Starting 2025 and moving ahead on our School of Public Health
Colleagues,
I hope everyone has had a wonderful holiday break, with an opportunity for restorative rest and connecting with loved ones. I start the new year energized and buoyed by hope and optimism. Over the holiday break, my family and I moved to St. Louis and are slowly settling into the city. Now in place, I am looking forward to further engaging with all members of the WashU community as we move ahead with building our School of Public Health, in line with the vision laid out in the Here and Next Initiative.
In this first note of 2025, and my first note formally as part of the WashU community, I wanted to build on my December note and continue with process updates about the school, including several elements we are launching in the coming weeks and months. As I noted in my last note, all of this work I report on is the work of many, and to all who are pushing these various aspects forward: thank you. Work continues along the framework of the 4×4 plan I presented to the community and summarized in my December note.
We continue to review applications for primary faculty appointments, and letters of interest for joint appointments also are welcome. As we build out the school, staff positions are emerging and will be posted as they open, here. In addition, we are focusing on steps toward accreditation, leading to our Nov. 17-19, 2025, accreditation site visit.
As we move forward with this project of building an exceptional School of Public Health, there will be much happening and much that would benefit from communication to, and from, the WashU community. I am always available and welcome anyone to reach out to me directly if a conversation would be helpful. Meanwhile, there are three ways in which we shall communicate regularly: in writing, through convenings, and through use of multimedia avenues.
In writing
Public Health at WashU, monthly. These notes — among them, this note you are reading — will continue throughout 2025. Everyone who has signed up and is receiving this right now will continue receiving these monthly dispatches. We aim in these notes to share thoughts and ideas about public health that may be of interest and helpful as we sharpen our collective engagement in the science and scholarship of population health.
We also will summarize in these notes progress at a high level but will be moving many of the operational progress updates to the Public Health in Progress note, summarized below.
Public Health in Progress, weekly. As the weeks and months progress, there will be more and more details relevant primarily to those faculty, staff and students engaged in the day-to-day work of the School of Public Health. Therefore, we will establish the Public Health in Progress (PHiP) note for anyone so engaged or interested.
If you wish to receive this note, please sign up here.
All faculty, staff and students with primary engagement in the school will be signed up by our team.
Convenings
Convenings shall have two audiences: internal to WashU and external, with some aimed at both.
Talking Public Health. This seminar series will feature presentations by leading thinkers in public health from around the world. Invited speakers will present their work and engage with the audience, in person and online, in conversation to advance the ideas that shape public health. We will launch this series quite vigorously this month, with most presentations happening at lunchtime. WashU community members are welcome to all of these, and we also will open these seminars to the world at large in due course. A list of presentations, locations, dates, and times will be available here.
Thinking Public Health. We are at a pivot point for health. We are exiting the acute COVID period with a dramatic loss in public trust. We also are heading into a new federal administration that promises to change many long-familiar structures that affect health. How then do we, in this moment, reimagine our approach to health? Thinking Public Health is an opportunity for in-depth conversation within the WashU community about topics of current concern in public health. These will be moderated, structured discussions, held in person, observing the Chatham House rule to encourage open conversation. A list of locations, dates and times will be available here. If anyone has specific topics they would like to be considered for one of these conversations, please do email me directly.
Public Health Around Campus.
The WashU community is engaged in a broad spectrum of work that advances the agenda of public health. We will partner on some of this, and we will elevate other such work through our communication channels. We would encourage anyone who would like work promoted to the public health community to reach out to our head of communications, Elizabethe Holland Durando, here.
School of Public Health Assemblies. These monthly gatherings for faculty and staff will serve as an opportunity for the internal WashU public health community to hear progress updates and to discuss steps we are taking to build the school. We hope that all primarily appointed faculty and staff attend these assemblies — and for the time being, as we build the school, we also invite all interested WashU faculty and staff to join us. A list of locations, date and times will be available here.
Annual symposia.
We will continue the tradition started by the Institute of Public Health of hosting annual high-level symposia in the fall. Plans for a symposium in 2025 are underway; more on this in due course.
Multimedia
A central part of our agenda is to build a school that engages fully in the world, aspiring to global impact. Doing so will require a robust digital presence. We are clearly not there yet and will be building this, step by step, in the coming weeks and months. We are building a School of Public Health website and a weekly Public Health at WashU newsletter.
These will feature the work of our faculty through Public Health Ideas conversations, Talking Public Health seminars, and other content to elevate the public health work of faculty, staff and students at WashU. We also will build a full suite of social media communications to promote our work. I will communicate process related to building the school through the weekly PHiP note as other channels come online. I note that I also communicate to the outside world through my LinkedIn account and lean on this outlet to amplify the work we are doing together as a school and university.
While I will be shifting my monthly Public Health at WashU community notes to be more about ideas in public health that may be of interest to our community, I also, in my The Healthiest Goldfish blog, amplify some of these ideas, in case that is of interest to any in our community.
And finally, an invitation to attend WashU’s Jan. 29 Assembly Series talk, where I will be speaking about “Why Health? Reimagining What We Think About When We Think About Health.” Registration is here.
As we start this year, I want to reiterate how enthusiastic I am to be joining this university, to be working with so many on the project of moving forward the science and scholarship of population health, and the practice of public health in WashU, in St. Louis, in Missouri, nationally and globally. I can think of no more important time for us to be taking on this project together. I am immensely grateful to this community for welcoming me, Margaret, our kids, and our dog to St. Louis, and I am much looking forward to meeting everyone who has for so long advanced public health in this community.
Warmly,
Sandro
Sandro Galea, MD, DrPH