Jay Winsten is Director of the Initiative on Media Strategies for Public Health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health where he served for thirty-five years as an associate dean and founding director of the Center for Health Communication. The Initiative on Media Strategies recently launched Project Look Out, a distracted driving prevention campaign supported by General Motors. Winsten is best known as the architect of the U.S. Designated Driver Campaign, which introduced the designated driver concept into the American culture from Scandinavia, contributing to a sharp decline in alcohol-related traffic fatalities and injuries. The Chronicle of Philanthropy reported: “Many grant makers say it was the success of the campaign that persuaded them that skillful work with news and entertainment media can bring about social change.” Starting in 1997, the Center's Harvard Mentoring Project served as the communications arm for the youth mentoring movement in the United States in collaboration with MENTOR: National Mentoring Partnership. The campaign won the direct support of three U.S. presidents; General Colin Powell served as lead spokesperson. The annual number of young people matched with mentors through local programs grew from 300,000 in 1997 to over 3 million a decade later. Winsten also served for many years as a communications advisor to philanthropist and humanitarian Raymond G. Chambers, including on an international malaria-prevention campaign that financed and distributed over one billion insecticide-treated bed nets throughout sub-Saharan Africa.
