Basketball

There’s one thing we know for sure this week. The men’s Tar Heels are still in the game, and the women defeated UCF to advance to the second round. That’s a great way to start the week. I was really relieved to see Ty Lawson back in the men’s game Saturday night. The women play tonight.

White House garden

The most frequently e-mailed article in the New York Times last week was the story about Michelle Obama breaking ground for the new White House garden, where the First Family will grow fresh fruits and vegetables. There was a follow-up article in the Sunday paper. Issues our School has been studying and advocating about for many years now are coming front and center. Nutrition professors Marci Campbell, PhD, Alice Ammerman, DrPH, and others here (including Biostatistics’ Survey Research Unit), in collaboration with the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, Duke University (where I played a small role in the study) and other colleagues showed that a variety of strategies, including church gardens, resulted in modest but significant increases in fruit and vegetable consumption among people in eastern N.C. The Body and Soul program now has been disseminated nationwide, with good results. Alice Ammerman’s Gillings Innovation Lab on local foods is consistent with the national interest in locally grown foods as both good health and good economic strategies. And a UNC undergraduate student and Morehead-Cain Scholar, David Baron, has been given land by the city to start a HOPE garden. David and his colleagues will reach out to involve homeless people who also will receive some of the produce from the garden.

While we are on nutrition, Barry Popkin, PhD, Carla Smith Chamblee Distinguished Professor of Global Nutrition and director of UNC’s Interdisciplinary Obesity Center, has an important editorial in Archives of Internal Medicine this week. He highlights the interrelated concerns about meat consumption-e.g., cancer and other health risks from eating meat and impact on energy consumption and climate change from producing meat-in an editorial that accompanies results of a very large study led by the National Cancer Institute. In one of the largest studies ever conducted, the authors concluded that “reducing meat consumption has benefits beyond better health” and that “eating red and processed meat was associated with increased risk of death.”

Erin Shigekawa, a junior health policy and management major and dean’s office assistant, along with Aileen Sammon, a junior in Nutrition, were recognized as 2009 UNC Social Entrepreneur Fellows.  Erin and Aileen’s project, Camino Adelante (I Walk Forward), will partner with Carrboro Community Health Clinic to provide a group walking program for Hispanic women in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro area. The program will offer health education ‘charlas’ (workshops) on the benefits of proper nutrition and exercise.

Budget woes

We are dealing with the consequences of the State’s serious budget shortfall. Chancellor Thorp’s memo last week communicated the need for all units to cut at least 5% from their budgets effective July 1^st. He has communicated openly and thoughtfully about this difficult task.  I will send a separate communication about the budget in the next day or two. For now, I will say that this is incredibly painful, but many schools of public health have it much worse. I am so impressed and gratified that across the School, our department and unit heads are working really hard to save jobs and to find every possible way to cut budgets that will not result in job cuts. It will be painful, but with the extraordinary people here, we will do everything we possibly can to protect jobs and the quality of our work. The people here are our most important resource.

Departments

There’s exciting work in all our departments. I read the new Biostatistics newsletter, BiosRhythms, over the weekend and was really impressed with how much has been happening in the department and the many awards our folks received at recent statistical meetings. Similarly, our HPM students won first place in a national health care case study competition hosted by the University of Alabama at Birmingham. I got a chance to participate in the department’s Faculty Planning Day last week and to hear Winston Crisp, JD, Assistant Vice Chancellor, Student Affairs, talk about millennial students, followed by two student presentations on the subject. It was fascinating. I have really been impressed by the outstanding students accepted into HBHE who want to study global health. Recent faculty recruitments in the department have made HBHE even more attractive to applicants. It’s clear we need even more faculty members in the global health arena. We are all very excited about the new WHO Collaborating Centre in MCH, led by Bert Peterson, MD, professor and chair. Growth in the PHLP program shows that they have hit upon a very important model for program delivery. And there’s been interesting news out of the Middle East in the last couple weeks about a conference our ESE, EPI and Nutrition faculty members helped plan and execute as part of our contract with The Environment Agency - Abu Dhabi.

Interesting Article

Science (March 13 issue) had a good editorial by Christopher Reddy, PhD, director of the Coastal Ocean Institute, part of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, in Woods Hole, Mass. He discussed a topic that really resonated with me-scientist citizens.

“Now more than ever, issues such as climate change, obesity, stem cell research, green technology, and evolution are migrating from scientific journals to the non-science community, from school halls to the halls of Congress. It’s critical that scientists venture beyond their laboratories to put these issues into the correct contexts and help the public understand what is known, unknown, and under debate.”

He urged, and I agree, that we all have a responsibility to communicate and inform about science. And many people in our School do a superb job in that regard.

There’s a lot going on. Happy Monday. Barbara

Back from spring break

Welcome back from spring break to a very wet Chapel Hill. I hope you had a wonderful respite and are ready for the rest of the term. The pear trees look great, and the redbuds are coming into their own. On Saturday, there was a quote in the local paper that if the mens’ Tar Heels lost Saturday, no one would be on the streets Sunday. As I drove down Franklin to my office Sunday, it sure looked that way. I was really feeling badly about the outcome until I spoke with Shelley Earp, MD, Lineberger Professor and Director, and he cited from memory the years in which we lost the mens’ ACC game on Saturday and went on to win the NCAA championship. Aren’t data wonderful! We all wish a speedy recovery to Ty Lawson. Hope is a powerful emotion!

Students’ internships

I am really pleased to hear about some of the wonderful summer internships our students are getting. Your preparation is paying off. I have been impressed by the fabulous applicants we have had. And from those who are coming to me with questions, it seems like more and more applicants are interested in global health and seeing us as a strong contender across the School. That is the way it should be. Of course, we must continue to build our global faculty - already strengthened over the last few years.

Budget issues

I suspect that over the next few weeks, as we get closer to knowing the amount of the State’s budget shortfall, we will have to begin dealing with the reality of next year’s budget constraints-on top of the non-recurring 7% cuts we have made in our state budgets over the last few months. I promise to do everything I possibly can to preserve our jobs in the School of Public Health and to seek every possible non-personnel avenue for cutting budgets. As I have said before, I am really gratified by the way people are working together to cope with the budget situation in a positive manner. Our chairs and other School leaders are working together to deal with the difficult issues. Chancellor Thorp’s memos on the budget situation are frank and helpful. Charlotte Nuñez-Wolff, EdD, our associate dean for business and finance, David Potenziani, PhD, our senior associate dean and I will update our faculty, staff and students as we get more information.

It will get better! Happy Monday. Barbara

30^th Annual Minority Health Conference

Our students did it again! Once again, 30 years in a row, our students, under the leadership of the Minority Student Caucus, and 2009 conference chairs Stephanie Baker (HBHE doctoral student) and Kevin Wu (HBHE master’s student), created the largest student-led conference in the U.S. The North Carolina Institute for Public Health handled a lot of the logistic arrangements, and OJ McGhee, MA and his IIS colleagues ran the AV. People from across the School’s units, including Student Affairs, Communications, Global Health and External Affairs all helped. Felicia Mebane, PhD, Assistant Dean for Students and Assistant Professor Health Policy and Management,  and Vic Schoenbach, PhD, Associate Professor Epidemiology and Director of the Minority Health Project, were fantastic advisors.

This year’s theme was Our World, Our Community: Building Bridges for Health Equity. The event is so momentous that I will focus this week’s blog on it. First, anyone who has ever put on a conference or other big event knows that it takes a huge amount of behind-the-scenes work to pull it off. You’ve got to come up with ideas and themes, generate names of potential speakers, invite them, develop agenda, program, budgets, communication and promotion materials, block rooms, promote the event, arrange AV, and on and on. Our students do all this and so much more. Each year, I used to worry a little in the beginning about how they were going to do all this, and go to class, and hold down jobs and all the other things our students do. I don’t worry anymore. I just expect them to do it, because they always do. I don’t take it for granted, but I don’t doubt the capacity of this group of determined people to succeed.

Thursday night, the Minority Student Caucus, under Alrick Edwards’ excellent leadership, recognized some of the people who helped with this year’s event and also thanked and celebrated some of the heroes of public health who have been long-term supporters of the conference. They brought home for me what a rich history this School has of supporting minority concerns and overcoming health disparities. I am proud to continue this tradition.

A few things are especially notable about this year’s event. There were more than 540 registrants for the UNC-Chapel Hill event. In addition, five other universities participated through Internet or satellite connections. At University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health, 230 people attended. So did people at Boston University, Tulane University, University of California Berkeley and University of California at Los Angeles. (These are links to the student group sponsors at each university.)

A conference that started in Rosenau Hall 30 years ago under the direction of then Associate Dean William T. Small, Jr., MSPH grew into a national phenomenon. Friday, this conference was the place to be for anyone interested in reducing health disparities. It was connected to the past but clearly a 21^st century event, with Internet and satellite transmission as well as in-person. It was wonderful that Bill and his wife Rosa were with us Friday.

This year marked the conference’s 30^th anniversary. A number of people who had been involved with the conference for many years returned, including Drs. Delton Atkinson, Dorothy Browne, Geni Eng (here as Professor), Rudy Jackson and Bill Jenkins. It was so great to see them all. We appreciate their continued support.

While I could not stay for the entire conference, I attended a couple hours Friday morning and did a brief but whole-hearted welcome. As I said in my remarks, never before was I grateful to have had difficulty finding a parking place! It was wall to wall people-energetic, enthusiastic, intelligent and committed. I was awed as I walked into the lobby of the Friday Center to see so many people focused on issues of minority health. It was a great sea of people.

Archie Ervin, PhD, Associate Provost, Diversity and Multicultural Affairs, gave wonderful opening remarks that really recognized the expertise of our School in diversity and reducing health disparities. We appreciated his presence.

Kevin Wu gave nice opening remarks. Stephanie Baker, in introducing the keynote speaker, Barbara Wallace, PhD, said that the organizers wanted to get away from this or that thinking, e.g. research or service, global or local. I could not agree more. Our problems are far too challenging to dichotomize them that way. I appreciate the students picking a global theme.

In a very thoughtful talk that mesmerized the audience, Dr. Wallace, addressed health equity and called for a new movement focused on civil rights and health equity. She talked about the important ways in which President Barack Obama has changed the nature of dialogue, by using phrases like work alongside you and by talking about a new era of responsibility. She also reminded us about the power of the conference itself as a temporary community, another force to achieve health equity for all.

A number of SPH faculty members gave talks, and we thank them: Drs. Siddiqi, Bennett, Behets, Smith, Wing and Foster. Many graduate students gave talk or moderated sessions, and their names are listed in program.

A lot has changed since last year’s conference. Many of the attendees had helped to bring about the historic change in our Presidency. We have major challenges to resurrect our failed economy, bring health care to all Americans and make ourselves energy independent. Our values about reducing health disparities and our commitment to it and our creativity, ingenuity, collaborations and intellect all will be needed as we rebuild the global economy, develop clean, affordable energy and reform health care. As I looked out on that sea of people – dedicated, smart, passionate and persistent – the future felt safe in their hands.

Thank you to all the students who participated in any way-and all our staff and faculty who made such a difference. Thanks to the attendees and exhibitors. This School is committed to reducing health disparities. We cannot do it alone.

And a thought: the Minority Health Conference is a tremendous educational experience. When I returned to the School and asked a student if she intended to attend, she very wistfully told me she had class. I know it is hard to change class schedules, but it’d be great if all our students had the opportunity to attend at least part of the conference.

I’ll be in D.C. a couple days this week-first time back since the election.

Happy Monday! Barbara