Harvard Medical School Dean Says HMS Has Improved Financial Stability at State of the School Address

Harvard Medical School Dean George Q. Daley ’82 said Wednesday that HMS is “more financially stable than at any time in recent history” after recovering from pandemic-era financial stress.

Speaking at his first in-person State of the School address since Covid-19, Daley said HMS balanced its books in fiscal year 2022 “despite all the pandemic challenges, and more than a decade of recurring budget deficits.”

Daley said HMS broke even on discretionary cash flows in fiscal year 2022 for the first time since 2009 — a milestone it was not projected to hit until 2023 because the Medical School waived fees for its affiliate hospitals due to the pandemic.

The school’s Office for External Education brought in $17 million in net revenue in fiscal year 2022, Daley said. HMS also saw increases in its commercialization revenue and sponsored research funding, according to the address.

Daley said HMS worked to invest in research and education in fiscal year 2022 by providing $203 million to subsidize researchers and $30 million to improve educational offerings.

In 2017, Daley launched the Dean’s Innovation Award, which has provided $24 million in extra funding for 92 research projects. Daley lauded the program on Wednesday, saying it would act as a catalyst for additional funding. He pointed to HMS faculty members Gary Yellen and Nathalie Y. R. Agar, who received $500,000 through the Innovation Award program.

“They have since secured nearly $2 million in follow-on funding from the National Institutes of Health,” he said. “That’s what the Innovation Awards program was meant to do.”

Daley also said HMS is “reimagining” the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology curriculum to prepare students “to be the physician-innovators of the future.”

Daley said the school’s investments in two avenues for research funding — the Blavatnik Therapeutics Challenge and the Quadrangle Fund for Advancing and Seeding Translational Research — are “predicated on the core principle that we have an obligation to make our science relevant.”

Daley also discussed the school’s efforts to improve diversity and inclusion on Wednesday, highlighting the school’s Black Staff Caucus, which he said seeks to address the “shared goals and challenges of staffers across HMS.”

“Our community investments are building better pipelines, too,” he said. “We have expanded our faculty promotion criteria to include significant supporting activity for diversity and inclusion.”

Overall, Daley said, investments over the last year in research, teaching, and culture have continued to elevate HMS as a “leading institution,” but that there is always room to grow.

“We cannot rest on what we have done to date,” he said. “We have to continue to strive to become even more responsive to the world’s emerging threats and challenges.”

—Staff writer Dorcas Y. Gadri can be reached at dorcas.gadri@thecrimson.com.

—Staff writer Krishi Kishore can be reached at krishi.kishore@thecrimson.com.