Public Health

Notes from ASPH & APHA

October 31, 2011

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I arrived in D.C. 10/29 for meetings of Association of Schools of Public Health (ASPH) and American Public Health Association (APHA). Leaving RDU, it was essentially a public health plane, so full of our folks and very high spirited.

At a lovely reception sponsored by ASPH and Pfizer, HBHE Professor Geni Eng, DrPH was given the Pfizer Faculty Award for Excellence in Academic Public Health Practice. It was nice to see some of Geni’s former students there.

I love the number of people who came up to me and said they were impressed by how much UNC values practice. Of course we do! Our associate dean for practice, Anna Schenck, PhD is developing a cross-school practice vision; a great example of SPH’s commitment to practice.

We started the day at Diversity Committee.  Howard Koh, MD, MPH, Assistant Secretary for Health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, talked about the great opportunity for prevention through the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Public health folks should understand potential of ACA to reduce health disparities and strengthen the public health workforce.  Koh wrote a couple good papers about potential of ACA in these areas. I am so excited that he will be our School’s commencement speaker next May. Our co-chairs of the Minority Health Conference Turquoise Griffith, Master’s Student, HBHE and Kea Turner, Master’s Student, HBHE,  handled themselves very professionally.

Happy Monday. Barbara


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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.