Thanking our staff

Last Friday afternoon, we celebrated Brent Wishart, Facilities/Maintenance Coordinator, who received the 2008 SPH Staff Excellence Award. People spoke admiringly of Brent’s devotion to the SPH and its people, his unflappable dedication to solving problems and removing roadblocks and his kindness. Linda Kastleman choreographed a hysterical skit in which people were calling Brent to do things from all over the atrium—just the way it happens in real life. He has a wonderful ability to juggle multiple balls with grace and agility. I have grown increasingly impressed by the quality of the staff at the SPH and am grateful that I am getting to know many of the people who work here.

Stimulating transformational research

I just finished reading the new report, Investing in Early-Career Scientists and High-Risk, High-Reward Research from ARISE, Advancing Research in Science and Engineering, a project of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The committee that developed the report is a stellar one that included highly respected academics as well as people from the business sector. They call for significantly more attention to developing the careers of our younger scientists and also to supporting transformative research. They argue that “leadership in science and technology is necessary to compete in the global economy” (p. 1). The report makes several recommendations to nurture early-career faculty. It also calls for encouragement of high-risk, high-reward, potentially-transformative research (p.1). “Science benefits greatly from work that has the potential to disrupt complacency and conventional thinking—innovations in methods, instruments and software and paradigm shifts” (p. 27). I am encouraged that many aspects of our recently funded Gillings Innovation Laboratories (GILs) are just what the report recommended to stimulate transformative research. You can watch several GIL, PI’s on our website as they discuss their projects.

The ARISE report shares some themes in common with Saturday’s (July 19) New York Times column by Bob Herbert entitled Yes We Can. He described reactions to Al Gore’s recent speech in which Gore issued a strategy challenge that the United States set a goal of getting 100 percent of our electricity from renewable resources and carbon-constrained fuels within 10 years. Herbert cautioned that “the naysayers will tell you that once again Al Gore is dreaming…” Then, he went on to say something very important.

“But that’s the thing about visionaries. They don’t imagine what’s easy. They imagine the benefits to be reaped once all the obstacles are overcome.” Herbert worries that the United States has become a “can’t-do” society instead of the “can-do” society we once were.

Al Gore is one of the world’s best, most well-known visionaries. But there are many others, and there should be even more. That ties back to the ARISE report. We must provide the means for our visionary researchers and teachers to turn their visions into new ideas, tools, methods, programs and solutions that change how we see problems and ultimately, benefit people (although not immediately for all discoveries). People in public health have a “can-do” past, and we must not lose sight of that, because there are huge problems waiting to be solved—by us!

Check the July 16th issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, JAMA. It has some interesting articles on race, including one that tracks the history of African American physicians and organized medicine and an excellent commentary by R. M. Davis on the need for contrition, reconciliation and collaboration with regard to race issues. The same issue also has an article about physical activity from ages 9-15 years, documenting the yearly decline in physical activity after age 9. That’s one of our biggest public health challenges.

BIOS to the rescue

Kudos to BIOS Professor Fred Wright and former SPH BIOS Professor Michael Schell for their mentions in the current issue of Newsweek. It is not every day that biostatisticians are interviewed for weekly magazines aimed at the public. Wright said that “most of the literature (linking a gene to a disease) is riddled with false discoveries.” Behind Fred’s claim is transformational research. Way to go Fred Wright and colleagues!

I am off Wednesday to Vancouver to my fourth Association Schools of Public Health Deans’ retreat. I am co-chairing this one. It is always a good chance to find out what other schools are doing and concerned about.

Happy Monday. Barbara

Our School’s impact:

Each year, I submit a progress report to the Provost about my role as dean and my and the School’s accomplishments over the past year. Similarly, the School’s chairs and unit leaders provide me their progress reports. A couple years ago, I asked them to include highlights of their unit’s impact in research, service and teaching. As I have said before, as a public university, we must hold ourselves to a standard of making a difference. Just to be clear, impact could be a groundbreaking new type of statistical test for microarray analyses, a basic science finding that changes how people view a nutrient, an epidemiologic result that alters how we understand breast cancer risk, a new teaching program that is educating students more effectively or the effect of an intervention on health policy or population health. In each case, something changes because of our work. This year, I read the Chairs’ reports with real pleasure and enthusiasm as I saw the many ways in which we are making a difference across the School. I will share some of these impact stories over the next few weeks. It is one of the things that excites me so much about being dean—this opportunity to achieve impact and to communicate about it. For now, more about the SPH’s impact can be found on our Web site.

Developing our talents:

I really appreciated HBHE Assistant Professor Noel Brewer sending me an article I’d seen in the New York Times July 6, but hadn’t grabbed electronically. It is called “If You’re Open to Growth, You Tend to Grow,” by Janet Rae-Dupree. The article begins, “WHY do some people reach their creative potential in business while other equally talented peers don’t?” After three decades of painstaking research, Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, PhD, believes that the answer to the puzzle lies in how people think about intelligence and talent. Those who believe they were born with all the smarts and gifts they’re ever going to have, approach life with what she calls a “fixed mind-set.” Those who believe that their own abilities can expand over time, however, live with a “growth mind-set.” Guess which ones prove to be most innovative over time.

“Society is obsessed with the idea of talent and genius and people who are ‘naturals’ with innate ability,” says Professor Dweck, who is known for research that crosses the boundaries of personal, social and developmental psychology. “People who believe in the power of talent tend not to fulfill their potential because they’re so concerned with looking smart and not making mistakes. But people who believe that talent can be developed are the ones who really push, stretch, confront their own mistakes and learn from them…”

As some of you know, I occasionally cite the wisdom of Group Fitness Coordinator Paula Brennan, spinning and fitness instructor/trainer extraordinaire at the UNC Wellness Center in Meadowmont. She has an expression which I have mentioned before: “We have to work our weaknesses.” It has a lot in common with Dweck’s conclusions. We have to develop the parts of us that don’t come easily. I’ve had to work really hard to develop my quantitative skills, but the more I’ve used these skills, the easier it becomes. Many of us, particularly those of a certain age (read: well over 50), grew up thinking that if we weren’t a natural at something, we just couldn’t or shouldn’t do that thing. For me, it was athletics. When I finished the NYC Marathon at age 40, I imagined every gym teacher who thought I was worthless at the finish line. And when I finish a session of ultimate conditioning, I still see those teachers. But boy, am I working my weaknesses!

I have watched some of our students struggle with their weaknesses, especially those who really have to work at writing or experience a setback in their work. Yet, when they put their hearts and minds to it and work with mentors, they improve in astonishing ways.

What’s striking is that sometimes the joy and satisfaction we get from surmounting our weaknesses is so much greater than performing in areas that come easily. I really resonated with Dweck’s message. It’s the kind of message that gives us hope that we can transcend our own weaknesses and limitations. After all, we are part of the university; we should never stop growing. I want this School to be the kind of place where people can work their weaknesses and get a lot of support doing so. That’s the ultimate strength training!

Happy Monday!

July 4^th holiday

Hope everyone had a good holiday. Aside from the fireworks and time away from work, it is good to spend a little time thinking about the history of this country and where we are today. I can’t imagine living anywhere else, but there are a lot of problems we must fix, including growing inequalities in health care, housing and income.

We had two days of really ferocious storms. Sunday morning, my husband and I rode our bikes along the Bolin Creek Trail, and it was staggering how many trees and really big branches were down. Periodically, we had to walk our bikes over trees and branches. I assume some of the devastation is the result of prolonged drought weakening the trees.

Visit from Chancellor and Provost

Last week, we hosted a visit from Chancellor Thorp, on his second day in his new position, and Provost Gray-Little. It was a great opportunity for us to inform the new Chancellor about the School’s strengths, current activities and some of the challenges we face. We talked about a couple of these challenges, including the need for more scholarship support for our students, especially multi-year awards that give students the peace of mind that comes from knowing they can focus on their education instead of juggling multiple jobs, as many of our students now do.

We also showed them how the downturn in federal funding is affecting our School and departments, some more than others. Thanks to three outstanding faculty members/Principal Investigators (Drs. Baric, Morrissey and Vizuete) and a number of people across the School (including Ramona DuBose, OJ McGhee and Tom Laney), we created brief videos with three PIs for Gillings Innovation Laboratories (listed above). Each of the PIs talked enthusiastically and compellingly about their GILs. These projects (and the others as well) aim to solve important, challenging public health problems using novel solutions and with a real sense that GIL support is letting the teams solve problems faster and better. We also visited Steve Meshnick’s lab. Both Provost Gray-Little and Chancellor Thorp were engaged throughout the visit, appreciated the School and asked excellent questions. We should have the videos available on our Web site later in the week. We will create videos for each of the GILs. Thanks to Mae Beale and Jenny Lewis for their help in creating briefing materials for the visit.

While I was sorry when Chancellor Moeser announced his intention to step down, I am confident that Chancellor Thorp is going to be a truly outstanding leader. His understanding of the University is deep and broad. In addition, he is an unbelievably smart, enthusiastic and intellectually curious person. Bernadette Gray-Little is a very important member of the UNC leadership team, and I really value her leadership and understanding of our School and the University.

Our changing Web site

Working with a local company, Jennings, we are in the process of dramatically redesigning, and I hope, improving our Web site so it is easier to navigate and more relevant to and useful for applicants and current students as well as others. We all agree we need more content that is engaging and interactive. This includes videos and access to social networking sites. I really want to encourage people associated with the School to unleash their creativity and to be part of the process so our website will be a living, breathing and evolving voice not just for our School but for public health.

Stay tuned for information from Assistant Dean Felicia Mebane about a photo contest, but don’t wait to send us your photos from work you’ve been doing this summer in North Carolina and around the world. We would like to post them on the School’s Web site and potentially print, frame and display them in our halls. (See “Send us your photos” on the SPH homepage.)

Happy Monday. Best, Barbara

In the journals

Over the weekend, I got caught up on some of the journals and magazines in my stack—JAMA, New England Journal of Medicine, Harvard Business Review, Wired, Annals of Behavioral Medicine and a few others. Joseph Cook, MD, PhD, an adjunct professor of epidemiology at our School, is the author of a fascinating NEJM article, Eliminating Blinding Trachoma. Trachoma is a horrible, blinding eye disease linked to poverty. It was a problem in the U.S. until the 1950s and is rampant in Africa and much of the developing world. Fifty-five million people are infected; about 3 million are visually impaired or blind as a result.

So, why wasn’t I aware of this before? How many of our students learn about it? What’s particularly tragic is that trachoma is largely preventable through access to safe water and good personal hygiene practices (health education) and is treatable with antibiotics. Yet, often the disease is neither prevented nor treated. The unjustness and unfairness of poverty-related conditions and diseases is so distressing, and the cycle of poverty is exacerbated by ill health. Surely, we can do better.

The June 28th issue of The Lancet, includes an editorial entitled “How to prevent a tenth of the global disease burden.”The article reflects upon a new World Health Organization report titled “Safer Water, Better Health.” (Jamie Bartram, one of the report’s three co-authors, spoke at our School last spring.)

The report concludes that 9.1% of the world’s global burden of disease could be prevented through better water, sanitation and hygiene. In 32 of the worst-affected countries, the estimate is 15%. Globally, that’s a huge potential impact, and the report does an excellent job of reviewing the data and estimating DALYs* and costs associated with possible interventions.

Anyone who cares about public health should read the report. It is brief, well-written and well-illustrated, and the case it makes is compelling. At the end of the editorial, The Lancet calls for an immediate water, sanitation and hygiene plan that should be discussed and implemented by the international community without delay. I’d like our School to be part of this effort.

*Note: DALYs (Disability-Adjusted Life Years) for a disease are the sum of the years of life lost due to premature mortality in the population and the years lost due to disability for incident cases of the health condition. The DALY is a health gap measure that extends the concept of potential years of life lost due to premature death to include equivalent years of “healthy” life lost in states of less than full health, broadly termed “disability.” One DALY represents the loss of one year of equivalent full health. – from the World Health Organization Web site.

Good books

I just read Blue Covenant (New Press, NY, 2008) by Maude Barlow. It’s about the global water crisis and analyzes causes and solutions. Nowhere is our planetary interdependence more clear than where water is concerned. Barlow cites the irony of Revelations 21.6: “To the thirsty I will give water without price from the fountains.” That is in contrast to the growing price and inaccessibility of water in much of the world. (Trachoma, which I mentioned above, thrives in areas where water is scarce and unsafe.) Barlow cautions that unless we “collectively change our behavior, we are heading toward a world of deepening conflict and potential wars over the dwindling supply of freshwater” (p. 142). While water is a public health issue, it also is a global security issue. That may lead us to new partnerships. I have been surprised how difficult it is to get federal funding for water-related research. It just doesn’t make sense.

Awards and Recognition

I am so excited that Professor Peggye Dilworth-Anderson (Department of Health Policy and Administration) was elected incoming president of the Gerontological Society of America. The GSA is a very influential organization that reaches across both theory and practice.

In the last week, Professor Mark Sobsey and alumnus Joe Brown, now assistant professor at University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, were awarded the 2008 Project Innovation Award from the International Water Association. It is a major recognition of their efforts to bring low-cost ceramic water filters to people who lack safe, accessible water.

Congratulations to Vangee Foshee on her promotion to professor. Hope Associate Professor Linnan is having a great time singing her way through Italy.

Have a great July 4^th – and Happy Monday!

Barbara

Dynamic colleagues

I’m so impressed by how multi-faceted many of our faculty, staff and students are. In April, our home page highlighted the athletic prowess of Environmental Sciences and Engineering students and faculty who completed the Boston Marathon. Many of our faculty, staff and students bike considerable distances to work – and anyone who’s biked around here understands that we earned the name Chapel HILL!

Musical talents in the School of Public Health are awesome as well. I’ll mention only a few of many examples. Cathy Melvin plays dulcimer, along with former Senior Associate Dean Ernie Schoenfeld. Michael Kosorok, who has a master’s in music as well as a PhD in statistics, composed a piece for his daughter’s high school. Mike McQuown plays in Freylach Time! The Klezmer Dance Band. Will Vizuete hosts a Sunday afternoon jazz show called Jazz Incognito. Kathryn Johnson is in a local band called Schooner. Kathy Barboriak and Laura Linnan sing with the Chapel Hill Community Chorus. I saw Laura Sunday and she mentioned that tomorrow she’s off to tour Italy with the chorus. Happy travels and please don’t decide to leave us for the Met!

The School of Public Health is full of fascinating people who are accomplished on many levels, and I’m proud to call them colleagues. In the coming months, we’ll find more ways to showcase their non-academic talents. Let us know if you have ideas.

University of Iowa flooding

Our thoughts are with our colleagues at the University of Iowa and the citizens of Iowa. The scale of flooding seems almost inconceivable, and the economic, social and personal dislocation are vast. I spoke with Jim Merchant, the dean of the School of Public Health at Iowa, last week, and he conveyed an optimistic determination to forge ahead, but wow, this is tough to deal with. It’s frightening to think that these horrible floods could become more frequent and more intense as a consequence of global warming.

Off to CDC

I’m off to the CDC this week where I co-chair the Task Force on Community Preventive Services. As I’ve said before, there’s probably no better way to stay on top of multiple literatures than to be part of evidence review teams. While the Task Force requires a lot of work, I really believe in the mission.

It’s great to have a break in the weather. After torrential winds and rain yesterday evening, the air is cool and pleasant. Enjoy it while it lasts!

Happy Monday!
Barbara

Reading matters

In the last week, I’ve read some interesting pieces in The New York Times and Atlantic about email and the internet. Last week, the Saturday NYT carried a story about a convergence in thinking among some big companies that now recognize that email is both a blessing and a curse and are trying to find a way out of the conundrum. They’ve done some interesting experiments which show that when people restrict their email to certain times of the day, in other words, when they exert control over their email, they appear to be more productive. It’ll be important for us to follow emerging best practices in this area. As readers know, I am concerned increasingly that my own productivity, at least, has suffered in the last year as a consequence of mounting email, much of it spam that is not immediately recognizable as such.

A related story in Atlantic asks whether Google is making us stupid. The hypothesis is that we are spending more time on the internet using Google and less time reading. This has important relevance for how we teach and learn, but it also has implications not just for our professional development but our leisure activities as well. I confess that my own book reading has declined over the last few years. At first, I attributed it to work overload, eye strain, late work nights and early morning workouts. But I noticed that all the explanations I give are similar to ones reported in national studies about reading. Right now, I am reading four different books; in past years, I would have devoured them much more quickly but it’ll take me several more weeks to finish them all. In contrast, I finished both Neverland and PR 2.0 on the plane to and from Abu Dhabi using the Kindle which shows what happens when one is a captive audience for 14 hours.

Nicholas Carr, author of the Google article, recounted his personal experiences and conversations with friends. There’s general agreement among them that the longer people spend online, the less reading they do and the more difficult time they have focusing attention for extended periods of time. That’s pretty scary for us as individuals and also as purveyers of knowledge and critical thinking. We need to talk a lot more about how these social phenomena should affect how we teach and how we continue to develop ourselves as people with ideas. There’s a lot of traffic on the web about the story, so it must be striking a chord.

Bad news

Many of us were saddened by news of Tim Russert’s death. Who can’t remember election night Gore vs. Bush and Russert’s famous whiteboard? (It’s also a lesson that sometimes simpler is better.) I haven’t watched “Meet the Press” in years and years, yet Russert is etched indelibly in my mind. How can we have a national election without Tim Russert!

Uplifting message

Many of you have heard of or know Ron Davis, MD, who once led the government’s Office on Smoking and Health and has been a tireless anti-smoking advocate. Ron is now a leader at Henry Ford Health System in Detroit and President of the AMA. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer several months ago. Pancreatic is one of the most virulent forms of cancer. I really admire the forthright, sometimes even humorous way, he has been writing about his personal cancer experiences. Michael Eriksen sent this link to a speech Dr. Davis gave to the AMA recently, AMA (Comm) Legacies in the circle of life.

Davis said about his disease, “As a physician, I know the survival statistics for someone with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. But if the five-year survival is 5 percent, that’s not zero. And as someone with relative youth, good functional status, outstanding health care, love and support from family and friends, and a thirst for life that feeds into a strong mind-body connection, then who knows what the future holds for someone in my situation. So never take away someone’s hope.” Those are powerful, inspiring words from a man with stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

Davis also reminds us about the importance of friends and family. “Another positive to come out of my illness is that family and friendship have been redefined for me. It’s cliché to say this, but yes, a serious illness does force one to reexamine one’s priorities in life. And I’ve been so very happy to be able to spend more time with Nadine and our three sons during these past four months. A person cannot be president of the AMA without having incredible love and support back home. And when you add the big “C” to the mix, that love and support become your lifeline. So Nadine and Jared and Evan and Connor, I can’t thank you enough.”

Davis, Russert and the recent articles about email and the internet all share a common theme: legacy. What contributions do we each leave behind that make the world better, healthier, safer? How do we make a difference?

Part II: Monday, June 9, 2008

On Monday late…in the skies approaching Lvov

Earlier tonight, before leaving the hotel, I sat in the hotel bar sipping coffee (read caffeine) and observed the world in which I found myself. All around me were groups of men dressed in traditional Middle Eastern galabiyya beautifully starched pure white cotton garments perfect for the 105 + temperatures, in animated conversations. There were almost no women anywhere in this male society, and I was an interloper but not at all uncomfortable. Outside, the sea glistened, a slight breeze had finally brought some movement into the stillness; against the traditional fashion and conversation was a huge outdoor screen and the French Open at Roland Garros. Abu Dhabi is a land of contrasts.

Earlier in the day, Drs. Jackie MacDonald and Ivan Rusyn, Jennifer Platt and I participated in the signing of a contract between UNC Chapel Hill and the Environmental Agency Abu Dhabi. Our collaborators, including UAE University and RAND Corporation were there. I did interviews with some Abu Dhabi TV and print journalists and found them a lot like their US counterparts. We had a project kick-off meeting to begin the work. Then, there were some remaining issues to be worked out about the scope of work, nuts and bolts research issues that one might have to work out on any large research project that involves many players.

We sat in a Majlis and met for a few more hours before we reached a conclusion everyone could endorse. The room itself was fabulous, in fact, I wish we could turn one of our SPH rooms into a space like that. Imagine a long room with beautiful loveseat size couches covered in a lovely kilm print and in front of every couch a low table. Several of us already were positioned on couches along the wall, and the men moved from sitting along the far wall to sitting on chairs and the floor around the coffee table. We dove into substantive discussions about sampling, measures and the pros and cons of different kinds of samples. We left with a plan. I really like the people with whom we are interacting, and although there are differences in how we work, there also are many similarities.

If only there were a magic carpet for getting between NC and Abu Dhabi…Happy Monday—just barely. Barbara (near Warsaw)

***

Part I: Sunday, June 8, 2008

DATELINE: Somewhere above the Porcupine Plain heading toward Abu Dhabi

I am on the plane in route to Abu Dhabi, with Jackie MacDonald, Assistant Professor ESE, also on board. Ivan Rusyn, Associate Professor, and Jennifer Platt, Research Associate and Project Manager for the UAE project, will be joining us, along with other colleagues on our contract and those from the The Environment Agency Abu-Dhabi (EAD). We are returning five months after our first visit, to sign a contract with the EAD to develop an environmental plan. We are all very excited about the opportunity to do this work, especially because we will have excellent partners from Abu Dhabi and the US. The methods we will use could be applied in the US if we were so fortunate to be in the position to develop a plan for a state or the US. The more I read about this part of the world, the more I recognize how important it is for UNC to be there and public health as well. I just read a very interesting book about the region, called Dubai Inc. It provides a good history of the area and also some of the issues in doing business or any work there. As a behavioral scientist who understands how culturally-specific programs often must be to be effective, I wonder how we will have to adapt our methods to fit with the culture, practices and values of the UAE.

I could not believe the number of different electronics and chargers I packed for this trip. Laptop, regular cell phone, Treo, Blackberry (which should work in UAE while Treo won’t), digital camera, and Kindle so I only have to carry one book (failure back-up). Traveling light is an oxymoron. And after doing my homework about adapters, none of the four I brought worked on the plane. This helped me commiserate with a nice young businessman from Pakistan who was planning to work for the 14 hour flight. Finally, one of the extremely pleasant Etihad attendants offered us adapters that worked. So, now I am quite happily working and watching the flight pattern. It’s easy to be happy on the first of 14 hours! It will get tedious, but at least this is a direct flight—from NYC. This is an impressive airline, the official airline of the UAE, and it just started in 2004. Think about how different it is running an airline from the UAE where the price of oil is a fraction of what it costs in the US!

I was thinking about how different it is going back to places. I am not a person who eagerly awaits going to new places. I admire the people who can’t wait to explore the next place. That’s true for a lot of our students, staff and faculty. But I do like going back to places I have been. I like knowing my way around whereas I am not crazy about learning my way for the first time (I have a terrible sense of direction.). I think about how unknown everything was when we went to the UAE just five months ago. But this time, I know more what to expect, including the neon everywhere that will be an arresting sight when we emerge from the arrival area in the airport. And I look forward to walking on the famous Corniche in Abu Dhabi—although when we were here before, the temperature was merely in the 80s, and it was 106 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday in Abu Dhabi. Of course, it was a mere 100 in Chapel Hill, so I am as ready as one can be.

Reading on the Kindle

For those not familiar with it, the Kindle is the e-book reader Amazon created, and it is pretty amazing in that it actually feels like a book but it is a fraction of the size of a book; in fact, I am carrying around many books on mine, and I can order more easily, along with magazines, newspapers and more. Eventually, our students may order their textbooks on e-books and download them. Are we ready? Are we thinking about how these increasingly good new technologies will change how we deliver our information? One of the books I am reading is PR 2.0. It is making me realize even more acutely that we must be tracking how we as a school are being written about on the web, because viral, social messages can be extremely important. It’s a new way of thinking about communications. We will harness these new tools or be left behind.

It’s 1:30 am in Abu Dhabi, and there’s a huge celebration of some sort going on outside my window. Better to work than be sleepless in Abu Dhabi… More tomorrow after we sign the contract and before I board the 2:00 am return flight Tuesday morning.

Happy Monday, Barbara

Remembering

Although I do not believe we should continue to be in Iraq, I support our soldiers there. They have paid a high price for duty—some with their lives and others with permanent disabilities. On this day, we think of them all.

Weekend activities

It is a beautiful day in North Carolina. I am excited that some of the daylilies I planted a couple months ago are starting to bloom, and the verbena looks great. I admire people who can plant from seeds, but personally, I don’t have the patience to wait. I started the day with Awesome Intervals at the fabulous UNC Wellness Center. It’s the kind of killer session that makes me glad I am healthy and fit enough to finish and sorry I am not more skilled.

SPH in Endeavors

It was great to see several School of Public Health faculty in the UNC magazine Endeavors this month. It’s a terrific magazine that is very well-written and does an excellent job documenting exciting and creative research work done by our faculty, staff and students. This issue featured a story about water and interviewed Associate Professor Greg Characklis and Professor Fran DiGiano about ways to reduce water consumption. The magazine also did a story on former faculty member Phil Setel’s research on the verbal autopsy in Mozambique. It is a very interesting technique to overcome the problem of missed deaths in many developing countries. Finally, the issue featured Assistant Professor Carmen Samuel-Hodge about her weight loss study. Her study, Weight-Wise, focuses on low income women in Wilmington, NC. Characklis and Samuel-Hodge are excellent examples of the important work we do in North Carolina. While we will be extending our global reach, we will do more than ever before in North Carolina, thanks to resources from the Gillingses’ gift. Samuel-Hodge’s work certainly has global relevance and is an example of work begun in North Carolina that could be adapted and tested in other settings. (The Spring 2008 issue of Endeavors, Volume XXIV, Number 3 can be found online at: http://research.unc.edu/endeavors/).

On top of McGavran-Greenberg

Last Monday, I visited with Professor Harvey Jeffries, Assistant Professor Will Vizuete and Research Associate Ken Sexton, along with two of their students, Kim de Bruijne and Seth Ebersviller. For me, the chance to learn firsthand what our faculty, staff and students do is one of the best parts of this job. They told me about their exciting research and took me to their lab and up to the top of McGavran-Greenberg where they have the only smog chamber in the US that can be used to examine how human lung tissue responds to different concentrations in the air, such as biodiesel or particular chemicals and other substances. Seeing Chapel Hill from the rooftop gives one a whole new perspective! What’s really impressive is that the investigators can experimentally examine and manipulate the impact of different kinds of particulates, chemicals and other matter on cultured human lung tissue, which we get through collaboration with Dr. Ilona Jaspers in the School of Medicine. The team was awarded a Gillings Innovation Lab to, among other things, create a portable smog chamber that can be taken all over the world—a novel idea.

Some of the folks in ESE are geniuses at product development; working with their own in-house shop to create new products and adapt existing ones for new uses. Faculty and folks from the shop created the smog chamber, using large Teflon panels that come out from the center in a tent-like structure.

I really like the fact that the kind of work these folks do literally goes from the basic science of toxicology to epidemiology and policy. EPA routinely seeks our faculty’s help in setting policy standards. Most policies are set without really understanding effects of factors like sunlight and without looking at what happens to human lung tissue. But sunlight can interact with, say emissions, to create more dangerous pollutants. With the smog chamber, we can provide a true laboratory based in the real world. It was great fun to hear students talking about being on 24 hour details to get measurements, some there at 2 am and others covering other periods in the day. Caveat: I am not an environmental scientist and probably have not done true justice to the science. See our GIL press release for more information about the GIL and other research being done by the team.

Our School

The School of Public Health is a remarkable place. There is always a new, interesting story to uncover. Over the next year, we will do a better job of turning these stories into videos, podcasts and other means of communicating our excitement about them.

Hope you had good holidays. Happy Monday and have a good week! Barbara

Commencement afterglow

This past week, I’ve been reviewing pictures of the School of Public Health’s commencement on our website. Thanks to Ramona DuBose for these fabulous pictures! (View pics on Flickr.) I’m struck anew by the joy and pride in the faces of our graduates (alumni!) and their families—and what a family affair it was. This is so different from my generation when many of us shunned graduations and other ceremonies. I still feel exhilarated by the School’s 2008 commencement, and I deeply enjoyed interacting with our students and their families and friends. I’m so grateful to Assistant Dean Felicia Mebane and her team, as well as Brent Wishart, Rob Kark, student services managers (some of the most beloved people in our School), student marshals and our Communications group for all they did to make the event successful.

Death by e-mail (IM etc)

I’ve been thinking about all the ways in which e-mail has come to dominate our lives, giving us instant access to people all over the world but potentially drowning us in more information than we can handle. I worry that by attending meticulously to the hundreds of e-mails in the daily inbox, leaders may focus too much on the immediate and insufficiently on the longer-term, strategic mission and goals that are the purview of organizational leadership. Our over-reliance on e-mail, coupled with multi-tasking, sometimes leads to messy interactions with colleagues, because we may write faster than we think. (I have been guilty of this.) We may forward a message too quickly without thinking through the ramifications. E-mail also has tremendous advantages. We may expand dramatically the range of people with whom we can communicate. And it sure beats the phone for quick answers to straightforward questions and interacting with people in far-flung time zones.

It seems like many of us are trying to find a way out of the e-mail conundrum. While we do not want to go back to a world without e-mail, we also want to regain some measure of the control over our lives that has been lost. One senior person said she was considering an e-mail free day in her office. An intriguing idea but not very practical given that some e-mail is highly time-sensitive. I’ve read a lot about managing e-mail and talked to many smart people about it. I do not have the answer. Maybe one of my readers does. I do know one thing for sure. I don’t want my epitaph to read…Here lies the dean, buried in e-mail.

What I’m reading

In the past week, I’ve worked through a couple of stacks of journals, like JAMA, and read a new Institute of Medicine report titled Knowing What Works in Health Care. (Thanks to my colleague Dr. Bob Croyle, Director Population Sciences at the National Cancer Institute, for alerting me to it.) IOM reports are generally a terrific way to get a substantive overview of fields and problem areas. The report’s premise is that decisions about health care of individual patients should be based on best evidence. The same should be true of decisions we make in the public health sector. The report deals with accepted methods to assess evidence and makes a series of recommendations about how to review and use evidence at the government level. I don’t agree with all the recommendations, but it is a thoughtful, thorough report. Schools of Public Health should assure that all students are familiar with accepted methods to review evidence and how they can be good consumers of evidence. One of the most satisfying and productive intellectual experiences of my career has been participating in evidence reviews.

I also was struck by a very interesting JAMA article about population health by Kindig and colleagues (A Population Health Framework for Setting National and State Health Goals). They propose a potentially useful way of thinking about population health and the factors that influence health outcomes. The authors argue that by setting targets in relation to health determinants and health outcomes, we’re more likely to consider potential downstream consequences of pursuing particular goals and actions to achieve them. The article mentioned America’s Health Rankings, an activity Professor Tom Ricketts leads on behalf of our School, in collaboration with United Health Foundation.

Reconnections

It was so good in the last week to hear from Dr. Michel Ibrahim, former Dean, UNC School of Public Health, and now professor at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Ibrahim led our School extremely well at a critical time in its history.

It’s hard to believe it is almost Memorial Day. Happy Monday, Barbara

I hope everyone who attended commencement had a great time and that even more faculty will attend next year. For me, it was a tangible, joyful reminder of why we are an educational institution and not merely a research organization—we prepare students to change the world for the better. It’s both fun and exciting to see how proud and hopeful our students and their families are when the journey has ended. It’s so rewarding to meet parents, spouses, and children of our grads.

I really enjoyed meeting our commencement speaker, Dr. Heather Munroe-Blum, who received an honorary degree from UNC-Chapel Hill May 11th. Dr. Munroe-Blum is the first woman to be principal and vice chancellor at McGill University in Canada, one of the finest universities in the world. She’s an astoundingly thoughtful person who is an astute thinker on the topic of leadership. We talked about how men and women function differently as leaders. I thought her commencement talk was right on the mark. She talked about our inter-connectedness as humans, globalization, leadership and other topics.

It’s exciting that two of the University’s honorary degrees went to people associated with public health. Along with Dr. Munroe-Blum, Dr. Philip Palmer Green, III was recognized for his transformational work in genetics. He talked about how he’d been so influenced by Dr. Robert Elston, a statistical geneticist who lived in Chapel Hill next door to him. Green, as Dr. Munroe-Blum did, mentioned people in our school (notably, biostatistics faculty) who’d given him opportunities here. He was nominated by Professors Fred Wright and John Anderson. Dr. Munroe-Blum was nominated by Professor Bert Kaplan. I appreciate them for taking the time to nominate these fine people. It’s a wonderful way to recognize outstanding people. It also educates a huge audience about what we do.

The other scientist who received an honorary degree, Dr. Peter Courtland Agre, works on malaria and commented to me that public health is a hot field.

So, the weekend brought not only appropriate focus on our graduates but also shone a light on the centrality of public health as an essential field in today’s world.

On another note, it was great to see Dr. Steve Marshall, Professor of Epidemiology, quoted extensively in a Sunday New York Times magazine article, “The Uneven Playing Field.” Steve is trying to understand why teenage girls who play soccer experience a disproportionate number of ACL injuries. It’s an important problem.

I really appreciate all the work Assistant Dean Felicia Mebane, Sherry Rhodes, student services managers, student marshals, Brent Wishart and Rob Kark do to make our commencement activities so enjoyable and flow so smoothly. It takes a village!

Saturday, along with Chancellor Moeser, Joan and Dennis Gillings were recognized by the GAA for what they’ve done for Carolina.

Happy Monday! Barbara