Why public health matters to us all, etc

Speaking without a net

Last week, I gave a talk titled Why does public health matter to us all? at Carolina Meadows, a retirement community in the Chapel Hill area where my parents live. It is a wonderful community, the kind there are too few of in this country. The support, services and people are fabulous. Although I’d committed to give the talk months ago, it was only about six weeks ago that I learned the room did not permit either slides or video. As an academic, I have become undoubtedly far too dependent upon these tools. And we have a wonderful School video I’d really wanted to show. Once it became obvious that I’d have to create a new presentation, I adapted, with some mental resistance. As I assembled the facts about why public health matters to us all, I became more enthusiastic about the assignment and more appreciative of how important it is to create messages before the slides. It is too easy to become dependent on slides, and sometimes the key points get lost in the dramatic presentation of the slides themselves. There have been many commentaries focused on why powerpoint can be deadly, and they’re right, up to a point.

Here are just a few of the reasons why public health matters to us all…

• When one person is infected with an infectious disease, it can put us all at risk. As the latest flu virus A(H1N1) shows us so clearly, diseases don’t stop at borders. We are more vulnerable than ever before to diseases that can be transmitted around the world.

• Lack of access to medical care due to lack of insurance or poor insurance is a national crisis and a local crisis. We have more uninsured people in North Carolina than many other states. In 2006-2007, 22 percent of North Carolinians were uninsured and didn’t have a usual source of health care. The number has increased.

• Lack of coverage hurts us all. Many uninsured people delay needed care and end up sicker, with bills shifted to others. In North Carolina, people with health insurance pay more for their health insurance premiums  — on average, an additional $438 per individual and $1,130 per family — to help pay for the cost of uncompensated care for the uninsured.

• The World Health Organization estimates that globally, more than 1.6 billion adults are overweight and 400 million are obese. They estimate that by 2015, there will be 2.3 billion overweight adults. This is a global epidemic that affects us all. Over 180 million people worldwide have diabetes; this number is expected to double by 2030.

• 36% of North Carolinians are overweight and 30 percent are obese. We have the eleventh highest obesity prevalence in the United States.

• 30% of our high school students are overweight or obese, and only 44 percent of our high school students meet adequate physical activity levels. Diabetes costs North Carolina $5.3 billion annually due to medical expenses, lost productivity and indirect costs.

And these are only some of the reasons why public health matters. Lack of safe water and sanitation, high-quality maternal and infant health care, and effective violence prevention and so many other issues plague our state, nation and world. Our School conducts research, teaches about and provides service in all these areas and many more.

The Carolina Meadows audience was astute, well-informed and very interested in public health. I appreciated the invitation. And once I got over needing to create a new presentation, it was a good reminder that sometimes one should fly without a net and go without slides!

Nicholas Kristof article

On Sunday in the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof had a very poignant article in which he described becoming pregnant as one of the most dangerous things a woman in Africa could do. In Sierra Leone, 1 woman in 10 dies in childbirth. We can do better. He closed with the line, “…women can be saved in childbirth — but only if their lives become a priority.”  I so appreciate Kristof’s observations on the world. He can awaken millions of people to this problem. Our School works on many aspects of this issue, including family planning. A  new WHO Collaborating Centre in global reproductive health, led by Herbert B. Peterson, MD, professor and chair of the maternal and child health department and a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the UNC School of Medicine, will develop evidence-based guidelines for family planning and reproduction.

To Twitter or not to Twitter

I really want to use the new social media effectively. But I am trying to grapple with longer days, shrinking budgets and growing needs. There’s a lot of evidence that people in their 20s and 30s use Twitter and that for many of our students, Facebook is the way to communicate. But I am trying to figure out how to do it all and have it all. For the first time, I cannot answer all my e-mails and return all calls every day. So I find myself wondering, how many friends can I handle? I’d appreciate advice from readers.

Administrative review-onward

I was going to talk about the outcome of my administrative review, a process all senior leaders at UNC undergo in the fourth year of five-year terms. However, it’s late, and I risk trying my readers’ patience. So, next week, expect a few comments. Bottom line: I am pleased to have been reappointed. It is an incredibly difficult job, but it is the job I want to do. I love this School and University.

Happy Monday! Barbara