Monday after

Last week was quite a week, wasn’t it! Thanks to all of you who came to the naming events including Tuesday’s Global Health Fair and Friday’s naming celebration. The Global Health Fair was a lot of fun, and I was really impressed by the global research our students are doing. We will post on the School’s LCD screens and on this blog a list of people I especially want to thank for their efforts in making last week a wonderful experience and a real testimony to the value of public health.

For people who could not be at the event, we had an impressive naming celebration at which President Bowles, Chancellor Thorp, PhD, Board of Trustees Chair Roger Perry, State Health Director and Director, Division of Public Health, NC DHHS, Leah Devlin, DDS, MPH, and Student Government Co-President Lauren Thie spoke. I was very proud of the job Lauren did representing our students. The way all the speakers talked about the importance of public health in today’s world was really striking. Because of the celebration, a lot of people came to the School and heard about public health’s importance and this School’s value. It was really a rush to look up at three levels of the atrium and see so many of you there for the event. That’s important, because although some kind words were said about me, the reputation of the School and our ability to deliver on people’s expectations are dependent on all of us. I could not have stood there had it not been for all of you and all the people who came before us. I loved the band Big Fat Gap (thanks to Kathryn Johnson and Mae Beale for finding them) and hope folks enjoyed them and the picnic. It was pretty amazing that the sun came out as the ceremony ended.

The way forward

We are very fortunate to have received the very generous gift from Dennis and Joan Gillings. I believe we have made very wise investments that are starting to bear fruit. We will continue to treat the funds (about half of which remain in endowment) with great care and respect, and there will be lots of discussion about how to assure that, as priorities evolve, we remain nimble. Managing Director Julie MacMillan, MPH, and her Carolina Public Health Solutions staff have done a superb job.

I also believe that the world shifted subtly last week; more will be expected of us, and we must deliver on reasonable expectations. Each speaker addressed the imperative for us to serve North Carolina. Dennis Gillings, CBE, exhorted the School to think globally and act locally, a perspective very much in line with public health. I’d like to see more discussion within the School about how best to serve our state. Of course, we have the very excellent North Carolina Institute for Public Health, but there also is a lot of other activity from all sectors of the School. Are there ways we can do a better, more coordinated job of serving North Carolina?

As most of you know, President Bowles’ UNC Tomorrow initiative is heavily dependent on our ability to deliver. And we also recognize that service is one–but only one—of the many expectations for the School. To all the students, faculty, staff, alumni and friends who wonder if we’re going to turn away from North Carolina, let me repeat what I said at the ceremony: “Hear me now, we are more committed to North Carolina than ever before.” So watch us, get involved, give us ideas and help us!

Our Web site redesign

Our new-look Web site was launched on Friday, and I hope you will agree that it looks fantastic! Communications and Instructional and Information Systems (IIS) worked very hard and it shows.  Special thanks to Kathy Barboriak, PhD, Jay Cartwright, Ramona DuBose, Charlie Hitlin, MS, Will Foushee, Patrick Gale, BSc, Chris Perry, Dave Potenziani, PhD, Jennings & Co, SPH Web Council and the 60+ content managers across the School. They did great! If you haven’t explored our redesigned Web site yet, please do. We welcome your feedback.

Exhibits

If you get a chance, go to the Health Sciences Library (HSL) exhibit about our School. I am totally blown away by how wonderful it is.  I am grateful for its contribution to understanding the impact of our School and how public health challenges both have changed and remained constant. I love the way the history of North Carolina public health was delved into, uncovering fascinating artifacts and even the song “It’s up to you.” This is a great example of how the HSL serves the health sciences schools. Kudos to Linda Kastleman, Communications Manger here at our School, Daniel Smith, JD, Special Collections Librarian, and all the people who worked on this project.

Check out the wonderful photos, taken by many of you, now hung on the first floor of Rosenau Hall. Thanks to all who contributed their photos and to Rob Kark, MBA, Brent Wishart and Linda Kastleman for creating a stunning gallery!

Also, there is an exhibit of recent books published by our faculty installed in the 2nd floor atrium of the Michael Hooker Research Center thanks to Linda Kastleman.

This week

I am off to National Institutes of Health (NIH) to give a talk on the intersection of genetics and public health. A number of people in this School were very generous in sharing slides; thank you Kari North, PhD, Rebecca Fry, PhD, Ivan Rusyn, MD, PhD, and Steve Zeisel, MD, PhD, Kenan Distinguished Professor. Thanks to Vangie Foshee, PhD for sharing her innovation project. Friday, one of my students, Jennifer Gierisch, will defend her dissertation (Jo Anne Earp, ScD, HBHE Interim Chair is dissertation chair). Go Jennifer!

Start making plans for voting day. It’s nearly right around the corner. I hope some of you will volunteer for the candidate of your choice and help get out the vote. The stakes in this election are so high.

It’s a beautiful day at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health (Thank you Fred Rogers.). Happy Monday. Barbara

The week ahead

It’s going to be an amazing week. Two of our Gillings Visiting Professors, Jim Merchant, MD, PhD, and Sheila Leatherman, MSW, will be here this week. We announced Sheila’s appointment last year; she focuses on microfinance. Jim recently stepped down as dean of the University of Iowa’s College of Public Health. His research has covered topics such as occupational health and rural health. We want people throughout our School to benefit from these visiting professors, so don’t hesitate to email them and ask to meet. You can find their email addresses on the UNC directory.

Tuesday, the Office of Global Health, Office of Research and Office of Student Affairs are sponsoring a Global Health Fair in the atrium of the Michael Hooker Research Center from 4pm-6pm. Come—it will be fun! These are great folks. Also see how Gretchen Van Vliet, MPH, Director, Office of Global Health, and Peyton Purcell have transformed the window adjacent to the Rosenau lobby with global artifacts and photos.

A lot of people have been working hard to assure that the event Friday is respectful of our mission and values, as well as fun, especially for students, and a fitting way to celebrate a very big milestone for the School.

Julie MacMillan, MPH, Managing Director, Carolina Public Health Solutions, has chaired a terrific committee that has been meeting for more than six months to plan the events. Committee members are listed at the end of this blog entry. Jerry Salak, Director of Donor Relations, has done an amazing job of working with different vendors and responding to our ever-evolving preferences, for example, my strong desire to support locally produced foods, and the opportunity for the School to express environmental values through careful choices in paper plates, water bottles and the like. If all goes as planned, Friday’s event will be the University’s first waste-free event, thanks to the willingness of folks on campus to bring us composting bins and other paraphernalia. But it’s Jerry who is making this all happen. Having hundreds and hundreds of people in the School for an event doesn’t just happen and our facilities folks, Rob Kark and Brent Wishart, are attending to every detail. I hope everyone enjoys the freshly planted flowers outside the Rosenau front patio. The area looks a lot better too, and hopefully, now it will be attractive to more than just our weekend skateboarders (who do provide an interesting distraction outside my window).Thanks to all of you who registered for the event.

Friday, the latest issue of Carolina Public Health magazine will be available. It is a wonderful issue that includes brief interviews with a number of public health deans about the future of public health. Kudos to Ramona DuBose, Director of Communications, Linda Kastleman, Information and Communication Specialist, Emily Smith, former Assistant Director of Communications, and several free-lance writers as well as many people around the School. There’s also a historical exhibit at the Health Sciences Library, featuring the School.

It also will be the debut of a fabulous new video about the School with a lot of SPH stars.

Friday, our new-look website will go live, thanks to a whole lot of people around the School. I will acknowledge them next week.

Saturday

As most readers know, during football season, I try to make most of the home games. A beautiful Saturday in September is pretty special in Chapel Hill, and the stadium crowd was up for the game. I left at half-time to get work done and listen on the radio. What a disappointment to lose that one! Walking back from the game, I had the very disturbing experience of walking close by several students, one of whom was dreadfully drunk and being held up by her friends. She could barely walk, and her friends were half-carrying her along. I don’t understand is recreational binge drinking; it is a widespread serious threat to life and health.

Later that day, I ran a few errands, Saturday being the only day for that. I had to go to one of the malls and was waited on by a delightful young woman who at one point apologized for becoming distracted and told me that her mother was in UNC Hospitals with cancer—a mother younger than I am. The mother has worked hard all her life as a hairdresser but lacks health insurance. A cancer diagnosis for someone without health insurance may be the beginning of bankruptcy. Her children have moved in with her to take care of her and help pay the bills. By the end of our conversation, I was wavering between feeling really helpless and distressed and being angry. It is unconscionable that we are a society that can afford a catastrophic war in Iraq and the financial rescue of large companies (and we have been left with no choice but to do the latter), but that hard-working citizens who become ill are left bereft. In thousands of venues, and in the thousands of days since I was an MPH student at Michigan in 1971, we have talked health insurance to death—but we haven’t fixed the problems.

I hope everyone who reads this, everyone at the School and associated with the School, will become informed about the differences between the health plans proposed by candidates Obama and McCain. I know a lot of people look at the field and see a lack of bold vision. But there are profound differences between the candidates. Whoever you vote for, vote knowing the real-world implications of your choice. It will make a difference.

Faculty mentoring

There’s been a lot of depressing news in this entry. I want to end on something upbeat. Two years ago, we started a School-wide mentoring program for new faculty, to supplement departments’ mentoring efforts. I’d heard a lot of comments from the School’s assistant and associate professors that led me to start this and to ask Jan Dodds, EdD, MEd, Professor of Nutrition, to lead it. Wednesday, I had lunch with about 10 new faculty members and their mentors. What a group! I am so impressed by the people we have hired. They are smart, collaborative and thrilled to be here. They talked about how wonderful it is to be here, and how when they e-mail faculty members from around the campus, the individuals almost all offer to meet with them and want to be helpful. The mentors are a superb group of people who are giving their time to help these colleagues from around the School. Kudos to ESE Professor Bill Gray, PhD; HBHE Research Professor Bob DeVellis, PhD, MA; HPM Research Associate Professor and Sheps Center Senior Research Fellow, Sandra Greene, DrPH, MSPH; and MCH Associate Professor Carolyn Halpern, PhD, MA. The new faculty members at the lunch included: ESE Assistant Professor Rebecca Fry, PhD; HBHE Assistant Professor Clare Barrington, PhD, MPH; NUTR Research Assistant Professor Marlyn Allicock, PhD, MPH; EPI Assistant Professor Melissa Troester, PhD, MPH; ESE Assistant Professor Jill Stewart, PhD; and EPI Associate Professor Stephen Cole, PhD. If you run into one of them, do what Howard Weinberg, DSc, MSc (Associate Professor ESE) does—ask how they’re doing!

Hope to see y’all Friday. And Happy Monday! Barbara

In the presence of heroes

Friday afternoon, I attended one of the most moving events I have been part of in a very long time. Led by Professor Ed Fisher, PhD, former Chair, the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education (HBHE) sponsored an event to examine the historical roots of the department.

They invited H. Jack Geiger, MD, MSciHyg, ScD (hon) and John W. Hatch, Jr., DrPH, MSW, to talk about their experiences developing the concept and reality of community health centers in Bolivar County, Mississippi, and Columbia Point, Boston, Massachusetts, the first two community health centers in the United States - the beginning of a movement.

Jack Geiger is the Arthur C. Logan Professor of Community Medicine at the Medical School of the City University of New York.  He has received numerous awards, including the Nobel Prize and an honorary degree from UNC.

Hatch also has been recognized with numerous awards, including Kenan Distinguished Professor. Ted Parrish, DrPH, former Chair of Health Education at North Carolina Central University, provided perspective on the importance of their work, as did Lynn Blanchard, PhD, MPH, Director of the Carolina Center for Public Service, and Jo Anne Earp, ScD, HBHE Interim Chair.

Professor Geni Eng, DrPH, moderated and showed a video filmed while Geiger and Hatch were in Mississippi in the late 1960s/1970s. It was almost overwhelming to observe the poverty that confronted them in Mississippi and how they created, out of dirt and poverty, first a health center, then fields and crops, a school that educated people and created a model of how to improve lives.

I thought about the fact that, over the years, we have developed sophisticated models to describe the multiple kinds of determinants that affect health. Yet, these men went to one of the poorest places in America and created a new model of health care, one in which they worked with the community to develop its educational resources, sending residents to college for the first time, buying acreage so they could grow their own food, defining health in all its complex multidimensionality and not merely as the provision of primary care, which millions of people still need in this country. Of course, health services are essential, but they are not enough. The studies that were done in the early days of the community health center movement provided the evidence that people got healthier as a result of interventions on multiple levels.

This is another example of the fact that UNC School of Public Health has been fighting for social justice and improved health and social conditions for the long run. Jack said that their ideas for the community health center concept were partly formed by a visit he’d made to health centers in South Africa where he met several people who were part of this movement and later emigrated to Chapel Hill—Sidney Kark, MD, Guy Steuart, PhD, MPH, and John Cassel, MD, MPH. Thus, Geiger and his colleagues transported and translated a model that was conceived in South Africa but came to maturity in the United States. John Hatch took much of what he learned in Bolivar County to improve health in Cameroon, Africa. Even in the earlier days of the School, these global/local connections were strong.

Geiger urged students to think boldly and courageously about what they could do to push the envelope to improve health. It was hard to walk out of there without feeling, “Yes, we can!” It made me think about UNC Tomorrow and how we can make a difference in North Carolina. How much more might accomplish if we could get out of our topical silos and think about how education, health and economics could fit together to improve people’s lives?

Couples

I am beginning to realize that there are a lot of happy marriages/relationships that came about thanks to the School of Public Health, where the couples met. Saturday night, my husband and I had the pleasure of attending the wedding of two of our HPM grads, Jimmy Rosen, MBA, MSPH, and Jennifer Casey, MHA. It was a lovely event, very thoughtfully done, and very inclusive. It was fun to talk with some of our current students and other alumni. Best wishes Jimmy and Jen!

Our celebration

Learning more about the heroic history of our School and the people here, our long traditions of working to end health disparities, the many years in which faculty, staff and students have learned from abroad and applied the lessons at home and vice versa, makes me even prouder of this School. One of the first Gillings Innovation Labs, led by Professor Alice Ammerman, DrPH, is focusing on the connections between sustainable farming and health, something that has its intellectual roots in some of the work that was done in Mississippi.

All the more reason to celebrate the naming of the School September 26th. We are going to have a fabulous picnic with local foods and music by Big Fat Gap after a brief ceremony with messages from Chancellor Holden Thorp, PhD, President Bowles, State Health Director and Director, Division of Public Health, NC DHHS, Leah Devlin, DDS, MPH, Board of Trustees Chair Roger Perry and Student Government Co-President Lauren Thie. I hope you all will join us!

Please register by going to www.sph.unc.edu/anticipate. We want everyone to come and enjoy the ceremony. But to be sure we have enough food for everyone, we need you to register.

I look forward to seeing a lot of our faculty, staff, students and friends on September 26th! Happy Monday. Barbara

The storm

The winds howled, the trees bent precipitously, the rains came down ferociously, some people lost power but hopefully we came through mostly unscathed. We got a good warning about not being complacent where storms are concerned. I especially want new students to learn how to prepare for weather emergencies.

Several of our faculty are experts on preparedness. Bill Gentry, Lecturer and Director of Certificate Programs in Health Policy and Management, is part of the North Carolina State Animal Response Team (SART) who was reminding citizens to prepare for their pets as well as the rest of their family! Bill has offered some tips about preparing pets for disasters that will be posted here shortly.

Meeting with student representatives

Assistant Dean for Student Affairs, Felicia Mebane, PhD, MSPH, Senior Associate Dean Dave Potenziani, PhD, and I will meet with representatives of each of the three major student organizations once a term. These representatives also are members of the School’s Dean’s Council, the leadership organization for the School. Last week, the three of us, Peggy Bentley, PhD, Associate Dean for Global Health and Gretchen Van Vliet, MPH, Director of the Office of Global Health, met with Student Global Health Committee (SGHC) leaders Chris Deery and Rushina Cholera. I am really excited by their energy and commitment. I was pleased we could share Peggy’s work on globalizing the School’s curriculum, thanks to a private donation and support from General Administration and the Provost. Earning the name global always will be a work in progress since we should set a higher bar as we accomplish more.

Celebration soon

Less than 20 days from now, we will celebrate the amazingly generous $50 million gift from Dennis and Joan Gillings with a big celebration as we add the words Gillings and global to our name. We join the School of Pharmacy, our next door neighbor, which recently became the Eshelman School of Pharmacy. For those who want to know more about how the gift came about, I have written extensively about why we are renaming the school in this blog (Basketball, health behaviors and remembering Eve & Responding to events and comments).  There’s been extensive coverage of how we are investing the gift, in addition to endowment (which is like putting the money in a very good savings account so it will last well into the future). I encourage you to read and watch about the nine Gillings Innovation Labs we have funded to accelerate solutions to big public health problems; 13 students are being funded on these projects. I am really excited about these projects which were selected by a very rigorous process of peer review, managed entirely by the SPH and with final decisions made by me, the chairs and several other SPH leaders. Although we will be the first school of public health to add global to its name, and I am proud of that, we are more committed than ever before to North Carolina. As you will see from the GILs funded to date, they represent a good balance of global and NC projects.

Another part of the investment—though much smaller—is in supporting Gillings Visiting Professors. Read more about the program at http://www.sph.unc.edu/accelerate/. Health Policy and Management Professor Tom Ricketts, PhD, MPH will be the first GVP from within the SPH and will be leaving soon for France where he will develop a partnership with Ecole des Hautes Études en Santé Publique (Rennes-Paris).

The week of September 22nd, two GVPs will be with us. We introduced Sheila Leatherman, MSW, earlier. Sheila is one of the world’s authorities on microfinance. Also present will be James Merchant, MD, PhD, who, until August, was dean of the University of Iowa School of Public Health. Jim’s focus areas align really well with the SPH and include injury prevention, rural health and environmental health issues. There will be lots of opportunities for students, faculty and staff to meet with Jim and Sheila.

September 26th will be a day to remember, and I hope you all will attend. Friends of the SPH are coming from all over. Please register for the event. There’ll be a brief (about 30 minutes) ceremony at which President Bowles, Chancellor Thorp, Dennis and Joan Gillings, Board of Trustees Chairman Roger L. Perry, Sr., State Health Director and Director, North Carolina Division of Public Health Leah Devlin, DDS, MPH, Student Government Co-President Lauren Thie and I will make brief remarks. We will unveil the new signs and have a huge picnic with local band Big Fat Gap. We have a wonderful planning committee that has been working hard to make sure this is an event that is memorable, fun for students and represents our values. Some of you have advised us about environmentally appropriate choices for tee shirts and water bottles (how to get water to maybe 1,000 people without making people wait in endless lines to fill up). Others have advised us about serving local foods—a choice that is both economically smart and healthy. While it’s not easy been green and not cheap either, I believe it’s important that we be a role model for the community so we are trying to do our best to negotiate the tension between good environmental choices and cost consciousness

There’s a lot of work still to be done to get ready for September 26th.

A few things in closing

Several faculty and staff members have lost parents in the last few months. My heart goes out to you.

Thanks to those of you who alert me to problems that need attention. Case in point is Maternal and Child Health Associate Professor Lew Margolis, MD, MPH letting me know that our students are not being served by UNC’s Writing Center due to overwhelming demand and insufficient supply of tutors. We are working to solve the problem, but I cannot solve problems I don’t know about. Kudos to Lew.

Do you want to be incredibly cheered about the oneness of the world? Smile, be enraptured and maybe even start dancing? Check out this wonderful YouTube video (Where the h*** is Matt?) made by a young man who started dancing all over the world. As his video became more popular, people started joining him. It is a uniquely 21st century experience!

Happy Monday. Barbara

Happy celebration

It was a non-stop weekend. Yesterday, my husband and I drove to Greensboro, N.C., to attend the bat mitzvah for the daughter of one of our faculty members. It was a wonderful event, a celebration of the daughter’s accomplishments in a year during which the family had faced major health challenges. A number of School of Public Health faculty members were there. For me, it was also a reminder of how much goes on in our lives outside the School and the rich social networks that strengthen many of our faculty and staff.

Most of the way to and from Greensboro, I read journal articles and an excellent Institute of Medicine report on Genes, Behavior and the Social Environment. Much of the rest of the weekend, when I wasn’t attending events, I was parked in front of my computer reading and working on slides. Almost 10 months ago, I agreed to give a keynote talk on public health opportunities to improve health and the intersection with genetics for the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). Preparing for it is one of the most challenging intellectual experiences I have experienced in awhile. I am not a geneticist, and while some of my research has been in this area, I am not on top of the latest thinking or research. So, it’s been an immersive preparation experience, and the timing isn’t particularly good. Colleagues like Caryn Lerman, PhD, and Jim Evans, MD, have been great about helping me sort through some of the issues, and Colleen McBride, PhD, Chief Social and Behavioral Research Branch at NHGRI, sent me a lot of great articles to read. The challenge is synthesizing it all, and having something valuable to say—and doing all this while doing everything else the dean of a school must accomplish. September is an especially busy month here!

Football game

Some of you know that basketball is much more my game than football, and I’d far prefer activity to sitting. Nevertheless, part of a dean’s job is attending football games, and this year, I am committed to being at nearly all the home games. So, you might wonder, why go to football games? They are a great way to interact with our donors in a relaxed setting, do a lot of academic business in a comfortable setting and meet legislators and others in an informal venue. For example, Janice Periquet, Associate Director of Development, introduced me to U.S. Rep. Mike McIntyre from North Carolina’s 7th Congressional District. Turns out he is really interested in and knows a lot about rural health. I talked with Moses Carey, Jr. on the Orange Board of Commissioners, a bit about why we are adding the word “global” to our name. Made me glad we are developing a letter to legislators about this issue. I also interacted with a lot of other people, including several deans and others at the University. Before the end of the second quarter, a major storm hit, with impressive thunder and lightning, delaying the rest of the game for about 40 minutes. Fortunately, UNC beat McNeese State University, but it wasn’t an easy win by any means. Here are a few pictures my husband, Bernard Glassman, took. It was a fantastic crowd, and we all enjoyed the fireworks when UNC scored. Unfortunately, the skydivers who were supposed to surprise the UNC stadium crowd inadvertently went to Duke, whose stadium was quite surprised by their appearance! Apparently, they couldn’t see clearly and ended up at Duke! Hmm…

Visiting with family

Sunday, we had a good visit with my parents who live at Carolina Meadows, along with a number of our retired faculty members and their spouses and the parents of some SPH faculty. I learned that Jason West, PhD, Assistant Professor in Environmental Sciences and Engineering, will be speaking soon on climate change. It’s great when our faculty members reach out to the community to speak on issues of great interest.

Next week’s blog

I will focus on the coming celebration of our name addition. I say that, because we are taking nothing away from our name. We are adding two words, Global and Gillings, adding but taking nothing away. We are planning a terrific celebration for September 26th. President Bowles, Chancellor Thorp, Department of Health Director Leah Devlin and SPH Student Government Co-president Lauren Thie all will speak. There’ll be great music, local foods and a chance to socialize with many friends of the School. Please sign up to attend at http://www.sph.unc.edu/anticipate.

Hope you had a great holiday. Don’t forget to register to vote or get an absentee ballot if you’re out of town. Happy Monday. Barbara!