

Dr. Julius Richmond is currently John D. MacArthur Professor of Health Policy Emeritus at Harvard University. From 1983 to 1988 he was Director of the Division of Health Policy Research and Education at Harvard University.

His collaborative work with Dr. Bettye Caldwell at the State University of New York at Syracuse on the development of young children growing up in poverty, led to his appointment in 1965 as the first national director of the Head Start program of the Office of Economic Opportunity where he also served as Director for Health Affairs, which initiated the Community Health Centers Program. He returned to Syracuse in 1967.

From 1977 to 1981 Dr. Richmond served as Surgeon-General and Assistant Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. During this time he had responsibility for administering all of the agencies of the US Public Health Service. In 1979 he issued the report, HEALTHY PEOPLE: THE SURGEON-GENERAL’S REPORT ON HEALTH PROMOTION AND DISEASE PREVENTION. This report for the first time established quantitative health goals for the nation for the next decade—a process which has been institutionalized by the US Public Health Service through its report, HEALTHY PEOPLE 2000: NATIONAL HEALTH PROMOTION AND DISEASE PREVENTION OBJECTIVES.

He received M.D. and M.S. degrees from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1939, where he was appointed Professor of Pediatrics in 1950. In 1953 he moved to the State University of New York at Syracuse, where he chaired the Department of Pediatrics and was Dean of the Medical School until 1971.

In 1971 he joined the faculty at Harvard Medical School as Professor of Child Psychiatry and Human Development and became Director of the Judge Baker Guidance Center and Chief of Psychiatry at the Children’s Hospital. He also served as Professor and Chairman of the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine from 1972-1979.

Dr. Richmond has received the C. Anderson Aldrich Award of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Gustav O. Lienhard Award of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, the John Howland Award of the American Pediatric Society, the Ronald McDonald Award of the Ronald McDonald Children’s Charities, and the Sedgwick Medal and the Martha May Eliot Award from the American Public Health Association and a number of honorary degrees. He received the John Stearns Award for Lifetime Achievement in Medicine in 1999 from the New York Academy of Medicine.

His current interests are in the area of shaping health policies with a particular emphasis on health promotion and disease prevention, with special emphasis on children and families. He is especially interested in the developmental antecedents of habituation from conceptual, methodological and public policy approaches.