Great weather, lectures and symposium in Chapel Hill

Sunday afternoon

It’s one of those magnificent Chapel Hill days that makes one wonder why anyone would live anywhere else. As I drove along Franklin Street on my way to the office, I was glad to see so many people out on the street. It’s amazing how a warm winter day brings people outdoors. For readers elsewhere, it’s 70° F, bright blue sky with a few clouds. That is pretty good for February. I did think twice about turning around and going home to work in the garden, but there is so much to do at School.

Last week

Last week was the kind of week I really like. In the midst of a lot of high stress events, including our budget presentation to the Provost’s team, I attended three really exciting, interesting lectures.

Larry Michaelson, PhD, is professor of management at University of Central Missouri and author of Team-Based Learning. Peggy Leatt, PhD, associate dean for academic affairs and chair, Health Policy and Management, invited him to visit. I participated in part of one of his sessions (had to leave for a meeting) to demonstrate team-based learning. Instead of lecturing, he practiced what he preaches. Instead of spending most of a class session with lecture and slides, he advocates spending only a small proportion of the time lecturing about content and the rest in learning teams. He argues that people learn better this way. After observing him in action and reading several chapters in his book, I find the argument pretty impressive.

Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize recipient, visited UNC the same day. Several of us met with him in the morning to discuss potential collaborations. Julie MacMillan, MPH, managing director, Carolina Public Health Solutions, and I went to his lecture at Kenan-Flagler Business School later in the day. It was one of the most remarkable lectures I have attended — ever. Dr. Yunus walked to the microphone and spoke calmly but with passion for about 45 minutes, with no slides and no notes. Yunus received the Nobel Prize for his pioneering work in Bangladesh with microcredit, in which small loans (often amazingly small) are made to women to help lead them and their families out of poverty. He created the successful Grameen Bank which provides the infrastructure by which to offer the loans, as Yunus says, without collateral and without all the red tape that accompanies most loans. And well over 90% of the loans are repaid. Microcredit is now offered by many organizations, and Yunus claims in his new book, Creating a World Without Poverty, that millions of people have been helped as a result. Why is this interesting to people in health care? Of course, we want to help people out of poverty, and there are lots of data that provide painful evidence about the relationship between poverty and ill health.

In his lecture, Yunus talked about Grameen’s success, and he described a number of social businesses. A social business has a social goal, like reducing malnutrition. The company involved reinvests profits in the business, rather than getting a distribution, but does get a return on its investment. Yunus told a remarkable story about a partnership between Grameen Bank and Groupe Danone (Dannon) to create a super-nutrient type of yogurt to be sold in poor countries as an aid in reducing malnutrition. The idea of social business is a compelling one, at least under Yunus’ strong guidance.

If I only told you that Yunus has compelling ideas and data, it would not be the whole story. The way he delivers his message, with gentle strength, humor and a bit of self-deprecation, is so moving and transforming that it almost feels like a religious experience.  I left the lecture hall feeling so much better for having been there.

Barbara Sorenson Hulka Symposium

Andy Olshan, PhD, professor and chair, epidemiology, and his colleagues organized a symposium Friday morning to honor Barbara Sorenson Hulka for her work in pioneering the field of molecular epidemiology. Speakers included Bob Millikan, PhD, DVM, Barbara Sorenson Hulka Professor of Epidemiology, UNC, and two outstanding epidemiologists from other institutions — Margaret Spitz, MD, MPH, professor and chair at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, and Nat Rothman, MD, MPH, MHS, senior investigator, National Cancer Institute. It was a wonderful way to honor Barbara Hulka, former Kenan Professor of epidemiology and chair of the department. Bob Millikan’s talk was superb. He did a terrific job of interweaving comments about Barbara and her multiple interests and talents with a synthesis of what he had learned from her and how he had applied those lessons to explain the different trajectory of breast cancer in younger, African American women. Unfortunately, I had to leave for a meeting before Nat and Margaret spoke.

These lectures represent the best of what we are — a place where we push ourselves to think about better ways to do what we do (teach), where we bring in ideas from outside the University and subject them to scrutiny and where we look backwards to celebrate our colleagues’ contributions so we may do even better going forward. That’s a pretty good place to be!

Happy Monday!
Barbara