Jane Bertrand, a leading international health expert, became director of the Center for Communication Programs on Jan. 1. She succeeds Phyllis Tilson Piotrow, who founded and developed JHU/CCP into a center with a $50 million annual budget and a staff of 470 people working in 30 countries worldwide. Piotrow, who retired in December, will continue her work as a professor in the Bloomberg School of Public Health's Department of Population and Family Health Sciences, where Bertrand also will hold a faculty position.

"I am honored to continue the work of an influential figure in the field of international public health," Bertrand said. "Phyllis has been a pioneer in transforming information, education and communication activities into the respected scientific discipline of strategic behavior- change communication, which is now recognized as a major component in most public health programs around the world."

A graduate of Brown and the University of Chicago with an M.B.A. from Tulane, Bertrand is an expert in the fields of international family planning, applied research and strategic health communication. Fluent in French and Spanish, she has dedicated the majority of her career to research on reproductive health in developing countries.

Bertrand spent 22 years at Tulane, where, from 1994 to 1999 she chaired the Department of International Health and Development, the largest department within the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in terms of both student enrollment and sponsored research.