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

(May 4)

I write while waiting for my plane to take off for Atlanta. This will be short.

As our students continue to depart, those of us who remain must make the transition to the time of year when our atrium is not filled with intensely-focused students talking in animated groups. If I have to choose between finding parking places on Franklin Street and having students here, I’ll choose the students.

I’ve had a few conversations with graduating students about their experiences here, both positive and not-so-positive. Don’t hesitate to email me with suggestions about what we can do to make the School even better. Tell us what is working well and what might not be working. We’ve got to keep earning our reputation for being student-focused.

I look forward to seeing faculty, staff, students and their friends and families at commencement for the School Saturday. We were all surprised by Memorial Hall’s policy about requiring tickets. I hope you will trade tickets with each other to make sure everyone gets what they need.

Thanks to Mae Beale for her help in posting the blog and adding photos. She also helps to double check and make sure I’m not missing comments. But if you think I’ve missed your comment, don’t hesitate to email me at Brimer@unc.edu.

Check out the Button Chair exhibit in the atrium of Michael Hooker Research Center, a project of Blue Cross Blue Shield North Carolina to honor breast cancer survivors and educate people about breast cancer and how it can be found earlier. I was glad to have been asked to comment on the script last year and pleased that the NCIPH has facilitated the exhibit.

Also check out an article on a recent gift to create a new Canadian school of public health.

Thanks to our faculty and staff for all they do to educate our students and to our students for having chosen Carolina.

Happy Monday. Barbara