During his career at Brown, Vivier served as professor of pediatrics; community health; health services, policy and practice; and emergency medicine—his academic career straddling Brown’s School of Public Health and Brown’s Division of Biology and Medicine. Until 2016, he also worked as a pediatrician, most recently serving as director of the
division of general pediatrics and community health in the Hasbro Children’s Hospital/Rhode Island Hospital department of pediatrics.
From his work on lead poisoning, reading proficiency, and childhood obesity, to his efforts to improve information systems to enhance the delivery of health care, Vivier has focused his career on children and the early life factors that impact health and flourishing. As founding director of the Hassenfeld Child Health Innovation Institute, Vivier established the Institute as a collective of locally-based initiatives—providing critical services to hundreds of Rhode Island children—with far reaching national implications for improving the lives of children and families.
Vivier’s legacy at Brown, however, lives most strongly in the students and alumni he has served. In 2002, he took over direction of Brown’s Master of Public Health program, which had just graduated its first class, and grew it into a fully accredited program with multiple signature areas of focus. He established the Clinical and Translational Research program and developed Brown’s 5-year undergraduate/graduate public health program (the AB/MPH). He worked collaboratively with the Watson Institute to create the MPH/MPA which closely ties public health science with public policy to prepare students to address critical health policy issues in the United States and throughout the world.
Throughout his decades of leadership at Brown, Vivier remained guided by the needs of students and committed to their success. We thank Dr. Vivier for his dedication to Brown’s students and alumni, and for his numerous contributions to public health and to education at Brown University.