Julio Frenk

Secretary Frenk with President Vicente Fox and Reyes Tamez, Secretary of Education, in Los Pinos during the initialing ceremony of the National Institute of Genomic Medicine

Frenk's professional career began in 1984, when Frenk assumed the position of founding director of the Centre of Public Health Research, Ministry of Health of Mexico, a role he held until 1987. Following that appointment, he went on to serve as the founding director-general of the National Institute of Public Health of Mexico, from 1987 to 1992. From 1995 to 1998, he served as the executive vice president of the Mexican Health Foundation, a private non-profit organization, and the director of its Centre for Health and the Economy.

In addition to his many executive positions, Frenk has served in several academic roles including, senior researcher at the National Institute of Public Health and adjunct professor at the faculty of medicine of the National University of Mexico. He was also awarded the position of national researcher. In 1992–1993, he was visiting professor at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies.

In 1998, Frenk was designated executive director of evidence and information for policy at the World Health Organization (WHO), in Geneva, Switzerland.

Following the election of Vicente Fox in Mexico's 2000 presidential election, Frenk was appointed minister of health of Mexico, a position he held until December 2006.

In 2003, while serving as secretary of health of Mexico, Frenk introduced Seguro Popular, a program of comprehensive national health insurance which expanded access to health care for tens of millions of previously uninsured Mexicans.[2] One test of any national healthcare delivery program is its durability after the key architects of the plan are no longer in power; Seguro Popular is still operating in late 2016.[3]

Nominated by Mexico's government, Frenk was among the five final candidates for the position of director-general of WHO in 2003, alongside Lee Jong-wook, Pascoal Mocumbi, Peter Piot and Ismail Sallam; the post eventually went to Lee.[4]

In 2004, Frenk was criticized by tobacco control advocates for cutting an unusual deal with tobacco companies. Philip Morris and British America Tobacco agreed to donate $400 million for health programs in Mexico over 2½ years, but reserved the right to cancel the donation if cigarette taxes were raised[5]

In July 2005, Frenk met the opposition of Interior Secretary Carlos Abascal, a conservative Catholic, because of the decision of the Ministry of Health to distribute the morning-after pill at government health clinics.

In September 2006, the Mexican government put Frenk's name forward for a second time as a candidate for the leadership of WHO.[6] The British medical journal The Lancet published an editorial[7] endorsing Frenk as the best candidate, while The Wall Street Journal reported that the controversial tobacco deal could hurt his chances for election.[8] Alongside Elena Salgado, Kazem Behbehani, Margaret Chan and Shigeru Omi, Frenk eventually became one of the five finalists; in the end, the position was awarded to Chan in November 2006.

Julio Frenk is officially installed as the 6th president of the University of Miami on January 29, 2016

Following his service as minister of health, Frenk was tapped to serve as senior fellow in the global health program of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation where he counseled the foundation on global health issues and strategies.

Frenk served as Dean of the Faculty at Harvard University's School of Public Health from 2009 until 2015.[9] While at Harvard, he was also the T & G Angelopoulos Professor of Public Health and International Development, a joint appointment with the John F. Kennedy School of Government.[10] Under his leadership, the school received its largest-ever gift of $350 million and was renamed Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in 2014.[11]

In addition to his role at Harvard, Frenck co-chaired (alongside Lincoln Chen) the Commission on the Education of Health Professionals for the 21st Century, which published its final report in The Lancet in 2010; the report recommended that governments place the same emphasis on fighting cancer that they do on infectious diseases like AIDS and malaria.[12] In 2013, he joined Vicente Fox and others campaigning for marijuana legalization at a series of events this year in the United States and Mexico.[13]

Frenk assumed the presidency of the University of Miami, on 16 August 2015, a position formerly held by Donna Shalala.[14][15] He was officially inaugurated on 29 January 2016.[16] He co-edited a collection of nonfiction essays on the subject of global health entitled "To Save Humanity," which includes work from contributors as varied as Michelle Bachelet, Larry Summers, Elton John and himself.[17]