Weekly news from the School of Public Health at Washington University in St. Louis
Dear colleagues,
Welcome to Public Health in Progress. This weekly note is intended to be an informal update on progress in the School of Public Health (SPH), and also an opportunity for me to share thoughts and ideas relevant to the moment. I am conscious that such forms of communication are one-sided, so I do encourage anyone to reach out to me directly with reflections on these ideas or with anything relevant to the emerging school.
Today, procedural notes about communication and building a leadership team at the school.
Communication
We also now have a first website that is a repository of information about the school for the WashU community and for the outside world. We are working on a more permanent website that we hope to have online by the summer. The website archives this and all SPH communication, and includes dates for upcoming School Assemblies, Thinking Public Health, and Talking Public Health sessions. It also features work that advances public health from around WashU. We will soon introduce a feature that allows for all members in the WashU community to add Viewpoints that contribute to the public health conversation, both at WashU and beyond.
School of Public Health leadership team
We are building a school, and doing so includes assembling a leadership team that can lead on a range of aspects of the school’s work. We now have four members of the Dean’s Cabinet in place who have for the past couple of months been leading us forward.
Elizabethe Holland Durando is our Director of Communications and Change Management. Elizabethe previously was the executive director of medical news and media relations at the School of Medicine. Elizabethe is responsible for our communications, internal and external, and has most recently overseen the creation of our temporary website.
Professor Debra Haire-Joshu is our Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs. Professor Haire-Joshu joins the school from the Brown School, where she has been a longtime faculty member. In her role as associate dean, Professor Haire-Joshu oversees faculty recruitment, faculty development, and tenure and promotion processes. And, under Professor Haire-Joshu’s leadership, the Center for Diabetes Translation Research and Center for Obesity Prevention & Policy Research have moved to the School of Public Health. The centers’ staff also now join the school. We will have a post about them in next week’s newsletter.
Sunghei Han serves as Associate Dean of Administration. Sunghei previously served as a lecturer and field faculty at the Brown School. Sunghei’s portfolio includes all administrative aspects of the school. She oversees People Services, Finance, Grants Administration, and Admissions and Recruitment. Sunghei also is our primary liaison with central university shared administrative resources.
Amanda Rhodes serves as Chief of Staff and Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives. Amanda previously served as the associate director of the Office of Public Health within the Office of the Provost, working alongside the Here and Next team to establish the foundation for the School of Public Health. Amanda and I work closely together on all aspects of strategic direction for the school, and Amanda will be point person for our strategic planning when we start that later in the year. Amanda oversees special projects, events, accreditation and ongoing evaluation, and the office of the Dean.
We shall be adding a few more members to the leadership group in coming weeks, and I will announce them here as they come on board.
New faculty and staff
We also, of course, have added other new faculty and staff to our school, with efforts underway to recruit more faculty and staff in the coming months. To introduce members of the school who have joined so far:
Professor Salma Abdalla has joined as an Assistant Professor. Dr. Abdalla was previously an assistant professor of global health and epidemiology at the Boston University School of Public Health. Her work focuses on how economic, social, commercial, and political forces shape global population health, using systems thinking to both assess and propose policy solutions. She is broadly interested in noncommunicable diseases, particularly mental health in the aftermath of mass traumatic events.
Caroline Caligiuri is the Executive Assistant in the Office of the Dean. Caroline has been at the university for 8½ years, previously working as the executive assistant for Amy Kweskin, who recently retired as chief financial officer of WashU. Caroline works closely with me and with Amanda on managing my engagements with the school, the university, and the world. Caroline serves as point for scheduling meetings, just to keep me on track and as efficient and effective as possible.
Caroline Clasby serves as Director of Admissions and Recruitment. Caroline previously was director of international student recruitment and admissions at Middle Tennessee State University. Caroline is working closely with Sunghei and with our colleagues at the Brown School as we transition public health recruitment to the new school with our goal of recruiting a class of students into the school in the fall of 2026.
Eric DelGizzo serves as Communications Specialist. Eric was previously communications specialist and social media associate at the Boston University School of Public Health. Eric works closely with me and Elizabethe on my and school messaging and communication.
Leah Kemper serves as Director of Faculty Affairs. Leah previously served as the associate director of the Institute for Public Health, where she oversaw operational aspects of the Institute and facilitated the Institute’s role in convening, connecting and catalyzing public health research activities at WashU. In this role Leah works closely with Professor Haire-Joshu overseeing all aspects of faculty recruitment, development tenure and promotions.
Emeka Madubuike is starting as Senior Grants Manager. Emeka was previously senior research administrator at the Boston University School of Public Health. Emeka will work closely with Sunghei as part of our growing pre- and post-award unit.
Looking ahead
As the school emerges in coming weeks and months, we will be ramping up activity on a number of fronts. There is quite a bit of work being done on setting up structures that will support an exceptional school in years to come. This is unfolding in close partnership with the members of the leadership team and with other leaders at the university. We also aim to conduct systematic strategic planning on much of this in 2026 after our foundational work in 2025 that sets us up for accreditation. With that said, building on our four areas of our work, summarized in my December community note, I am spending most of my time on the following areas of work.
Engage world-class faculty and staff
Faculty recruitment and onboarding continues apace. We have a process to engage faculty, both primary to the school and with joint appointments, that is now well underway, supervised by Professor Haire-Joshu. This will gather steam, and we will bring on faculty in the coming months quite quickly.
Staff recruitment and onboarding is also ongoing. We will soon be posting a number of staff positions as we build the infrastructure needed to run a school, having us ready for accreditation review as a freestanding school.
Nurture outstanding teachers and students
Much of this at the moment centers around our preparation for accreditation, which is driving much of what we do in 2025 and involving a range of colleagues from around the university. As I note in my January community note, our work in building a core faculty, staff, and administrative structures aim to create a freestanding school that supports our scholarship, education, and practice work, ahead of our accreditation site visit in the fall of 2025.
Build Public Health Plus
One of the core goals of the school is to make sure that we build an interdisciplinary school that engages faculty from across the university. This is not easy, and it means building structures and relationships across our campuses to make it possible. We are spending a fair bit of time engaging with the university on building the architecture of a school that centers around public health but engages a range of disciplines in all we do.
Prioritize local and global impact
The vision at WashU has long been to build a school that is second to none in leadership on public health scholarship, distinction in education, and commitment to local and global impact. Building such a school is our collective responsibility, and this occupies a fair bit of my time and focus, including working with our university colleagues in Advancement, and slowly with community partners. Our goal is to make sure that these relationships grow and flourish as we build the school.
Public Health Ideas
As part of our Public Health Ideas initiative, I am talking with faculty throughout the university about their public health scholarship. A video of my conversation with Professor Ross Brownson on his paper “Understanding misimplementation in U.S. state health departments: An Agent-Based Model” is here. Thank you to Professor Brownson for being a part of this. I shall share other videos in future communications, and more will be available on our website in the coming weeks.
Coming up
Our first School of Public Health Assembly will be held this week — from 10-11 a.m. Wednesday, Jan. 15, in Umrath Lounge in Umrath Hall — as a way to share progress updates and discuss steps we are taking to build the school. Our eventual plan is that these will be the primary venue for exchange of ideas among all primarily appointed faculty and staff. But in our early months, we invite all interested WashU faculty and staff to join us. There is a Zoom link for those unable to attend.
Also new this week
An essay in my blog, The Healthiest Goldfish, for those who might be interested, on “What is next for health in 2025.” I always welcome your thoughts and feedback on these and other writings.
Thank you
I end with a note of thanks. While I am writing and sending these notes, I see my job as creating a way for all of us to contribute to building something extraordinary together. That means that everything I write about reflects the work of many, and I am grateful to all who are engaging with this work, every day, both inside the school and throughout the university. To all who are contributing to this journey: thank you.
Warmly,
Sandro
Sandro Galea, MD, DrPH
Margaret C. Ryan Dean of the School of Public Health
Eugene S. and Constance Kahn Distinguished Professor in Public Health
Washington University in St. Louis