Dean Linda Fried Awarded George M. Kober Medal for Lifetime Scientific and Mentorship Achievements

The Association of American Physicians (AAP), the elected society of the U.S.'s leading physician scientists, awarded its highest honor, the George M. Kober Medal, to Linda Fried, MD, MPH, dean of Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health for her lifetime scientific and mentorship achievements. Fried served as president of the association in 2016-2017 and was the first dean of a School of Public Health to be president of AAP. 

Fried has been dean of the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health since 2008 and the DeLamar Professor of Public Health Practice, professor of epidemiology and of medicine, and senior vice president at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. She has also served as director of the Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center since 2019.

An internationally renowned scientist, Fried has dedicated her career to the science of healthy aging and done seminal work in defining frailty as a medical condition She has led major NIH-funded population-based studies to determine the causes and consequences of frailty, chronic diseases, multimorbidity, loneliness, and disability in aging. Her continued dedication to these issues is demonstrated by her teaching the class (Y)our Longer Life to Columbia undergraduates this semester and last year.  

An elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and its Executive Council, Fried was appointed co-chair of the National Academy of Medicine’s 2019-2022 Global Commission on a Global Roadmap for Healthy Longevity, an initiative that will make strategic recommendations from the realms of public health, medicine, science, and technology. 

Fried is also the co-designer and founder of the Experience Corps, a ground-breaking model for senior volunteerism. It was designed to simultaneously support the success of children in public elementary schools and health promotion for the older volunteers, and is now in 23 U.S. cities and multiple countries. 

The recipient of numerous awards, Fried has been honored with the American Federation for Aging Research's Irving Wright Award, the 2008 American Geriatrics Society Henderson Award, the Alliance for Aging Research's inaugural 2011 "Silver Innovator Award," their 2012 Silver Scholar Award, and Foundation IPSEN's 2012 Longevity Prize, all in recognition of career contributions to aging research. In 2014, she was named as among the top 1 percent “most influential scientific minds of the past decade” by Thomson-Reuters, and in 2012, by The New York Times as “one of the 15 world leaders in science.” Most recently, Fried was named to City and State magazine’s 2021 Health Power List of individuals leading New York through the coronavirus crisis.