Dear CHPPD Members
Thanks go to all of you who have contributed to the Section newsletter by writing for it or reading it. I have enjoyed being the editor for the past couple of years and look forward to future issues under the new co-editors, Renée Wilson-Simmons and Brad Wright. The section newsletter is one of my windows to the world.
I am looking forward to hearing Laurie Garrett, Senior Fellow for Global Health at the Council on Foreign Relations, make the keynote address at the 2007 APHA Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. John Steen reviewed her book, Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health, in the Fall 2006 issue of the newsletter. Laurie Garrett is the only person to have been awarded the three “big P’s” of journalism - the Pulitzer, the Peabody, and the Polk. She received her second George C. Polk Award, Best Book of 2000, for Betrayal of Trust.
John Steen, in his review, wrote that “the author details the recent epidemiological threats that have challenged world public health, including pneumonic plague in India, Ebola in Zaire, the collapse of public health in the former Soviet Union, and last but certainly not least, the erosion of public health in the United States at the very time when we are threatened by bioterrorism. And …. she would have us add that all public health is global.” I was also interested to read “Minnesota can be seen as having briefly developed a population health system with a communitarian focus that was arguably the best ever achieved by any state.”
In the Winter 2007 issue, Lucy Vogel offered a historical perspective into “Health Planning in the Indian Health Service,” and I look forward to reading Part 2.
We even know the first prize winner in the Kaiser Essay Contest that was announced in the newsletter. It was Brad Wright, our new CHPPD Newsletter co-editor, who won the first prize among graduate students. The winning essays can be read online at http://www.kaiseredu.org/essayprizes2007.asp.
Finally, on behalf of our section, I would like to express my sympathies to our colleagues in Blacksburg, Virginia, with regard to the tragic events of April 16. Our thoughts are with you.
Priti Irani