Dear Colleagues:

It is simultaneously my pleasure, and with deep regret, that I wanted to announce Professor Alan Jette’s retirement from the School and from Boston University, effective July 1, 2017.

I do not normally reach out about all these transitions but wanted to do so in this case, reflecting both the long trail of contributions Professor Jette has made to the School and to the University over decades, and that this transition occasions a change to one of our School-wide structures.

Let me start by summarizing Professor Jette’s career.

Initially trained as a physical therapist, Professor Jette is a pioneer in the field of disability research, whose seminal publication in 1994 outlining a socio-medical model of disability has been cited almost 3,000 times and is still frequently cited more than two decades after its publication. His model of the disablement process was the first to fully enumerate a public health framework related to disability, and formed the theoretical basis for the WHO’s taxonomy: The International Classification of Function, Disability and Health. Using the disablement model, Professor Jette was one of the first to launch analyses within the Framingham Heart Study cohort to elucidate the epidemiology of disability. He subsequently conducted several successful field studies that identified risk factors underlying the disablement process and then implemented clinical trials aimed at preventing late-life disability. In addition, Professor Jette and his colleagues at the SPH Health & Disability Research (HDR) Institute have designed a host of novel function and disability assessment instruments that are being used in healthcare settings, disability programs, and school systems across the US and abroad.

Professor Jette’s influence is truly multi-disciplinary, and he has been recognized with awards by the Gerontological Society of America, the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, and the American Physical Therapy Association. In 2013, he was elected to the Institute of Medicine (IOM), now the National Academy of Medicine (NAM), the first physical therapist so honored. The National Academy of Sciences has called upon Professor Jette as a member or chair of virtually every major NAS report related to disability in the last decade or more. Professor Jette’s prior contributions include serving as member of the IOM Committee to Review SSA’s Disability Decision Process (1999–2002); chairperson of the IOM Committee, The Future of Disability in America (2004–2007); chair of the IOM Steering Committee to Plan a National Workshop on Improving Measurement of Late Life Disability in Population Surveys (2008); member of the National Research Council Panel, External Evaluation of NIDRR; co-chair of the IOM Forum on Aging, Disability and Independence (2011–2013); member of the IOM study on psychological testing for the Social Security Administration (2014); member of the IOM Committee to Evaluate the Social Security Administration’s Capability Determination Process for Adult Beneficiaries (2015); and chair of the NAM Committee on the Use of Selected Assistive Devices in Eliminating or Reducing the Effects of Impairments (2016–2017). In 2016, Professor Jette was named editor-in-chief of Physical Therapy, the official scientific journal of the American Physical Therapy Association.

Professor Jette first joined the faculty at SPH in 1993 as a professor in the Department of Behavioral Sciences. In 1996 he left SPH to serve as dean of BU’s Sargent College of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences, where he served with distinction until 2004. During his tenure at Sargent College, Professor Jette helped expand the research portfolio of its faculty and created several new academic programs. During this period, Professor Jette also served on the Visiting Committee at SPH. In 2005, Professor Jette returned to SPH, where he became a professor of health policy and management. He has also served as director of SPH’s HDR Institute. which has become a major focus of health services and health measurement research at Boston University. For the past 15 years, Professor Jette also directed the Post-Doctoral Fellowship Program in Rehabilitation Outcomes Research at SPH, where he and his colleagues helped mentor numerous junior scientists. In 2012, he served as acting chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management.

As Professor Jette prepares for his next stage, we have been working together on mapping out a future for the work that he has nurtured here at SPH. In concert with Professor Michael Stein, chair of health law, policy, and management, we are moving to have Professor Lewis Kazis take on leadership of Professor Jette’s ongoing projects.

Although the HDR Institute will be phased out when Professor Jette retires, Professor Kazis will be taking over for Professor Jette as principal director of a major subcontract from the NIH and US Social Security Administration, where for the past eight years Professor Jette and his team have developed and tested contemporary functional health measurement instruments for use by the US Social Security Administration. Under Professor Kazis’ capable leadership, the BU team will continue to collaborate with researchers at the rehabilitation medicine department at the NIH Clinical Center to further refine these instruments, and to design and implement demonstration studies of their utility. Kazis, professor of health law, policy, and management, is an international leader in the field of health status measurement and has made seminal contributions to this field. He and Professor Jette are currently collaborating on the development of a measurement instrument that aims to assess the social impacts of major burn injuries. Professors Pengsheng Ni, Mary Slavin, and Christine McDonough and Kara Peterik from the HDR Institute will be remaining at SPH to continue this important work with Professor Kazis.

I am deeply grateful to Professor Jette for exemplary transition planning, and to Professor Kazis for taking on this new role.

I started this note by saying that this is both my pleasure and my regret to make this announcement. My pleasure arises from having had many discussions with Alan about his post-retirement plans, which involve both beekeeping and winemaking and sound simply delightful. My regret comes from losing someone from our in-house community who has been a trusted friend and colleague to me since my time here, and to many of us for much longer. I take solace in knowing that Alan will continue to always be a member of the BU community, a community he has long enriched by his presence.

Per Alan’s request, we will be having a small private event to celebrate his retirement later in the spring. Please join me in wishing Alan all the very best on his retirement and congratulating Professor Kazis for his new role.

Warmly,

Sandro
Sandro Galea, MD, DrPH
Dean, Robert A Knox Professor
sgalea@bu.edu

View all announcements