FIU Professor Honored as a ‘Health Care Hero’

Floridia International University

MIAMI (May 24, 2005)—A lifetime of achievements for Florida International University public health Professor Janvier Gasana was publicly recognized when he was named a “Health Care Hero” by the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce earlier this month.

Long before Gasana was an assistant professor in FIU’s Stempel School of Public Health, he was a boy growing up in Runda, an area near Rwanda’s Capital City of Kigali. He grew up with a family that shared a love and tradition for the art of healing. From early on, Gasana gained an appreciation for the art of healing from his grandmother, Asterie. He watched as his grandmother, a traditional healer, took care of the sick on a daily basis. It is from those experiences that Gasana drew the inspiration to pursue a career in health care.

“Gasana’s tireless work in the area of health care is what makes him a hero,” said Dev Pathak, dean of the Stempel School of Public Health.

In 1984, Gasana graduated from Rwanda Medical School with plans to open a clinic in the capital. But destiny took him down another path. The dean of his medical school handpicked Gasana to join the medical school faculty, assigning him to the public health department in the area of environmental health. This turn of events was a blessing and the appointment turned out to be a perfect fit for the man who grew up idolizing his grandmother.

After spending four years on the faculty, he was required to pursue an advanced degree that brought him to the University of Chicago in 1988. While working on his doctorate in public health, Gasana returned to Rwanda to conduct research. It was during this time in his homeland that he narrowly escaped getting shot while retrieving water samples from the Nyabarongo River.

“The narrow escape was a reality check, and I decided to leave the country in September 1993,” said Gasana

He sought and received political asylum in the United States and continued his research work in Chicago. Gasana’s graduate research alerted him to Chicago’s serious lead poisoning problem. When he moved to Miami in 1995 to accept a position at FIU, Gasana asked officials at the Miami-Dade County Health Department for local led poisoning data. The initial review of the data revealed that the city’s underserved communities had a considerably higher rate of lead poisoning.

For more information on Janvier Gasana, or FIU’s College of Health & Urban Affairs or Stempel School of Public Health please visit http://chua2.fiu.edu/ssph/.

—FIU—

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