Dr. Megan Ranney treated patients suffering from COVID-19 at The Miriam Hospital and Rhode Island Hospital during the height of the pandemic.
She has also saved victims of gunshot wounds and made it a mission to address gun violence, serving as a board member for the Nonviolence Institute in Providence.
From her base at the Brown University School of Public Health, where she serves as deputy dean, Ranney has used social media and television to spread her expert insight on public health across the country and beyond.
In less than six months, Ranney will leave Brown and Rhode Island to take over as dean of the Yale School of Public Health on July 1.
Yale’s announcement of the appointment Tuesday was met in Rhode Island with praise and congratulations for Ranney and Yale mixed with sadness that she will be leaving the Ocean State.
Ranney did not hold a formal position with the state Department of Health during the pandemic, but she was among the hundreds of Rhode Island health care workers fighting on the front lines and, through social and mass media, she emerged as one of several recognizable faces and deeply knowledgeable voices in the fight.
“Dr. Ranney was a critical partner to the Rhode Island Department of Health throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, both as a trusted physician in the community and behind the scenes, offering us her wisdom and expertise,” said Dr. Philip Chan, consultant medical director for the Rhode Island Department of Health.
“Beyond that, she has been a tireless advocate on so many important public health issues in Rhode Island, including gun violence,” Chan said. “Our loss is certainly Yale’s gain. We all wish her the best!”
Dr. Ashish Jha, who is on leave as dean of the Brown University School of Public Health while serving as COVID-19 coordinator for the White House, called Ranney “a once in a generation talent,” in a tweet Tuesday.
Offering his congratulation to the Yale School of Public Health, Jha said Ranney is a “brilliant scholar and communicator who is as smart as they come.”
In announcing Ranney’s appointment, Yale President Peter Salovey described her as “an internationally recognized public-health leader, investigator, advocate and clinician-scientist.”
Ranney has held faculty appointments at Brown’s Warren Alpert Medical School since 2008 and at Brown’s School of Public Health since its inception in 2013, according to Brown. She is a practicing emergency physician, researcher and educator with a focus on intersections among digital health, violence prevention and population health, Brown said. She is the founding director of the Brown-Lifespan Center for Digital Health.
In her roles at Brown, Ranney “has led transformative initiatives that bridge research and curriculum development, clinical-care improvement, community engagement and national outreach,” Salovey said.
Long before anyone heard of COVID-19, Ranney was speaking out about gun violence. In 2015, she co-authored a Providence Journal letter to the editor urging a public-health approach to reduce gun violence in the same way the nation has reduced motor vehicle deaths by redesigning vehicles and roads and enacting more effective drunken-driving laws, among other steps.
Ranney has brought that same approach, viewing gun violence as a public-health crisis in her work on the board of the Non-Violence Institute, according to fellow board member Oscar Perez, acting chief of the Providence Police Department. “It helps us a lot,” Perez said.
Ranney co-founded the American Foundation for Firearm Injury Reduction in Medicine at the Aspen Institute, and former Gov. Gina Raimondo chose her to co-chair her gun safety working group.
When COVID-19 emerged as a public-health threat, Ranney joined that fight. She co-founded GetUsPPE.org, which matched donated personal protective equipment to those who needed it most. By the time it ceased operations in July 2021 as shortages decreased, it had delivered more than 17 million pieces of PPE to health care providers, Brown said.
Ranney says she’s “beyond honored” to have been chosen for the Yale job.
“I’m becoming a Yalie!,” she wrote in a tweet linked to Yale’s announcement. “Grateful for the place that made me who I am. Excited to make the world better with new colleagues & students.”
