Weekly news from the School of Public Health at Washington University in St. Louis
Dear colleagues,
The past week, meetings
I spent most of my week in meetings with members of our community. I enjoyed them all; it is a real privilege and joy to meet our students, faculty, staff, to learn more about WashU and the St. Louis community, and to move forward together toward building population health science and scholarship at WashU. To everyone who took the time to meet — thank you.
This week I particularly want to extend a note of gratitude to doctoral students. Together with Dean Dorian Traube, I had the pleasure of meeting with doctoral students for a general meeting about all manner of items, ranging from the current moment in the country and world, to the transition to a new School of Public Health. While some of the issues we discussed were not easy — there are true challenges to health in the moment, and we all know that a transition to a new school is not straightforward — I left the meeting buoyed, encouraged, optimistic. First, it is always enormously uplifting to meet the students who will be the next generation of scholars and leaders in the field. It is akin to seeing the future, and that never fails to uplift. Second, it was just heartening to be able to engage in conversation about challenges, to discuss and identify issues, to think together, to align toward our shared mission.
To all of the doctoral students — thank you for being there, for the conversation, for your commitment to what we do every day. A thank you also to the faculty and staff who work with doctoral students and were at the meeting (particularly Dr. Patrick Fowler, who brought us together), and as I have said before in this space, to Dean Dorian Traube, who has been a steadfast partner in all of our transitions. Thank you.
I look forward to many more occasions to engage with our doctoral and master’s students as we go forward. As I mentioned at the meeting, we shall be having monthly such meetings starting in September, throughout the 2025-2026 academic year and beyond. We shall schedule and announce those soon. I look forward to continuing the conversation.
The past week, events
We held two monthly events this past week.
We held our monthly School Assembly on Wednesday, where I presented an update on our progress, and Dr. Morven McLean, executive director of networks & innovation and professor of practice, presented about the Innovation Research Networks. Thank you to all who attended. Notes for those who could not make it are here.
We also held our monthly Thinking Public Health session on Friday, discussing truth, what is it? It was, as all of these have been, an interesting conversation; thank you to all who could join us.
We will now pause on these schoolwide events as summer slowly emerges, and they will resume in September. We are in the process of scheduling the school’s full 2025-2026 academic calendar of events and will send a note through PHiP once that is all set so that everyone can add events to their calendar and plan ahead.
This past week, we also welcomed two outside guests to speak in our Talking Public Health seminar series — Susan M. Kiene, PhD, MPH, from San Diego State University School of Public Health, and Julia Fleckman, PhD, MPH, from the Celia Scott Weatherhead School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine at Tulane University. Recordings of their talks will be available here.
The coming week
We welcome three guests for our Talking Public Health seminar series this week.
Deshira Wallace, PhD, an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Department of Health Behavior and a faculty fellow at the Carolina Population Center, will speak on “Examining the intersections of mental health and physical health in U.S. and global research.” The talk will be at noon Tuesday, April 22, in 333A Goldfarb Hall on the Danforth Campus. RSVP here to attend in person or over Zoom.
Jenny S. Guadamuz, PhD, MSPH, an assistant professor of health policy & management and director of the Health Equity Research Program, Center for Health Management and Policy Research, at the School of Public Health at University of California, Berkeley, will speak at noon Wednesday, April 23. The title of her talk is “Case Studies on Structural Determinants of Health: The Impact of Exclusionary Immigration Policies & Pharmacy Systems on Healthcare Access,” and it will be in 333A Goldfarb Hall. RSVP here to attend in person or over Zoom.
At noon Thursday, April 24, Kim Thuy Seelinger, JD, a research associate professor at the Brown School, will speak on “Ending the War on Health: Understanding sexual violence in Northern Ethiopia’s armed conflict.” Her talk will be in 333A Goldfarb Hall. RSVP here to attend in person or over Zoom.
See our website’s Events page for details on other upcoming events, including a Research Pitch Competition from 5-7:30 p.m. this evening; a Health Data Bootcamp from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesday, April 23; and the Brown School Centennial Celebration this Friday and Saturday, April 25 and 26.
Looking ahead
Applications are being accepted for the Systems Science for Social Impact (SSSI) Summer Training Institute, which runs July 28 through Aug. 1. Participants are introduced to systems science methods that enhance the social impact of health and social science research. The training features five major systems science tracks: Intro to Systems, Agent-based Modeling, Group Model Building, Social Network Analysis, and System Dynamics.
Faculty and staff, circle May 21 on your calendar if you plan to register for a parking permit for the 2025-2026 academic year. Registration begins at 10 a.m. via the WashU Parking Portal. Also register through the portal for your U-Pass.
Joining the School of Public Health
We welcome two new secondary faculty and a new staff member.
Karen Joynt Maddox, MPH, MD, is an associate professor of medicine in the Cardiology Division at WashU Medicine. She studies health equity, and her main areas of research are quantifying inequities in health-care quality and outcomes for historically marginalized populations, and evaluating the impact of federal and state health policies on quality, outcomes and cost.
Kristen Mueller, MD, is an associate professor of emergency medicine at WashU Medicine. She studies firearm violence and injury prevention, and she serves as director of Life Outside of Violence, the St. Louis regionwide hospital-based violence-intervention program.
New to our staff is Sydney Zarate Sada, MPH, accreditation and evaluation coordinator. Sydney comes to the team with a deep knowledge of the Council on Education for Public Health accreditation process. She has been working with the MPH Program team as the public health accreditation project coordinator, organizing and supporting efforts related to completion of the self-study report and successful acceptance of the initial application submission.
Public Health Ideas
A video of my conversation with Ross Hammond, PhD, the Betty Bofinger Brown Distinguished Professor of Public Health at WashU. We discussed a paper Ross co-authored, “Making evidence go further: Advancing synergy between agent-based modeling and randomized control trials.”
To explore our growing collection of Public Health Ideas and Talking Public Health seminar series videos, see our YouTube channel.
Public Health news
A story on our website about a first-of-its-kind, two-day online dialogue that the World Health Organization (WHO) hosted and Olin Business School Dean Mike Mazzeo and I moderated. The dialogue brought together experts in academic public health and business from more than 60 countries to discuss how to bring public health concepts and frameworks into business schools, and vice versa.
Also this week
This week, in The Healthiest Goldfish, further thoughts on “What we owe, and do not owe, the past,” here.
In light of our conversation at the School Assembly, it seems reasonable to point out this piece in The New York Review of Books, which I thought was very good. (If you are at WashU and have trouble accessing it, you can do so using WashU library access.)
Relatedly, an article in AJPH I published with Megan Reynolds, on understanding power and its implications for our work in advancing the health of populations.
I hope everyone’s week unfolds nicely.
Warmly,
Sandro
Margaret C. Ryan Dean of the School of Public Health
Eugene S. and Constance Kahn Distinguished Professor in Public Health
Vice-provost for Interdisciplinary Initiatives
Washington University in St Louis
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