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

(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

I wish all our students the best of outcomes in their finals and end of the year activities. I look forward to seeing some of you on graduation day.

A week in the life of a dean

This has been an extremely busy but interesting week in which I have raced from meeting to meeting, been to Kannapolis for events, been chairing the search committee for Kenan-Flagler Business School’s dean, read a citation for the 2008 Thomas Jefferson Award and attended dinner for Chancellor (to name just a few examples). I’ll tell you about some of them.

Thursday and Friday in Kannapolis

As many readers know, David Murdock, who formerly owned Cannon Mills and now Dole Foods, is building the North Carolina Research Campus in Kannapolis, NC. We, along with researchers from Duke, UNC-Charlotte, UNC-Greensboro, A&T, NC State, and some other schools will have space, as will some related businesses. The goal is to revitalize Kannapolis with a state-of-the-science research campus (www.ncresearchcampus.net).

As you drive into Kannapolis, historically dominated by Cannon Mills, you see soaring, new, stately buildings, rising from the ashes of razed mill buildings, breathing life, hope and excitement into this community.

Dr. Steven Zeisel, Kenan Distinguished Professor of Nutrition, is leading the effort to create the UNC School of Public Health’s Nutrition Research Institute. The laboratories there will be headed by faculty members appointed at UNC Chapel Hill. They will study metabolomics and related areas to uncover how individuals differ in their nutritional profiles and how that might influence prevention and treatment of a variety of conditions and diseases, such as obesity, diabetes and cancer.

Dr. Ed Baker and his NC Institute for Public Health team are working closely with the Cabarrus County Health Department to create a 21st century health department that would link public health and public health science, hopefully on the campus there.

It’s very exciting, and I am glad our school is part of the Kannapolis project. I hope many students will have the opportunity to do research and internships there. If students, staff and faculty want to visit Kannapolis, we could consider arranging a bus tour in the fall.

Reception at the new David H. Murdock Core Laboratory Building

We hosted a reception for our Public Health Foundation Board, area alumni and people interested in what we were doing. It was an exciting evening as we got a chance to see the first almost completed building, truly a majestic, awesome structure. The 311,000-square-foot building will feature a core laboratory containing a strategic array of state-of-the-art scientific equipment. It will be available for use by any research institute or company located on the research campus.

I was pleased to meet so many alumni who are excited about the School’s directions, who say we are better than ever and they want to connect or reconnect with the School. I always enjoy meeting alumni and hearing their recollections of the School. Many thanks to Dixie Brink and Cutler Andrews on our external affairs staff and Beverly Jordan on the Kannapolis staff for their hard work putting together this event – the first in the Core Lab Building.

2008 Thomas Jefferson Award

I was thrilled to have organized a group of four deans, a faculty scientist and a Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center leader to nominate Dr. Shelley Earp for the Thomas Jefferson Award, and even happier that he was selected. By the way, when I do something like this, usually, someone in my office is to be thanked for helping to stay on top of people for letters and working with me to organize the package. In this case, it was Jenny Lewis. Friday, at the Faculty Council, I read the citation, and Chancellor Moeser presented the award to Dr. Earp. As Lineberger Professor and Director of the cancer center, Shelley has been an amazing leader, a visionary who is responsible for UNC receiving the University Cancer Research Fund from our legislature, and a real friend of the School.

Celebration of Chancellor Moeser

Friday night, I attended a magnificent event to thank Chancellor and Susan Moeser for their leadership of this University. It was a magical evening. I was so impressed how many of the evening’s speeches remarked about the Chancellor’s strength, character, willingness to take tough stands to support academic freedom, but also his kindness, decency and unequivocal commitment to academic excellence. I could not agree more. There’s nothing combative or antagonistic about the Chancellor; yet, he exudes tremendous strength and moral toughness. He’s made this University a better place. During my time as dean, I have been gratified by his support of this School.

In the news

This week, health disparities were front and center in the news, with publication of an article in PLoS Medicine. As Kevin Sack wrote in The New York Times Sunday 4/27, “ …the rising tide of American health is not lifting all boats, and there are widening gaps in life expectancy, based on the interwoven variables of income, race, sex, education and geography.” Life expectancy declined in many counties from 1983-1999. A fundamental job of public health is to erase these disparities. Our job is getting both more urgent and more difficult.

REMINDER:

Don’t forget to vote. It’s about the future.

Health care reform

(April 14) Tonight, Dr. Jon Oberlander, Associate Professor of Health Policy and Administration, School of Public Health, and Associate Professor of Social Medicine, School of Medicine, will give the Foard Lecture, our school’s most prestigious lecture. It’s really exciting that nearly 500 people have registered for the event. Jon will focus on health care reform and the presidential campaigns. This is exactly the kind of forum our school should be hosting. Health care reform is a highly contentious issue yet one Americans care deeply about. Just today, a New York Times article detailed changes in insurance policies that have resulted in higher payments by consumers for drugs. Since some of these drugs are life-saving but very expensive, it means that even people with insurance now are experiencing skyrocketing costs of health care. While the poor and near-poor are especially disadvantaged by the health care crisis, no one is immune from its consequences.

It’s almost inconceivable that 36 years ago, when I was getting my MPH in Medical Care Organization and Health Education at the University of Michigan, we memorized key components of various health insurance bills before Congress (I believe there were more than 12 at the time.). The mantra was, “not if but when.” I doubt any of our professors would have predicted that we’d still be talking 36 years later.

It’s important to me that our school foster productive dialogue, perform relevant policy analyses, teach our students about the issues, conduct demonstrations that might lead to tested components of a program and advise candidates and other influentials. Obviously, it’s the details that matter. Any plan must address topics like quality of care, access and provide incentives for prevention. I look forward to hearing what Jon Oberlander has to say about the issues. He authored two very thoughtful New England Journal of Medicine articles on these issues last fall. (Article 1, Article 2)

Surely, in this country, we can find a way to balance competing interests and finally declare access to health care a right not a privilege. It’s what professors like Sy Axelrod, Roy Penchansky and Avedis Donabedian taught me, and I still believe it.

New logo

I want to share with you the new version of our logo that the School will adopt in September 2008. Some people think we are dropping “UNC” from our name – nothing could be farther from the truth, for many reasons! I hope that sharing the new logo will ease some people’s minds and show that UNC still is very much a part of our name. (I realize some people still will not be comfortable.) While we may be adding two words to our name, our mission remains the same – to improve public health, promote individual well-being, and eliminate health disparities across North Carolina and around the world.

Happy Monday! Best, Barbara

A statement repeated around town in the last couple weeks concerns me greatly: The gist is that my blog isn’t really a blog, because we don’t post comments, and I don’t really want feedback. Nothing could be further from my intentions. I write to address these issues and share a draft comment policy on which I welcome comments.

Why I blog

My integrity is about my most important possession. I don’t write this blog to be a mouthpiece for official positions or to “spin” administrative messages. I started the blog, because I wanted another communication channel for me, the School and beyond. At one time, all the School’s faculty, staff and students could convene for a barbecue in Dean Rosenau’s front yard or the front steps of the Rosenau Building, as many alumni recall with fondness and wistfulness. We’re too big for that now. The blog is partly a way of extending to a broader community the conversations I would like to have with many of you individually. I welcome both positive and negative comments as I have said on many occasions.

One of my goals as dean is to foster discussion about difficult topics. I hope this blog will spark some of these. Now that I have been doing the blog for awhile, there’s another reason I keep it up. Photographers sometimes say they are better observers, because their cameras make them so. Similarly, I find that thinking about the blog and what I will write makes me listen more intently, read materials I might not otherwise have read and formulate opinions that might have gone unstated.

Over the last few weeks, I have contacted bloggers I respect and asked them about their review policies. I have gone to the websites of blogs from other schools, industry, the DTH and Huffington Post. There is general agreement that there must be some moderation to assure that spam is not posted (I get dozens of spams every day, and many of them are sexually explicit.), and that comments that defame other individuals or are racially or otherwise discriminatory don’t get through. Frankly, this takes time, and Mae Beale helps me do it. It is possible that every now and then an honest message will be missed in the spam. If so, I regret it, and assure you, my readers, that it will be a rare event. Get back to me if you don’t see a post. In a couple of cases, I have responded directly to an individual and asked if this cleared up the issue, and if they still wanted us to post their comment. We followed their preference. I never want to embarrass someone by pointing out that they misunderstood me or were misinformed.

A few weeks ago, the format of the blog changed. To my surprise and chagrin, I learned today that during this process, comments were removed for a week or so while they were being transferred to the new system. This has been resolved. In the future, changes will not be made without notifying me first so I can inform readers. I apologize to all anyone whose comments disappeared during this time. They were restored by early March.

That’s the background. Here’s the policy I crafted after getting the input described above. The policy statement will appear on the site menu. . Thanks to the DTH, Bernard Glassman, Huffington Post and the brilliant Paul Jones for input. Let me know if you have any suggestions about this policy. Consider it a draft for now.

Draft comment policy

I review and must approve all comments posted to my blog, primarily to keep out spam. We do not censor comments based on political or ideological points of view. We encourage divergent points of view, respectfully stated. We will not post comments that are abusive, off-topic, use foul language, or include ad hominem attacks. Because of the sheer amount of spam, it may take a couple of days before we post a comment. I may not respond to every comment individually. In some cases, I will respond through the subsequent week’s blog posting. In such cases, so as not to violate confidentiality, I will not mention the sender by name but will repeat the issue that prompted the comment.

I take full responsibility for what is written here. I will acknowledge my mistakes. If we alter published posts to correct mistakes, we will indicate that this has been done. Monday Morning represents my point of view. I am not speaking on behalf of the University nor the School as a whole, nor on behalf of the faculty, nor the staff, nor the students.

The outcome:

(April 6, 2008) I wrote the rest of this piece Saturday, but the game Saturday night changed everything. I suspect that there are a lot of people in Chapel Hill this morning (Sunday) who are stunned, wondering what happened last night when we were slammed by Kansas. My spinning class Sunday morning had the feeling of people in shock. But the fact is that this is a great team, as the women’s team is, and it’s time to move on. Next year, we all will start with fresh hopes and dreams. Meanwhile, let’s be proud of how far these teams came!

The weekend:

As I drove to my office this afternoon, I was captivated by the sheer beauty of Chapel Hill at the height of spring. After several days of rain, the redbuds and crepe myrtles are magnificent in their intense pinks and purples. (I am torn between working on slides and buying the dwarf crepe myrtle I want.) Franklin Street reverberated with a sense of expectancy. Everywhere, people in light blue were coming out of the local shops with Final Four shirts, the portable bathrooms are ready, and it seems as if everyone just wants the games to begin. Soon enough I am in my office working but determined to be home to watch the game.

Anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination:

There’s been a lot of press this week about Dr. King’s assassination. When I read his speeches and think about his life, I am awed by his vision and also by how young he was when he died. What a loss. It’s hard to believe that it’s been 40 years since that awful day. I was a sophomore at the University of Michigan, and the campus was devastated. As my baby boomer colleagues remember, it was a time of great ferment. Another war was raging, one that also was unpopular. Martin Luther King’s assassination catapulted nearby Detroit into riots but raised the consciousness of many students about the gap between our ivory towers and the country at large. Two years later, in my senior year, thousands of students from around the campus (including me) boycotted classes for eight days under the banner of the Black Action Movement (BAM) to lobby university president Fleming for greater diversity. The Michigan Daily reported that “the strike came to an end when negotiations between BAM and the administration resulted in a commitment made by the University to work toward 10 percent black student enrollment by 1973. BAM and the administration also agreed to additional BAM demands, all designed to create a better atmosphere for minority students.

Curious about how the BAM, in which I’d been active, was viewed by history, I found myself pouring over archives available via Google. I was intrigued by what then President Angell had said about the university in 1879 (Cantor, N, Introduction in Gurin et al., Defending Diversity. University of Michigan Press, 2004).

“Good learning is always catholic and generous. It welcomes the humblest votary of science and bids him kindle his lamp freely at the common shrine. It frowns on caste and bigotry. It spurns the artificial distinctions of conventional society. It greets all comers whose intellectual gifts entitle them to admission to the goodly fellowship of cultivated minds. It is essentially democratic in the best sense of that term….. Let not a misapplication of the laissez-faire doctrine in political economy, which has its proper place, lead us to the fatal mistake of building up a pedantic aristocracy.”
–James B. Angell, president of the University of Michigan, June 25, 1879, Commencement address

So, you’re wondering, am I advocating that our students boycott classes or storm the President’s office? Unequivocally, I am not. I am affirming my hope that we are bound by a commitment to achieve Martin Luther King’s vision, and that we will be outspoken, when being outspoken can make a positive difference. Even today, in our School, data show that we have room to improve not only the proportion of minorities who comprise our students, faculty and staff but in the appropriate mix of content in courses and the welcoming atmosphere we create in our school, campus and classes. Let’s all work harder at this!

Who would believe it?

Last Saturday’s New York Times article by Robert Pear reported that “Johns Hopkins University said Friday that it had programmed its computers to ignore the word ‘abortion’ in searches of a large, publicly financed database of information on reproductive health after federal officials raised questions about two articles in the database. The dean of the Public Health School lifted the restrictions after learning of them.” I’m really proud of Michael Klag, dean of the Bloomberg School of Public Health who stopped this practice when he learned about it. Klag said that the school is “dedicated to the advancement and dissemination of knowledge and not its restriction.” I could not agree more! (FYI - Google News Search for articles related to this story)

Happy Monday. Best, Barbara