Francesca Beaudoin PhD’17, a professor of epidemiology and emergency medicine in the School of Public Health, served her first day as interim dean of the SPH on Jan. 1. Beaudoin succeeds former SPH Dean Ashish Jha, whose departure was announced last December.
Beaudoin’s priorities in her new role are keeping the school’s “momentum” going, preparing SPH students for careers in the field and enhancing community impact, she wrote in an email to The Herald.
“There was so much exciting work happening in the school and truly exceptional people,” Beaudoin wrote, going all-in on the SPH when she became a chair in the epidemiology department in 2021 “was actually an easy decision to make.”
Beaudoin, who was previously the academic dean for the SPH, noted the school’s significant growth over the past five years under Jha’s leadership. Four new research centers, including the Pandemic Center, opened during that time. Looking at her time as SPH interim dean, Beaudoin highlighted the school’s initiatives with the Hassenfeld Child Health Innovation Institute, the Center for Advancing Health Policy through Research and the Center for Climate, Environment and Health.
Now, “we’re focused on growing our impact,” Beaudoin wrote, adding that this will include “growing our use of data, strengthening our science and improving how we communicate it to help drive changes in policy and practice.”
The “final piece,” Beaudoin wrote, will be “expanding our impact in the communities we serve,” beginning in Providence and Rhode Island and spreading to global partners “in places like China, Kenya, the U.K., across Europe and beyond.”
Even though Brown was “a big rival” for Beaudoin when she rowed for the University of Massachusetts Amherst during her undergraduate years, her career path has been “anchored to” Brown for the last two decades.
Beaudoin’s time at Brown began in 2006, when she began her Brown-affiliated residency at Rhode Island Hospital. A physician-scientist who has spent years working in the emergency room and researching opioid use disorders, Beaudoin believes in the importance of staying “grounded in the reality that too many of our neighbors and communities face.”
Beaudoin’s path to the SPH was “nontraditional,” she wrote. She completed her doctorate degree in epidemiology at Brown while already working as an emergency physician — the very job that inspired her to turn to public health in the first place.
“Although a bit atypical, I wouldn’t change it at all — I acquired the right skills at the right time to have an impact beyond the care of an individual patient,” Beaudoin wrote.
Beaudoin’s research focuses on addiction and mental health, specifically “improving treatment and recovery for people with opioid use disorders.” In addition to her role as interim dean, Beaudoin also works in a mobile addiction treatment unit in Woonsocket once a week.
Patrick Kelly, a doctoral candidate at the School of Public Health in behavioral and social health sciences, was a student in Beaudoin’s class on grant writing.
Kelly said that he has appreciated Beaudoin’s “willingness to have a conversation, receptivity to feedback and the way that she just kind of takes a pulse on where folks are at,” Kelly said.
When Beaudoin was a doctoral student at Brown, she took a class taught by Melissa Clark, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology and health services, policy and practice, who later sat on Beaudoin’s dissertation committee.
Beaudoin is “unflappable” and someone who “knows how to get things done,” Clark said. “She’s somebody who sees the big picture of things and hones in on what’s the most important thing.”
Noa Saviano is a senior staff writer covering Graduate Schools and Students. She is a freshman from New York City and plans on concentrating in Comparative Literature and Cognitive Science.
