Julio Frenk

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, as Mexico's secretary of health, Frenk introduced a comprehensive national health insurance program called Seguro Popular, which expanded access to health care for tens of millions of previously uninsured Mexicans.[3]

In 2003, Frenk was among five final candidates for the position of director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO) alongside Lee Jong-wook, Pascoal Mocumbi, Peter Piot, and Ismail Sallam; Lee was eventually appointed the position.[4]

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

In July 2005, Frenk drew criticism from U.S. Interior Secretary Carlos Abascal over the Mexican Ministry of Health's decision to distribute the morning-after pill at Mexico's government health clinics.

In September 2006, the Mexican government again nominated Frenk 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 Frenk's controversial 2004 tobacco deal could hurt his chances for election.[8] Along with Elena Salgado, Kazem Behbehani, Margaret Chan, and Shigeru Omi, Frenk was one of the five finalists for the position, which was awarded to Chan in November 2006.

Frenk's official installation as the University of Miami's sixth president on January 29, 2016

Following his service as Mexico's 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 subsequently served as dean of the faculty at Harvard University's Harvard T.H. Chan 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 made with the Harvard Kennedy School.[10] Under Frenk's leadership, Harvard's School of Public Health 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 as dean of Harvard School of Public Health, Frenk co-chaired, along with 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 place on infectious diseases like AIDS and malaria.[12] He served on the High-Level Task Force for the International Conference on Population and Development, co-chaired by Joaquim Chissano and Tarja Halonen, from 2012 to 2014.[13] In 2013, Fenk joined Vicente Fox and others in campaigning for marijuana legalization at a series of events in the United States and Mexico.[14]

In 2015, Frenk co-edited a collection of non-fiction essays on the subject of global health, "To Save Humanity," which included work from Michelle Bachelet, Larry Summers, Elton John, Frenk, and others.[15]

On April 13, 2015, the University of Miami announced the appointment of Frenk as the university's sixth president, succeeding Donna Shalala.[16] He was officially inaugurated on January 29, 2016.[17]

In 2015, Frenk's salary as University of Miami president was $1.14 million.[18]

Since 2022, Frenk has been a member of the Commission for Universal Health convened by Chatham House and co-chaired by Helen Clark and Jakaya Kikwete.[19]