Howard H. Hiatt, a prominent supporter of global health programs, fought against nuclear proliferation, and taught numerous generations of doctors and scientists during his tenure as dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, passed away on March 2 at his Cambridge, Massachusetts, home. He was ninety-eight.
Howard Hiat cause of death
Pooh Shapiro, his daughter-in-law, confirmed the death but did not provide a cause of death.
Howard Hiat obituary information
Dr. Hiatt was a physician, educator, and administrator who, in her roles as head physician at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, dean of the public health school, and professor at Harvard Medical School, had a significant influence on medicine.
Early in the 1960s, he worked with future Nobel laureates at the Pasteur Institute in Paris on the identification of messenger RNA, a finding that helped pave the way for the development of the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccines.
Due to quotas limiting the number of Jewish students admitted to Harvard in the 1940s, Dr. Hiatt was almost completely turned away, making her acutely aware of inequalities in access to healthcare.
In honor of Dr. Hiatt and his wife Doris, the hospital developed a residency in internal medicine and global health equality in 2004. He also co-founded the hospital’s Division of Global Health equality.
