Megan Ranney, MD, has been selected to serve as the next dean of the Yale School of Public Health, effective July 1. She will join the New Haven, Conn.-based institution from Brown University in Providence, R.I., where she has spent nearly 20 years from medical resident to various leadership positions.
Dr. Ranney is a practicing emergency medicine physician, avid researcher and educator. Currently, she is the deputy dean of Brown University School of Public Health. She has held faculty appointments at Brown University's Warren Alpert Medical School since 2008 and at the school of public health since its inception in 2013.
Dr. Ranney has worked on the front lines of the emergency departments at the Miriam Hospital and Rhode Island Hospital amid the COVID-19 pandemic, co-founding a startup called GetUsPPE.org in the early months. By July 2021, it had delivered more than 17 million pieces of personal protective equipment to healthcare providers.
She is a renowned voice in healthcare, frequently speaking on COVID-19, labor shortages and capacity issues within hospitals, and has advocated for gun violence to be recognized as a public health crisis. Among several leadership positions in the area of violence prevention, she is co-founder of the American Foundation for Firearm Injury Reduction in Medicine at the Aspen Institute.
"I'm delighted that Dr. Ranney will be our next YSPH dean," Melinda Irwin, PhD, associate dean of research at the school, said in a Jan. 31 statement.
"Her scientific accomplishments and leadership related to some of the most pressing public health challenges — including firearm injury, substance abuse, mental health, and infectious disease risk — combined with her extraordinary ability to communicate effectively, will propel YSPH forward as a leader in tackling these and other public health problems," said Dr. Irwin, who is also the Susan Swight Bliss Professor of Epidemiology and chair of the dean search advisory committee.
Numerous physicians and other healthcare leaders welcomed the news of Dr. Ranney's Yale appointment on social media. Jeremy Faust, MD, an emergency medicine physician at Boston-based Brigham and Women's Hospital, said it was "among the wisest moves in the history of the institution."
Dr. Ranney succeeds Melinda Pettigrew, PhD, who has served as interim dean of Yale School of Public Health since July.