Public Health

Excellence through collaboration

February 11, 2008

Family

The week began with a very early call from my father that he and my mother were at the UNC Hospitals emergency room, with my mother being the patient. She spent two days in the hospital, and while that was happening, our world subtly shifted. She is home, OK, and we all are relieved. UNC Hospitals was a terrific place (if one has to be in a hospital) with great care. Many faculty members, staff and students are juggling their own and family members’ illnesses. For some of you with children at home, this is especially stressful and challenging. As a society, we do a poor job of supporting families through illness trajectories. I want this school to help people adapt and cope. Please let Dave Potenziani or me know if ever the system seems not to be working for you.

UNC Tomorrow

President Bowles has released an important new report that focuses on what the university must do to achieve its 21st century mission. The report includes chapters on critical challenge areas, several of which are within our domain, e.g. health, environment, outreach and engagement. How can we be more responsive, nimble and more valuable to the state without losing our academic and research excellence? How can we adapt our teaching for the 21st century? This is really important for a school of public health and especially for this school as we contemplate being a global school. What does it really mean to be a global public university? Over the next year, we will be very active in turning this plan into reality.

Our alumni

We had an interesting meeting with our alumni association Thursday. What a wonderful group of people with fresh, creative, ideas! Schools like ours are going to have to do more and more to reach people using multiple channels. Some of our alumni want to hear from us through paper channels, others view paper as an assault on the environment, and still others just don’t think paper; they experience through the web, and it is how they want their information. We have to do an even better job of giving people the information they want in the way they want it. It is not an easy assignment, but we must do it.

Finished 4th edition

My colleagues, Karen Glanz, Vish Viswanath and I finished the manuscript for the fourth edition of our textbook. As we wrote this version, we worked hard to globalize the text, to weed out words that conveyed a U.S. or even western-centric perspective, and we looked to include examples and applications that were global. There are so many ways in which our professional articles assume that we are the world. For a lot of us, including me, this awareness is relatively new, but I am working on it. Being around people like Peggy Bentley and her colleagues helps one grasp the bigger picture. Seeing how Peggy Leatt and her faculty took on the task of globalizing their courses was a real inspiration! We can all become better at this, and we will be better for it.

The game

Too bad about the loss to Duke this week, but we still have a great team, as Sunday night’s nail-biter against Clemson proved!

Next week

I’ll write about some of the exciting times ahead as we plan to rename our school the Gillings School of Global Public Health.


Comments

Jerry Salak

02/13/2008

Dean Rimer, I'm sorry your mother was in the hospital recently and am glad she is home and okay. Hospitals are hard places to be. As you know, I am the primary caregiver for my mother who lives with me. I have learned that there are many of us in the school caring for our parents, grandparents, siblings, and children with illnesses. I was out for several days recently while my Mom was in and out of the hospital - she is also home and okay now. People at the school have been very accommodating and supportive as I juggle work and care for my Mom. I'm grateful and proud to work for an organization that makes it possible for us to care for our families and keep our careers. Thank you.

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The views expressed in this blog are Barbara Rimer’s alone and do not represent the views and policies of The University of North Carolina or the Gillings School.