Dr. Med. Eliot J. Pearlman, MPH&TM, MPA is a strong proponent of the volunteer public service.
He has had a very distinguished career both as an Army Preventive Medicine Officer and as a public health expert in the fields of public health management and disease control.
Following his 27-year military career, Dr. Eliot J. Pearlman spent a year at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government obtaining a Master’s Degree in Public Administration; then spent a year teaching at the Bielefeld School of Public Health in Germany as a Dozent, and two years with the Harvard International Institute of Development in Bratislava working on occupational health policies for Slovakia’s transition into the EU.
Since 1999, he has been in Kyiv, first with a two-year contract at USAID as senior health advisor, and then engaged with the establishment of the Kyiv Mohyla Academy’s School of Public Health (2001-2). For the past 12 years, after establishing an international non-governmental organization “International HIV/AIDS and TB Institute”, he has led it to be a very vocal and proactive organization at a time when there were very few NGOs that were challenging the status quo in HIV and TB.
During this period of time, the NGO became a very significant entry point for young university graduates, who wished to work in a non-governmental sector and to be professionally and individually nurtured and mentored to hone their administrative, intellectual, and analytical skills for future careers in the public health sector. The spectrum of challenges ran from health care reform to HIV and TB and beyond. Being self-funded, the junior colleagues were able to interact with senior officials; and to attend both domestic and international conferences, which further developed their advocacy skills. Many have moved on to positions of greater responsibility both in Ukraine and abroad.
At the end of the day, it will be this training given to young professionals more than anything else, which will be my legacy to Ukraine and that one would be able to state that I was a Mensch!
I strongly believe in the German motto:
It has driven me in my whole life to achieve the best possible results and has also become the slogan of our "International HIV/AIDS and TB Institute".
Alles ist Möglich” (everything is possible).
