 He has been appointed to the Chair of Public Health at the Collège de France.Initially trained as a physician in Paris, Fassin practiced internal medicine as an infectious disease specialist at the Hospital Pitié-Salpétrière and taught public health at the Universite Pierre et Marie Curie.He has been the physician of the Home for the Dying in Calcutta and the initiator of a national program of prevention of rheumatic heart disease in Tunisia where it was the first cause of death among young adults.