Alumni

Alum Gilbert L’Italien to Speak at 2025 Convocation

The 1997 doctoral degree recipient who studied epidemiology and biostatistics at SPH will serve as the alumni speaker at Convocation on May 17.

Gilbert L’Italien (SPH’97), senior vice president for clinical outcomes assessments and health economics at the New Haven, Connecticut-based biopharmaceutical company Biohaven, has been selected as the 2025 Distinguished Alumni Awardee and alumni speaker for the 2025 School of Public Health convocation.

In 1987, at the encouragement of epidemiology Professor Theodore Colton, L’Italien enrolled in SPH’s MPH program with the intention of later applying to pursue doctoral studies in epidemiology and biostatistics. Older than many of his peers at the time, he was also raising a family, caring for his aging parents, and working full-time as a junior Harvard University faculty member at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). With the support of his MGH department chair, he often took classes during the afternoons.

“I used to put my running shoes on and run to campus, take the class, and then run to get the commuter boat, which took me home,” says L’Italien.

In 1990, after successfully completing nearly all the requisite coursework, he transitioned into the School’s DSc in Epidemiology program (now the PhD in Epidemiology program). “It took a few tries to get accepted into the program, but by then I had performed quite well in my classes and had received the endorsement of several of my professors,” he says.

As a student, L’Italien conducted clinical research, using data from several hospitals across the country to develop and validate a Bayesian model for the assessment of cardiac risk among candidates for vascular surgery. He defended his thesis on the topic in 1997, a total of ten years after first beginning his studies.

The education “opened up the world for me,” L’Italien says. As a result, he earned a faculty appointment at Harvard University and served as Vascular Research Director at MGH before transitioning to the pharmaceutical industry, where he became involved in real-world evidence generation to support drug development at a variety of major companies, including Bristol Myers Squibb, Alexion, Biogen, and Biohaven, his current employer.

In 2023, L’Italien established the Georgette L’Italien Memorial Scholarship at SPH in honor of his late mother. The scholarship provides stipends to one or more PhD students based on financial need. Ahead of the School’s 2025 convocation, he shared insights on his decision to attend SPH, his current role, and his plans for his message to graduates.

How did you come to choose SPH for your higher education?

I was an older [applicant], and I had a full-time job, but I’ve always had a recognition of how rigorous the School of Public Health has been at BU because of its track record, because of the number and quality of publications, and the faculty, so I decided to meet with Ted Colton, and he gave me some tremendous insights—I’m forever grateful to him for this—he said, “I acknowledge that you have a tremendous amount of research experience, so take the intermediate (and later advanced) classes and apply to the doctoral program.” I had researched other schools, but this approach made the most sense to me.

Your current role involves two aspects of drug development: clinical outcomes assessments and health economics. Can you talk more about what you do at Biohaven?

The first drug we researched was for migraine, it was called a CGRP antagonist. It was a new class of migraine drugs. Clinical outcomes assessment leverages scales and measures within the clinical trials that capture disability and quality of life, and these data can be compared to ‘real world’ data within external databases. I’m very proud of the peer reviewed publications that we generated from this research, because we made a contribution to enhancing the knowledge of the burden of migraine to the public health. Upon approval of the drug,  it was a matter of developing what’s called a value proposition [or] value dossier. Value is defined as efficacy, safety, tolerability and these attributes of value define the so-called cost-effectiveness of the therapy. That work was quite rewarding, but once achieved, I transitioned my team’s focus exclusively on clinical outcomes assessment, leveraging real-world epidemiologic data to support clinical trial development. One area of focus pertains to the use of real-world registries that provides matched external control groups for one of the treatment arms in our clinical trial of spinal cerebellar ataxia, which is a very debilitating condition wherein the cerebellum undergoes morphologic changes that affect speech, balance, gait, etc. It’s a genetic condition, and it is relentlessly progressive. This study is a key component of our regulatory submission, now under priority review by the FDA, and if approved it speaks to the import of such innovative designs that could substitute for long-term placebo controlled studies.

What do you hope to share with graduates in your convocation speech?

I plan to quote Elie Wiesel. One of his quotes really resonated with me, “When you listen to a witness, you become a witness.” In other words, when people speak to you of their lived experiences it gives you a sense of what they went through.  I know that he was initially referring to Holocaust survivors but I know that he meant for all of us to listen with respect to people’s lived experiences as they approach the end of their lives.

I’ve been a hospice volunteer at a local nursing home for the last 22 years, and that experience has just been profound for me. Because when you visit someone on a weekly basis for months, or years, you become their friend. Contrary to the public view, people in nursing homes still have rich lives, and are close to the their fellow residents, family and friends. And they have profound stories to tell. As example, I have ‘witnessed’ the experiences of many World War II veterans and their spouses—they were very special people.

What do you think the next generation of public health leaders could learn from the prior generation’s stories?

I drafted my talk to [say], “Value your education, you can do much good with it. I regard myself as a scientist—I love the science—and science really contributes to our clinical knowledge and ability to treat patients and prevent disease, but there is this other aspect [of life]—connecting with  human beings and “witnessing” their life stories as their companion and friend. I am inspired to see this similar quality in the current generation of recent graduates: a sincere desire to help others who are in need.