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Harvard Hires Former Mexican Health Minister as Dean (Update2)  

Harvard University has hired Julio Frenk, the former Mexican health minister, to become the next dean of its School of Public Health.

Frenk is expected to start the job in January, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based university said in a statement. He will succeed Barry Bloom, dean for the past decade, who will become a distinguished service professor and continue research into global health.

Frenk, 54, is a senior fellow in the global health program of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle. In 2006, he was identified as a leading candidate to be director-general of the Geneva-based World Health Organization by the editor of the British medical journal Lancet. Margaret Chan, a Chinese infectious disease specialist, got the job. . . .

In 2004, Frenk struck a deal with British American Tobacco Plc and Philip Morris of Mexico, a joint venture of Carlos Slim and Altria Group Inc., which agreed not to raise cigarette taxes in return for $400 million for social programs. Anti-tobacco groups criticized the arrangement.

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