Jeffrey L. Sturchio
Jeffrey L. Sturchio is President and CEO of the Global Health Council, the world’s largest membership alliance of public health organizations and professionals (in more than 100 countries on six continents) dedicated to saving lives by improving health throughout the world.
Dr. Sturchio joined the GHC in August 2009, after retiring at the end of November 2008 as Vice President, Corporate Responsibility, at Merck & Co., Inc., in Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, where he managed a portfolio of activities including Merck’s corporate philanthropy, the Merck Institute for Science Education, the Merck Childhood Asthma Network, global health partnerships (including the Merck MECTIZAN Donation Program), global HIV/AIDS access programs, corporate responsibility reporting and the Merck Archives. He also served as President of The Merck Company Foundation, a US-based, private charitable foundation established in 1957 by Merck & Co., Inc., which is Merck’s chief source of funding support to qualified non-profit, charitable organizations. (In 2007, Merck made cash contributions of $62 million, donations of medicines and vaccines -- including the Merck Medical Outreach Program and the MECTIZAN Donation Program -- of $605 million, and donations of medicines through the Merck Patient Assistance Program of $161 million.) Since 2000, Dr. Sturchio was centrally involved in Merck’s participation in the UN/Industry Accelerating Access Initiative to help improve HIV/AIDS care and treatment in the developing world. He was a member of the board of the African Comprehensive HIV/AIDS Partnerships in Botswana (2005-2009) and a member of the private sector delegation to the Board of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria (2002-2008). He joined Merck in June 1989 as the Company’s first Corporate Archivist.
In 2008-2009, he was also Chairman of the Corporate Council on Africa, whose 150 member companies represent some 85 per cent of total U.S. private sector investment in Africa and work closely with governments, multilateral organizations, NGOs and business to improve the trade and investment climate on the African continent and to raise the profile of Africa in the US business community. Dr. Sturchio is also a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health and the Study of Business Enterprise at The Johns Hopkins University and a member of the Global Agenda Council on Health of the World Economic Forum.
Dr. Sturchio received an A.B. in history (1973) from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in the history & sociology of science from the University of Pennsylvania (1981). His previous positions include the AT&T Archives, the Beckman Center for the History of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers University, and the New Jersey Institute of Technology. He has also been a Postdoctoral Fellow and Senior Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History (NMAH) and a Visiting Fellow of LSE Health and Social Care at the London School of Economics. In 2004 he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2010 he was elected a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
His publications include Chemistry in America, 1876-1976: Historical Indicators (Reidel, 1985; paperback edition, 1988), written with A. Thackray, P. T. Carroll, and R. F. Bud; Values & Visions: A Merck Century (Merck & Co., Inc., 1991); “Pharmaceutical firms and the transition to biotechnology: a study in strategic innovation” (with L. Galambos), Business History Review 72 (Summer 1998): 250-278; “Successful public-private partnerships in global health: lessons from the MECTIZAN Donation Program,” (with B. Colatrella), in The Economics of Essential Medicines, ed. by B. Granville (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 2002); “Partnership for action: the experience of the Accelerating Access Initiative, 2000-04, and lessons learned,” in Delivering Essential Medicines, ed. by A. Attaran and B. Granville (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 2004); "Business and global health in an era of globalization: reflections on public/private partnerships as a cultural innovation," in Cultural Politics in a Global Age: Uncertainty , Solidarity and Innovation, ed. by D. Held and H. Moore (Oxford, UK: Oneworld Publications, 2008); and "Business engagement in public programs: the pharmaceutical industry’s contribution to public health and the Millennium Development Goals." Corporate Governance: The International Journal of Business in Society 8, no. 4 (2008): 482 – 489.
