Academia From 1969 to 1986, Beasley was an assistant professor, then associate professor, then full Professor of
Preventive Medicine (adjunct with
Internal Medicine) in the Department of Epidemiology, at the
University of Washington School of Public Health and Community Medicine. In 1979 he became Director of the American University Medical Center (AUMC) in
Taipei, Taiwan. From 1986 to 1987, Beasley served as Professor of Medicine and Head of the Division of AIDS and Chronic Viral Infections at the
University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He assumed the position of Dean at the
University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) School of Public Health (UTSPH) in 1987, and remained dean until 2004. In 2005, he stepped down from the Deanship and had been an Ashbel Smith Professor, Director of the Center for International Training and Research (CITAR) and Dean Emeritus at the UTHealth School of Public Health until his death on August 25, 2012.
Research on hepatitis B Beasley's research on
hepatitis B spanned 1972 to 1986 in
Taiwan. Before beginning his research on
hepatitis B, Beasley worked on
rubella in Taiwan during the late 1960s and early 1970s with
Thomas Grayston, who was the first dean and founder of the
University of Washington School of Public Health and later became the vice president of the
University of Washington (UW). While working on a project on the efficacy of the rubella vaccine, Beasley became interested in hepatitis as "the infectious disease problem least understood and seemingly most important among those that remained unconquered after
polio,
smallpox, and
measles had been brought under control". In 1964,
Baruch Samuel Blumberg discovered a surface
antigen for hepatitis B in the blood of an Australian aborigine and, together with his team, developed a screening test. In 1974 Blumberg was awarded a Nobel Prize for this discovery. The
Abbott Laboratories then developed a more sensitive and specific
radioimmunoassay technique to detect the surface
antigen of hepatitis B. Beasley was excited that this technique would bring a new tool for his epidemiological study on hepatitis B. Beasley then showed that the "E"
antigen is a good predictor for
vertical transmission from mother-to-infant. This observation led to new clinical trials on the hypothesis of whether the
hepatitis B immune globulin (HBIG) protects newborns from being vertically transmitted from their mothers. Beasley and his team reported that babies receiving HBIG within a few hours of birth were protected whereas there was no protection for those who received HBIG after 24 hours. HBIG was then refined for administration to all newborns within minutes after birth. The results were astounding as the incidence of infection was reduced by approximately 75%. At the same time, Beasley tried to test his hypothesis that hepatitis B causes
liver cancer. However, he "ran into enormous skepticism by almost everybody" and "people were saying I was crazy." Noted that the association between liver cancer and HBV carriers was stronger than the association between lung cancer and smoking (i.e., 20–25 times). "It's one of the highest
relative risks that anyone has ever seen," said Beasley. However, skepticism remained "because many people feel that establishing causation requires elucidating a plausible mechanism by which the effect occurs," he recalled. "Dr. Beasley has saved countless lives from
cirrhosis and
liver cancer through his work on the
epidemiology and prevention of
hepatitis B," according to Herbert L. DuPont, Director of the Center for Infectious Diseases at UTSPH. "He is a giant in the field of infectious diseases.". On that occasion, Roberta T. Ness, Dean of UTSPH, said in
The Medical News, "Dr. Beasley's contributions to understanding the link between hepatitis B and liver cancer have saved thousands of lives. His work not only transformed our understanding of the cause of liver cancer, but then spearheaded the solution through vaccination.".
Public health education Beasley represented UTSPH to the Association of Schools of Public Health (ASPH) for almost 20 years. During those years he visited most of the now 38 schools of public health in the US, represented ASPH as a counselor/board member on the
Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH), chaired several of the key committees of ASPH including the Education Committee, and the International Health Committee. He also served on the ASPH's executive committee as Treasurer, Vice President, and later President. As President he led efforts to strengthen the accreditation criteria and procedures used by CEPH, increase practical as part of MPH level education, establish
credentialing for
public health professionals, increase funding for the
National Institutes of Health (
NIH) and
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), reform the CDC to include better funding for extramural investigators, and build closer ties with foreign schools of public health. He visited schools of
public health in many countries and as President of the ASPH he initiated an effort to have the schools cooperate to encourage
public health education in
India through the establishment of national schools of
public health. He has also served as internal advisor to several established foreign schools of
public health (e.g.
London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine,
National Taiwan University School of
Public Health), and schools in evolution (e.g.
Kyoto University). In his roles on CEPH and ASPH, he has reviewed the accreditation documents of every school of public health in the United States. In 2005 the ASPH gave greater emphasis to international health when it created a new cross-divisional Global Health Program with funding from an FIC Framework grant jointly to UT and
Baylor College of Medicine. This program has stimulated increasing numbers of students and faculty to learn about global health issues and seek experiences in developing countries. After stepping down from the Deanship in 2005, Beasley devoted most of his time to global health research and training. In 2004, he created CITAR, under the sponsorship of the
John E. Fogarty International Center,
NIH to provide a training focus for foreign students seeking graduate-level proficiency related to HIV research with its initial focus on
Vietnam. In 2007, he began a program of summer research internships for American students in international settings. == Awards ==