Dean MacKenzie

MacKenzie leads an organization that includes over 800 full-time faculty working in 60 countries and teaching more than 2,900 students from 87 nations. Under Dean MacKenzie’s leadership, the School seeks lifesaving solutions across a broad range of issues from chronic and infectious disease prevention to immunology, nutrition and child survival.

In 2018, MacKenzie led the creation of the Bloomberg School’s five-year strategic plan. The plan centers on five main themes—Education, Science, Partnerships, People and Advocacy—to focus energy and resources that aims to shape not just the School’s agenda but the future of public health.

Elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2018, MacKenzie is an internationally recognized leader in public health, a renowned researcher on improving trauma care systems and policy, and a respected academic leader. An advocate for science, health equity and human rights, MacKenzie has spoken out forcefully against family separations at the U.S. border, gender-based discrimination and political interference in scientific research.

After earning graduate degrees from the Bloomberg School, MacKenzie joined the School’s Health Policy and Management (HPM) faculty in 1980, with a joint appointment in the Department of Biostatistics. A Bloomberg Distinguished Professor, she holds faculty appointments in the School of Medicine’s departments of Orthopaedic Surgery, Emergency Medicine and Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. 

MacKenzie founded and leads the Major Extremity Trauma Research Consortium, a collaboration of more than 50 U.S. trauma centers and military treatment facilities. A former director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy, she has shaped the field of trauma services and outcomes research, leading to improved quality of life for trauma survivors.

We must think in new and innovative ways to expand access to our educational programs, advance our research and build genuine partnerships within and outside the traditional boundaries of public health.

— Ellen J. MacKenzie

As a professor, department chair and senior associate dean for academic affairs at the Bloomberg School, MacKenzie has distinguished herself as an inspired leader. As HPM chair, MacKenzie enhanced practice as a part of the department’s mission, established a faculty development program that has served as a model for other departments and facilitated the development of a core curriculum in policy. She also helped establish the DrPH cohort programs in Taiwan, Abu Dhabi, the Pacific Rim, UAE and China.

MacKenzie’s vision for the Bloomberg School is shaped by her broad disciplinary background, commitment to fairness and equity for all, and substantive record of accomplishments across education, research, practice and administration.