Thomas T Kane

Thomas Kane was appointed the Director of the William Joiner Institute in June 2013. Dr. Kane enlisted in the U.S. Army in July 1969 and served for six years of active duty in the United States during the Vietnam War. He received his BA degree from George Washington University, a MA degree in Demography from Georgetown University, and a MA (1982) and PhD (1984) in Sociology from Princeton University. He has been awarded fellowships and/or grants from NIH, Princeton University, the DAAD, the East-West Center, USAID, and the Rockefeller, Ford and Mellon Foundations. Dr. Kane has worked in the field of international public health for over 30 years, working in more than 30 countries. From 1991-1996 Dr. Kane was a tenure-track faculty member of the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health, teaching program evaluation and operations research methods, and conducting research and evaluations of public health programs in developing countries in Africa and Asia. He continued to serve as an adjunct faculty member at JHU for an additional 10 years while living and working overseas. Dr. Kane’s international health work has included six years residence in Vietnam as Country Director for Family Health International and a consultant for United Nations agencies, USAID’s War Victims Fund (WVF) and the Displaced Children and Orphans Fund (DCOF), and for several international NGOs. Dr. Kane also worked as a Senior Operations Research Scientist at the ICDDRB Center for Population and Health in Dhaka Bangladesh (3 years); as a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow at the Sahel Institute in Bamako Mali (2 years) and for a year in Nigeria while on the faculty of Johns Hopkins University.  He is currently conducting research on American veterans and is also working with the government of Vietnam, USAID, the Hanoi School of Public Health, and international and Vietnamese NGOs in Vietnam to study the impact of war and other causes on disability in the Vietnamese population in areas heavily affected by Agent Orange dioxin exposure from the Vietnam-American war. Dr. Kane has authored/ co-authored several books and published numerous peer-reviewed journal articles on a range of public health, social, and development issues. He lives with his wife and two daughters in North Marshfield, MA.