Speaker’s Biography   Alvin Richard Tarlov, M.D. Ross University School of Medicine 2008 Keynote Graduation Speaker   Dr. Tarlov received his bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College and his M.D. from the University of Chicago. He completed his residency in internal medicine at the University of Chicago, after which he spent 5 years in hematologic research, partly at the University of Chicago and partly in the Department of Biological Chemistry at Harvard Medical School. His institutional affiliations since then have included: University of Chicago, 1964 to 1983, where he served as chairman of the Department of Medicine for 13 years; president, Henry J. Kaiser Foundation, Menlo Park, California, from 1984 to 1990; professor of medicine at Tufts University and professor of health promotion at Harvard School of Public Health from 1990 to 2000; director, Texas Program for Society and Health, and director of health policy, James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, Rice University, Houston, from 2000 to 2005; and professor of medicine, University of Chicago, 2006 to present.   Dr. Tarlov’s research began with studies of red blood cell production and metabolism. His attention then turned to studies of the number of physicians required in each specialty to meet the health care requirements of the U.S. population. In 1978, the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, appointed Dr. Tarlov chairman of the newly created Graduate Medical Education National Advisory Committee. Its purpose was to advise the secretary on the number of physicians needed in each specialty, and the means to achieve their optimal geographic distribution across the country. The final report of the committee was completed in nine volumes in 1981. This was followed by a decade of development and use of measures to compare the outcomes of medical care over time when care was provided by different organizational and financial systems of care. His most recent work has integrated the health sciences with the social and policy sciences into a theory of the production of human health and development over a lifetime.   Currently, Dr. Tarlov is focused on formulating and advocating public policies to make universally available to all U.S. children from birth to age 5, high-quality early education as a means to improve the long-term health of all Americans. An ultimate purpose of these policies is to guarantee that the U.S. workforce has the knowledge, capability, skill, work flexibility, and motivation to support a vibrant U.S. economy, and to foster family well-being, durability, and health. This work has recently been published in book form in Investing in Early Childhood Development: Evidence to Support a Movement for Educational Change.   Dr. Tarlov has been named a John and Mary R. Markle Scholar in Medicine, a National Institutes of Health Career Development Awardee, president of the Association of Professors of Medicine, chairman of the Federated Council for Internal Medicine, a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, a master of the American College of Physicians, a Robert J. Glaser Awardee of the Society of General Internal Medicine, a Distinguished Internist Awardee of the American Society of Internal Medicine, and an Honorary Fellow of University College, London.