Dr. Mary Guinan, the former executive director of the Nevada Public Health Foundation and the Nevada State Health Officer, has been named interim dean of the UNLV School of Public Health.
Guinan is a physician and scientist who was employed at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta in various scientific and administrative positions for more than 20 years. She rose to a top leadership position there as associate director for science.
"We are extremely pleased to have Dr. Guinan lead our new School of Public Health," said Paul Ferguson, vice president for research and graduate studies. "She has been instrumental in developing and implementing plans for the school, and her national and international experience and reputation will be a tremendous asset to the university."
Guinan has worked in public health throughout her career and has extensive experience both nationally and internationally in prevention and control of diseases and injury. She
participated in the worldwide smallpox eradication program, serving in India with the World Health Organization in 1975. In 1980 after the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, she was sent by the U.S. State Department to Pakistan to evaluate the status of Afghan refugees on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border.
At the CDC her research focused primarily on herpes viruses and sexually transmitted diseases. She was a member of the CDC task force that investigated the first cases of AIDS in 1981 and was featured in the book and movie "And the Band Played On." In 1995 she was chosen to lead the CDC initiative to develop Urban Research Centers (URC), community-based participatory research public-private partnerships that were established to identify "what works" to promote the health and improve the quality of life of inner-city, disadvantaged urban populations.
In 1998 Guinan left the CDC to start a second career as Nevada State Health Officer. In Nevada she led the effort to provide discharge services for prisoners with HIV/AIDS to link
them to community services after their release. Nevada is now serving as a national model for this effort. She also led the investigation into a cluster of cases of childhood leukemia in Fallon, Nevada.
Guinan holds a medical degree from Johns Hopkins and a Ph.D. in physiology/biochemistry from the University of Texas, Galveston. She is board certified in internal medicine, infectious diseases, preventive medicine, and public health.
She is also a member of both the Public Health Commission of the Nevada State Medical Association and the Nevada Governor's HIV/AIDS Task Force. She is the immediate past president of the Nevada Public Health Association.
UNLV's School of Public Health, a unit in the division of health sciences, is designed to prepare students to be public health professionals in the private and public sectors with the overall goal of promoting and protecting the health of individuals in our society. The program will offer a master of public health degree and will have four main specialty areas, including health promotion, environmental and occupational health, health care administration, and biostatistics and epidemiology.
The UNLV School of Public Health will focus on high-density, urban population health issues statewide and, thus, will complement the rural focus of the UNR School of Public Health.
The School of Public Health will also offer existing degrees in closely related fields to approximately 155 current students enrolled in health education, health care administration, and health promotion.
