Award-Winning Science Journalist Laurie Garrett Named Senior Fellow for Global Health

February 9, 2004 - Council President Richard N. Haass has named Pulitzer Prize–winning science journalist Laurie Garrett as the first Senior Fellow in Global Health. Made possible by a generous starting grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the fellowship was created in recognition that global health issues now pose national security challenges unimaginable only a few years ago.

Garrett is one of America’s most distinguished science journalists. She is the only person ever to be awarded all three of the major prizes in journalism: the Peabody, the Polk (twice), and the Pulitzer (for which she has also been a finalist three times). She has also been honored three times by the Overseas Press Club of America. While at the Council, Garrett will complete a book on emerging diseases and global security (to be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux) and launch a project on global health issues such as HIV/AIDS, epidemic diseases, and bioterrorism.

“Disease is a powerful example of globalization at work,” said Haass. “Laurie Garrett is uniquely qualified to make sense of what is taking place and to suggest what needs doing by the international community. We are truly fortunate to have her join the Studies Program.”

Garrett is the author of two best-selling books on public health. “The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World out of Balance” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994) was named “one of the best books of 1994” by both the New York Times Book Review and Library Journal. “Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health” (Hyperion Press, 2000) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Award.

Garrett was most recently (1988–2004) the health and science writer for Newsday, where she was also a contributor to publications such as Vanity Fair, the Los Angeles Times, and Foreign Affairs. Prior to that, she was the science correspondent for National Public Radio (1980–88). Her radio reporting received numerous awards, including Best Consumer Journalism from the National Press Club (1982) the Meritorious Achievement Award in Radio from the San Francisco Media Alliance (1983) and the First Prize in Radio from the World Hunger Alliance (1987).

Garrett graduated with honors in biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She did graduate work in the Department of Bacteriology and Immunology at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1992–93, she was a visiting fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health. Garrett has been honored with honorary doctorates from Wesleyan Illinois University and the University of Massachusetts, Lowell.

Garrett will assume her position at the Council’s New York office in March 2004.

Founded in 1921, the Council on Foreign Relations is an independent, national membership organization and a nonpartisan center for scholars dedicated to producing and disseminating ideas so that individual and corporate members, as well as policymakers, journalists, students, and interested citizens in the United States and other countries, can better understand the world and the foreign policy choices facing the United States and other governments.

Contact: Lisa Shields, Vice President, Communications, (212) 434-9888