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Keshia M. Pollack Porter, PhD ’06, MPH, became the 12^th dean of the Johns ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ on August 1, 2025.  

Pollack Porter leads an organization that includes over 900 full-time faculty, a full-time staff of more than 1,400, and more than 3,100 students from 88 nations. Under her leadership, the School seeks lifesaving solutions across a broad range of issues from chronic and infectious disease prevention to immunology, nutrition, and child survival.

An internationally recognized scholar, trusted leader, and unwavering advocate for public health, Pollack Porter is an expert in advancing policy change to create safe and healthy environments.   

She received her PhD in health and public policy from the Bloomberg School in 2006, and that same year joined the faculty as an assistant professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management before becoming a full professor in 2017. 

Pollack Porter served as the School’s Associate Dean for Faculty Development, Associate Dean for Faculty, and Vice Dean for Faculty from 2019 to 2022 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, leading efforts around faculty recruitment, retirements, mentorship, and professional growth.  

In 2022, she was named Bloomberg Centennial Chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management. As chair, she strengthened faculty mentoring and development and recruited faculty in key areas such as data science and population health, health services research, advocacy, and health equity.   

Pollack Porter was named a Bloomberg Centennial Professor in 2021 for her leadership as director of the Institute for Health and Social Policy. She has served on leadership teams with the Center for Health Disparities Solutions and the Center for Injury Research and Policy, among others. Since 2019, she has directed the Health Policy Research Scholars program, a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation that trains doctoral students from various disciplines to effectively apply their research to help build healthier and more equitable communities.    

Pollack Porter has led numerous federally funded research studies, published more than 200 peer-reviewed articles and reports, and influenced public health practice through leadership roles with the CDC and the National Academies. Her scholarship draws on injury epidemiology and health impact assessment to identify policies that create safe, healthy, and equitable environments where people live, work, play, and travel. She was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2023. 

With support from the Bloomberg American Health Initiative, Pollack Porter led the development of a policy analysis tool to advance Health in All Policies, working regularly with policymakers from multiple sectors at the local, state, and federal levels. She is a co-author of the book Policy Engagement, designed to provide practitioners with the tools to engage in the policy process.  

Pollack Porter earned a Bachelor of Arts in sociology and a certificate in Community Health in 2000 from Tufts University, where she now serves as a university trustee, and received a Master of Public Health in chronic disease epidemiology from the Yale School of Public Health in 2002. 

Before joining the Bloomberg School faculty, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship jointly sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. She is a 2018 recipient of the Johns Hopkins University Distinguished Alumna Award.