The Long View: Dr. Eugene J. Gangarosa: Making our global village a better place

by MainGate Staff

Fall 2020/Winter 2021

Dr. Eugene J. Gangarosa has been working to make our global village a better place for more than 70 years. It is that passion and drive that have inspired him to work tirelessly on behalf of the “have nots”—the 85 percent of the world that is “unserved or underserved in its health needs.” As Gangarosa points out, so many deaths in the developing world are preventable: they are due to “diseases of filth, poverty, and poor sanitation.” When people have access to safe water, fewer people—especially children—die of these diseases.

The Gangarosa family recently made a planned gift to AUB to establish the Gangarosa Family Endowed Chair for Safe Water and Sanitation. “AUB means so much to me,” says Gangarosa, “and has had a pivotal role in shaping my career in many ways.” He goes on to explain that another reason that he and his family decided to establish an endowed chair is that “hopefully other AUB professionals will feel as strongly as I do about the importance of AUB impacting their careers and be motivated to make their own endowments and perpetuate their own names.”

The endowed chair at the Faculty of Health Sciences, the faculty’s first endowed chair, will focus on water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) in the Global South– especially the needs of the Arab world. The individual selected to be the Gangarosa Chair at FHS will work closely with Dr. Christine Moe, the Eugene J. Gangarosa Professor of Safe Water and Sanitation and the director of the Center for Global Safe Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene at Emory University. Gangarosa hopes that the Gangarosa Chair at AUB will eventually lead to the establishment of a WASH Center at AUB—and that it and the WASH Center at Emory University will be part of a network of WASH centers around the world helping to make “our global village a better place.”

The Gangarosa name is already well known at AUB. Dr. Gangarosa was founding dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences from 1978 to 1981. It was in 1980 that Gangarosa met Professor Iman Nuwayhid, who stepped down as FHS dean in September 2020. Gangarosa and Nuwayhid have stayed in touch over the years, united by a shared commitment to social justice. It is a commitment that incoming FHS Dean Abla Sibai shares.

Another important connection that the Gangarosa family has to AUB is the Steinway grand piano that Rose Gangorosa, a devoted pianist and music teacher, donated to Marquand House when she and her husband left Beirut in 1981. The Gangarosa family will always be connected to AUB through both science and music.

1. Eugene J. Gangarosa, “A Global Perspective of Health, Vintage 1979,” Human Resources for Primary Health Care, American University of Beirut, 1980.