Sara “Sally” Bachman will head the School of Social Policy and Practice, effective January 1. An epidemiologist and expert in social welfare policy, Bachman has made public health a focus of her academic career. Currently she is the Paul Farmer Professor in the School of Social Work at Boston University, where she also directs the Center for Innovation in Social Work in Health. During her tenure, she has brought together faculty and experts from social work, public health, global health, and other disciplines to advance initiatives that reduce health costs, improve outcomes, enhance the patient experience, promote population health, and advance health equity nationally and globally.
She has been deeply connected to the public health and nonprofit communities, having served on the boards of the Massachusetts Dental Society Foundation, Women’s Lunch Place (a shelter for poor and homeless women in Boston), Bicycles Against Poverty, Century Health System, the Associates of the Boston Public Library, and the Natick Visiting Nurse Association.
Her appointment concludes a global search for a successor to John L. Jackson Jr., who, after four years of leadership, will step down to assume the deanship of the Annenberg School for Communication.
