Professor Brown elected to National Academy of Medicine Class of 2022 – The Brown Daily Herald

Megan Ranney MPH ’10, academic dean of the School of Public Health, practicing emergency physician and professor of emergency medicine, behavioral and social sciences, and health services, policy and practice, was one of the 100 new members elected to the National Academy of Medicine 2022 last week.

NAM is “an organization that represents the highest quality of … medical science and public health across the United States,” Ranney said. “He’s absolutely…a breathtaking class of people that I’ve deeply admired for years.”

“Being elected to the National Academy of Medicine is a huge honor,” she added.

New members elected to NAM are chosen based on their “significant contributions to the advancement of medical science, health care and public health,” wrote Dana Korsen, director of media relations at NAM, in a statement. email to the Herald.

Ranney said his election “serves as … a national attestation of the impact of our scholarship and our practice here at Brown.”

Ranney’s nomination recognizes her work as a “national public health leader and communicator who has brought a deeper understanding of public health challenges and … changed public health paradigms,” Korsen wrote.

Previously, Ranney worked with NAM on initiatives regarding science communication, COVID-19, and gun violence prevention. She said her election to NAM would give her “great ability to become more involved with the National Academy to influence research agendas as well as policy nationally and internationally” while also collaborating “with…people amazing around the world. .”

Ranney co-founded the nonprofit American Foundation for the Reduction of Firearm Injuries in Medicine in 2017 and serves as their senior strategic advisor. She also created the Brown-Lifespan Center for Digital Health in 2019 and co-founded GetUsPPE.org in 2021 to help frontline workers and underserved communities gain access to personal protective equipment during the height of the COVID pandemic. -19.

“I’ve been interested in public health since before I knew that was what it was called,” Ranney said. As a “young scientist, you dream of being elected one day (at NAM), and so it’s so significant” once the election comes around, she added.

After earning her bachelor’s degree from Harvard University, Ranney served in the Peace Corps working on HIV/AIDS prevention in West Africa during the HIV epidemic, before starting medical school at the Columbia University and eventually earning her master’s degree in public health at Brown.

“In the Peace Corps, I saw firsthand how important it is to be community-centered in developing prevention and treatment plans – and it is so essential for public health,” Ranney said.

Maddie McCarthy ’24, a health and human biology and medical anthropology concentrator, completed two years of independent study and an undergraduate teaching and research fellowship project with Ranney. The project she contributed to, under Ranney’s mentorship, involved screening patients in the emergency department of Hasbro Children’s Hospital for a study focused on preventing peer violence and depressive symptoms in adolescents in risk.

Ranney makes himself “available to his mentees, including me, in a way that I think is rare at the college level,” McCarthy said. “She gets a lot of emails a day, but I know if she sees an email from me or one of her mentees, she usually responds within minutes.”

After her independent studies and her UTRA with Ranney, McCarthy took a year off to do research in California, during which she “often … (thought) about the little pearls of wisdom” Ranney shared during her mentorship.

“She’s very beaming when she walks in and introduces herself to a patient,” McCarthy said. “If I was her patient, I’d feel a little safe…(she) just commands the piece, so I thought, ‘How can I imitate that?'”

“Ranney’s career has really been something to watch over the past two years, and…I’m extremely proud,” McCarthy said. “The path she is blazing is…truly touching (and) inspiring.”