The week ahead, Saturday & faculty mentoring

The week ahead

It’s going to be an amazing week. Two of our Gillings Visiting Professors, Jim Merchant, MD, PhD, and Sheila Leatherman, MSW, will be here this week. We announced Sheila’s appointment last year; she focuses on microfinance. Jim recently stepped down as dean of the University of Iowa’s College of Public Health. His research has covered topics such as occupational health and rural health. We want people throughout our School to benefit from these visiting professors, so don’t hesitate to email them and ask to meet. You can find their email addresses on the UNC directory.

Tuesday, the Office of Global Health, Office of Research and Office of Student Affairs are sponsoring a Global Health Fair in the atrium of the Michael Hooker Research Center from 4pm-6pm. Come—it will be fun! These are great folks. Also see how Gretchen Van Vliet, MPH, Director, Office of Global Health, and Peyton Purcell have transformed the window adjacent to the Rosenau lobby with global artifacts and photos.

A lot of people have been working hard to assure that the event Friday is respectful of our mission and values, as well as fun, especially for students, and a fitting way to celebrate a very big milestone for the School.

Julie MacMillan, MPH, Managing Director, Carolina Public Health Solutions, has chaired a terrific committee that has been meeting for more than six months to plan the events. Committee members are listed at the end of this blog entry. Jerry Salak, Director of Donor Relations, has done an amazing job of working with different vendors and responding to our ever-evolving preferences, for example, my strong desire to support locally produced foods, and the opportunity for the School to express environmental values through careful choices in paper plates, water bottles and the like. If all goes as planned, Friday’s event will be the University’s first waste-free event, thanks to the willingness of folks on campus to bring us composting bins and other paraphernalia. But it’s Jerry who is making this all happen. Having hundreds and hundreds of people in the School for an event doesn’t just happen and our facilities folks, Rob Kark and Brent Wishart, are attending to every detail. I hope everyone enjoys the freshly planted flowers outside the Rosenau front patio. The area looks a lot better too, and hopefully, now it will be attractive to more than just our weekend skateboarders (who do provide an interesting distraction outside my window).Thanks to all of you who registered for the event.

Friday, the latest issue of Carolina Public Health magazine will be available. It is a wonderful issue that includes brief interviews with a number of public health deans about the future of public health. Kudos to Ramona DuBose, Director of Communications, Linda Kastleman, Information and Communication Specialist, Emily Smith, former Assistant Director of Communications, and several free-lance writers as well as many people around the School. There’s also a historical exhibit at the Health Sciences Library, featuring the School.

It also will be the debut of a fabulous new video about the School with a lot of SPH stars.

Friday, our new-look website will go live, thanks to a whole lot of people around the School. I will acknowledge them next week.

Saturday

As most readers know, during football season, I try to make most of the home games. A beautiful Saturday in September is pretty special in Chapel Hill, and the stadium crowd was up for the game. I left at half-time to get work done and listen on the radio. What a disappointment to lose that one! Walking back from the game, I had the very disturbing experience of walking close by several students, one of whom was dreadfully drunk and being held up by her friends. She could barely walk, and her friends were half-carrying her along. I don’t understand is recreational binge drinking; it is a widespread serious threat to life and health.

Later that day, I ran a few errands, Saturday being the only day for that. I had to go to one of the malls and was waited on by a delightful young woman who at one point apologized for becoming distracted and told me that her mother was in UNC Hospitals with cancer—a mother younger than I am. The mother has worked hard all her life as a hairdresser but lacks health insurance. A cancer diagnosis for someone without health insurance may be the beginning of bankruptcy. Her children have moved in with her to take care of her and help pay the bills. By the end of our conversation, I was wavering between feeling really helpless and distressed and being angry. It is unconscionable that we are a society that can afford a catastrophic war in Iraq and the financial rescue of large companies (and we have been left with no choice but to do the latter), but that hard-working citizens who become ill are left bereft. In thousands of venues, and in the thousands of days since I was an MPH student at Michigan in 1971, we have talked health insurance to death—but we haven’t fixed the problems.

I hope everyone who reads this, everyone at the School and associated with the School, will become informed about the differences between the health plans proposed by candidates Obama and McCain. I know a lot of people look at the field and see a lack of bold vision. But there are profound differences between the candidates. Whoever you vote for, vote knowing the real-world implications of your choice. It will make a difference.

Faculty mentoring

There’s been a lot of depressing news in this entry. I want to end on something upbeat. Two years ago, we started a School-wide mentoring program for new faculty, to supplement departments’ mentoring efforts. I’d heard a lot of comments from the School’s assistant and associate professors that led me to start this and to ask Jan Dodds, EdD, MEd, Professor of Nutrition, to lead it. Wednesday, I had lunch with about 10 new faculty members and their mentors. What a group! I am so impressed by the people we have hired. They are smart, collaborative and thrilled to be here. They talked about how wonderful it is to be here, and how when they e-mail faculty members from around the campus, the individuals almost all offer to meet with them and want to be helpful. The mentors are a superb group of people who are giving their time to help these colleagues from around the School. Kudos to ESE Professor Bill Gray, PhD; HBHE Research Professor Bob DeVellis, PhD, MA; HPM Research Associate Professor and Sheps Center Senior Research Fellow, Sandra Greene, DrPH, MSPH; and MCH Associate Professor Carolyn Halpern, PhD, MA. The new faculty members at the lunch included: ESE Assistant Professor Rebecca Fry, PhD; HBHE Assistant Professor Clare Barrington, PhD, MPH; NUTR Research Assistant Professor Marlyn Allicock, PhD, MPH; EPI Assistant Professor Melissa Troester, PhD, MPH; ESE Assistant Professor Jill Stewart, PhD; and EPI Associate Professor Stephen Cole, PhD. If you run into one of them, do what Howard Weinberg, DSc, MSc (Associate Professor ESE) does—ask how they’re doing!

Hope to see y’all Friday. And Happy Monday! Barbara