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Title: A Message from the Chair

Author:

Section/SPIG: Epidemiology

Issue Date:

 

In last year’s Winter ’08 issue, as incoming chair, I told a personal story about learning the most succinct definition of epidemiology from a “fierce” professor in my medical school interview: “Epidemiology is the study of diseases (and disease-related conditions) with regards to person, place and time.”  (Article posted at:  http://www.apha.org/membergroups/newsletters/sectionnewsletters/epidem/winter08/.)

 

In that article, I also gave a current example of how epidemiology remains unrecognized as the core discipline of population medicine — the failure of NIH leadership to include epidemiologists in a recent task force review of NIH’s external peer review processes.  

 

It is time for another story and an assessment of where the Section has been and where we are going “with regards to person, place and time.”

 

First, the story. Soon after leaving the safety of UC Berkeley with my master’s in public health, I landed, as a preventive medicine resident, at a local health department during the first wave of the AIDS epidemic in the San Francisco Bay area. No longer was my task what it had been in seminars at UC-B: discussing the quality and validity of epidemiologic studies. My assignment was to begin the first surveillance efforts to assess HIV infection rates, especially among the large at-risk group of intravenous drug users living in our county. There was little information about HIV within the county, minimal funding, no first retroviral drugs available as yet, and much suspicion and resistance by the AIDS advocate community and even the director of the new county AIDS program. The words that the director candidly spoke to me those early days have too often been repeated by a good number of public health colleagues whom I have worked with ever since: “Why do we need the data?  We already know what to do!” Fast forward a few years to my leaving that position to join CDC when that same director came up to me and said, “Thank you, Jim, for helping me to understand that we DO need data.  In this country and in the U.S., we need the body count before policy-makers will act!”  

 

Then and since, I don’t often think of myself as a “body counter” per se, but the director’s point was clear. Epidemiology is at the heart of public health practice and the policy development cycle. Convincing even our own public health colleagues that data are essential to our practice remains a challenge for those of us who practice epidemiology, especially at the state, local and tribal public health levels. The simple fact is we as a people in this country need both the data and the stories of human suffering to move our communities and policy-makers to some action to end that suffering. 

 

With this new year and the recent changes of political leadership in Washington, D.C., now rippling across the leadership of federal agencies, there is much hope in the air for public health, especially for those practicing epidemiology. With serious economic and social challenges remaining, and as new policies and funding priorities are being developed, we as epidemiologists need to make sure our findings and study plans are even more relevant to and grounded in the communities we serve. Our “human and data stories” need to be heard by key policy-makers, not just by our data-loving colleagues. Ideally, the conditions we monitor or study should grow out of community needs, not funding availability. This may be another critical year for public health, and there is a critical role for all of us who are involved in “body counting”!  

 

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Looking Back: Person, Place, and Time in the 2008 Epi. Section 

2008 Section-sponsored Awards Sessions

 

Career Awards Session:

 

    

 

                         

  

Photos of Section career award winners with section leaders at the Section Leaders’ Annual Awards Dinner in San Diego in October 2008. On the top left, Dr. Julie E. Buring, 2008 John Snow Award winner, and her husband.  In the top middle, Dr. George Rhoads, Abraham Lilienfeld Award winner, and his wife. On the top right, Dr. Ana V. Diez-Roux, Wade Hampton Frost Lecture Award winner.  On the bottom left, in the middle of the frame, Dr. Greg Scott, Director of Research from the Chicago Recovery Alliance, the Public Health Practice Award winning organization.   On the bottom right side, is Dr. Dawn Terashita, the Public Health Practice Award early career winner, enjoying conversation with Section leaders and guests.

 

John Snow Award: Dr. Julie Buring, ScD, MS, professor at the Boston University School of Public Health and professor of medicine at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, received the John Snow Award for her groundbreaking and lasting contributions addressing women’s health issues, especially in the areas of the treatment and prevention of cardiovascular disease conditions (both for women and men), cancer and peri-menopausal health, including the use of hormone replacement therapy. Impressively, Dr. Buring has been the author/co-author of 455 publications including 365 original reports, 22 reviews, 38 chapters, 26 editorials or commentaries, and four textbooks. Dr. Alan Maryon Davis from the John Snow Society and Royal Society of Public Health in London, which officially sanctions the Section Award, joined us to bestow the honors. Ever humble and warm, Dr. Buring thanked her many collaborators and students “without whom these accomplishments would not have been possible.” Then, both inspiring and challenging, she reminded us that “Epidemiology is the ultimate team sport!”

 

Abraham Lilienfeld Award: Dr. George Rhoads, MD, MPH, professor and chair of the Department of Epidemiology and associate dean for academic affairs at the School of Public Health, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ), received the Abraham Lilienfeld Award for teaching epidemiology.  Besides his well-known excellence in the teaching and practice of epidemiology, Dr. Rhoads was one of the founders of the UMDNJ program, which has trained many epidemiologists. Awarding Dr. Rhoads was especially gratifying to those of us on the Section leadership team because of his many faithful years of service with the Epidemiology Section, including his years of service as the chair of the Section Awards Committee. Many of us are personally grateful to Dr. Rhoads for his quiet but affirming mentorship during our early Section leadership years. As usual, speaking briefly and quietly, he acknowledged his passion for epidemiology and called for the next generation of epidemiologists to continue to advance our skills to meet new challenges in our field.

 

Wade Hampton Frost Lecture: Presenting an outstanding Wade Hampton Frost Lecture this year was Dr. Ana V. Diez-Roux, MD, PhD, MPH, associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Dr. Diez-Roux is well recognized as a leader and ground-breaking researcher in the growing field of social epidemiology. Her lecture highlighted both the framework for studying the consequences of collective society on individual health as well as new studies and methods available for this study. She challenged us to think multi-dimensionally in the conception, study and analyses of epidemiologic studies of disease and health conditions. She convinced us once again that societal conditions as well as individual behaviors and biologic processes can cause suffering and illness. Both identifying conditions and finding interventions that more specifically address the multi-level and multi-factorial conditions that promote or alleviate poor health among communities remain two of the continuing challenges to public health in the 21st century.  With leaders like Dr. Diez-Roux pointing the way, our field will continue to make progress.

 

Public Health Practice Award: In the fourth year of the Epidemiology Section’s Public Health Practice Awards, which specifically recognize those who use data to make measurable impacts on the public’s health, we are excited to recognize both early career, individual and organizational winners — our first year awarding both! We honored Dr. Dawn Terashita, from the Los Angeles County Health Department’s Hospital Outreach Unit Liaison Project, which she helped to establish, for outstanding leadership in rapidly using data to identify causes and initiate controls for a number of hospital outbreaks and healthcare associated infections in L.A. County. The Chicago Recovery Alliance was also honored for their outstanding track record for over 16 years using evidence from their work to have measurable impacts on the lives of injection drug users, both in terms of recovery and the reduction of harms associated with injectable drugs. 

 

Next year, we need your help to identify those using evidence to have measurable impacts on the health of communities! Too often, such on-the-ground work remains unknown and unrecognized! Please consider nominating any colleagues within 10 years of their training or any organizations or agencies that through their efforts have a measurable, positive impact on a public health condition or on addressing public health issues. 

 

 

Looking Back: Person, Place, and Time in the 2008 Epi. Section,  con’t.

2008 Section-sponsored Awards Sessions

 

Student Awards and Career Roundtable Session:

 

      

   

 

Photos of Section student award winners at the Section Student Awards and Career Roundtable Session in San Diego in October 2008.  From the right to the left top photos, accepting awards from Drs. Aaron Mendelsohn and Karyn Heaver are:  Tomas Numo, Melissa Wei, and Heidi Sato and, below, a faculty mentor of Orquidea Frias-Belen.

 

Section Student Awards and Young Epidemiology Scholarship Awards (YES):

In this first year trying a new format to recognize and honor student award winners, we recognized four students winners with Epidemiology Section Student Awards for outstanding abstracts and presentations at the Annual Meeting: Orquidea Frias-Belen, Tomas Numo, Heidi Sato, and Melissa Wei. Capping off the honors, student winners received cash stipends for their outstanding work. We’re looking forward to another set of high quality student abstracts to review again this year! Looking to the future, we also honored the impressive work of several high school students as Young Epidemiology Scholar (YES) Finalists. Unfortunately they were unable to travel to the meeting. We were very honored that Diane Tsukamaki, the director of the National Recognition & Scholarship Programs at the College Board, was able to join us in the honors and give our best wishes to these exceptionally talented high school students, who received substantial scholarships to continue their scientific pursuits at the university level.  To read about the YES program, please go to the YES Web site.  

 

                 

Photos of Section student award winners at the Section Student Awards and Career Roundtable Session in San Diego in Oct. 2008.  From the right to the left top photos are Diane Tsukamaki from the College Board and Dr. Diane Marie St. George and other panelists discussing the Teach Epidemiology Initiative.

 

These workshops are part of a multifaceted initiative to train high school students and their teachers to learn and teach epidemiology and introduce careers in epidemiology. Wrapping up the event were student-senior mentor roundtables for individual discussions of career possibilities in epidemiologic research and public health practice. For me as chair, I had great fun meeting and talking individually with some really impressive budding epidemiologists!  

 

Please see below how you may contribute to next year’s successful recognition of the valuable work of our senior career, new career, and student colleagues in November and to another rewarding Careers in Epidemiology session.  To students and senior epidemiologists planning to be in Philadelphia, please mark your calendars, and don’t miss this terrific chance to celebrate and network about career opportunities in epidemiology!


 

 

2008 Section Governing Council and Policy Activities

 

     

Photos of Epidemiology Section Governing Councilors at work in the all-day Tuesday APHA Governing Council meeting in San Diego in October 2008.  Pictured in the middle frame, from left to right, are Drs. Howell Sasser, Resa Jones, Linda Hazlett,  Kris Fennie and on the right, continuing down the row, are Drs. Jan Risser, Laurie Elam-Evans, and Victor Ilegbodu.

 

Last year was another busy year for the APHA Governing Councilors with policy review activities and APHA leadership elections. The Epidemiology Section is one of the primary sections that APHA relies on to assure that policy statements and resolutions passed by APHA’s Governing Council (GC), APHA’s Congress-like governing body, are scientifically-supported, evidenced-based, and sufficiently pertinent to public health issues to justify putting APHA’s organizational weight behind them. As always, throughout the year, Epi Section Governing Councilors were actively engaged in APHA policy resolution reviews. Also, several leaders again served on the APHA Joint Policy Committee (JPC) and Science Board, two multi-disciplinary Boards with representatives from various parts of APHA to manage APHA’s policy process and make final recommendations to the GC.  This year, as always, several more controversial policies involved our section leaders rolling up their sleeves and investing the time needed to address the issues with science and reason. New policies ultimately passed by the Governing Council as a result of these efforts are now posted on the APHA Web site. These policies represent APHA members’ statements about the nation’s priority public health issues.

 

2008 Section Social Event

Tuesday night at the Section Social in San Diego, our celebration held at Café Sevilla was another well attended hit event. Special thanks goes to to Ms. Heidi Mortensen (one of our student leaders), Dr. Siobhan Maty, Dr. John Vena and several others who helped with planning. We drew well over 80 members. Student and career Section members and their invited guests were able to continue networking into the evening with tasty food, delicious drinks, and salsa music. Lucky ones who attended also cashed in with their Epidemiology Section raffle winnings from a fine selection of epidemiology textbooks! Those staying later were even invited to salsa dance lessons and dancing! Next year, don’t forget to add Tuesday night at the APHA meeting in Philly to your calendars for another chance for students, mentors and colleagues to met and greet each other!  Tickets will again be at the Section Booth in the exhibit hall. These go quickly, so get them early! If you would like to help plan this fun event, please contact me.

 

Yours truly,

Dr. Jim Gaudino

Chair, APHA Epidemiology Section

james.a.gaudino@state.or.us