July 7, 2025
FROM THE DEAN
Welcome to Inside WashU Public Health
This is the first edition of Inside WashU Public Health. As summarized in last week’s Public Health in Progress, this weekly newsletter now replaces PHiP for all internal members of the SPH community — our faculty, staff, students, and members of key councils. Much of what will be in Inside WashU Public Health is procedural, but I also will communicate, as I have in the past, as needed on matters that affect our community.
Consistent with the spirit we have been building at the school, this newsletter replaces separate mailing lists for different community segments. There are not separate staff or faculty mailings — all shall be in here and are visible to all. If something pertains to one group versus another, we may label it “For staff,” for example, and other groups may or may not browse, but messages are here for all. The idea is simple: to put everything our community needs to know in one convenient place, one email. If you read Inside WashU Public Health, you will know what is going on. And fundamentally, we are all better as a community when we all know what is going on and are all engaged. Thank you for reading, for engaging.
Strategic planning
“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”
That is from John Doerr, and it captures nicely one of the complexities that inform strategic planning. How do we make sure that, as we build an outstanding School of Public Health, we do what matters most? How do we create the conditions for science and scholarship of consequence to thrive? How are we the best we can be at preparing the next generation of thinkers and doers in public health? How do we best engage with communities to work toward making change happen? These are some of the many questions we shall be tackling together in the strategic planning exercise we shall be launching together at the All-School Retreat (ASR) for faculty and staff (see below).
The goal for our strategic planning exercise is to help us collectively to focus on strategic imperatives we will want to tackle, on the measures we will use to hold ourselves accountable, the indicators that we will use to benchmark the measures, and the tactics that we will use to achieve these metrics. We will spend 2025-2026 developing and refining a strategic plan that we shall launch by next summer. While the ASR on August 14, when we shall launch this planning, will be for faculty and staff, we will have ample occasion to involve other members of our community during the year, including students and other friends and interest holders. I am very much looking forward to the conversations that shall emerge from this process. I will, up front, thank Liz Vestal, who leads our Continuous Improvement Unit and who shall be key to all of our strategic planning work.
This year’s inaugural All-School Retreat will be held from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Thursday, August 14, at the Bayer Event Center at the Missouri Botanical Garden. Pre-reads and an agenda for the ASR are here. The ASR is an in-person event and will be highly participatory.
Orientation for faculty and staff
We are hosting an orientation for all of our faculty (primary and secondary) and staff on August 13. Recognizing we are a new school and there are many processes that are still gelling, we think having a couple of hours together will help align all of us so we’re on the same page regarding procedures going forward. We are organizing two sessions — one for staff, one for faculty, simply recognizing that there are different procedural issues that affect both groups. The orientations will feature brief presentations from our leadership team and then ample time for Q&A. As noted above, both groups will come together for the All-School Retreat the next day.
Orientation for staff will be held over breakfast, from 9 to 11 a.m. Wednesday, August 13, at the Lopata House on the northwest side of the Danforth Campus.
Orientation for faculty will be held over lunch, from 1 to 3 p.m. Wednesday, August 13, at the Lopata House.
Registration for the faculty and staff orientation and All-School Retreat
Please RSVP here for both orientation and the All-School Retreat. Note there is one link to RSVP for both events.
FROM THE ASSOCIATE DEAN OF EDUCATION, ON FALL AND SPRING TEACHING
New syllabus template: We are developing an all-new SPH syllabus template. It will be ready by the beginning of August. When ready, we will include a link here in Inside WashU Public Health for faculty to access and use.
Submitting syllabi: Having all updated syllabi is critical for Higher Learning Commission and Council on Education for Public Health accreditation requirements. Instructions for submitting syllabi will be included in this newsletter at the beginning of August and in your teaching confirmation letter. I appreciate your collaboration on promptly submitting your syllabus and posting to Canvas by the first day of the semester.
Course reserves: From now forward, SPH faculty must work with Olin Library for any course reserve requests for SPH classes. Please read more about the library’s course reserve request process here.
Spring 2026 teaching assignments: The education committee — Patrick Fowler, Charlene Caburnay, Lindsay Stark and I (Angela Hobson) — are now planning for spring 2026 courses. For this academic year, SPH course planning and scheduling will still be supported by Selma Dizdarevic in the Brown School. If teaching in the spring, you will still receive a teaching preferences survey in late July that will be due in early to mid-August. We are under new, stricter deadlines from the Office of the University Registrar for having course listings go live. I appreciate everyone’s prompt response to the teaching survey so that course planning and scheduling operates as efficiently as possible, and to meet the university deadline.
Center for Teaching and Learning: I encourage all who are teaching or who are thinking about teaching to regularly engage with the many resources and events offered by WashU’s Center for Teaching and Learning. We also will develop opportunities specifically for the SPH, and I look forward to engaging all of our teachers in fostering a culture of instructional excellence. Thank you for all that you do to make this culture possible and for advancing our educational mission.
FROM THE ASSOCIATE DEAN FOR ADMINISTRATION, ON SPACE MOVES
As we prepare for some members of our community to move into 4300 Duncan and others to relocate in Hillman Hall in early August, here is an update on some information that will be useful in planning for these moves.
For those moving to 4300 Duncan: A note of thanks to those who already have packed their belongings into green moving bins. For those who have not yet packed, we request that all belongings are packed and marked with your name no later than Tuesday, July 15. For anyone who needs green bins, they are in Suite 30 on the Garden Level of Hillman Hall. For faculty and staff who are located in Hillman Hall and will be moving to Duncan, once bins are packed and marked, they can be left in your current workspaces. The moving company will pick them up from offices and workstations and will transport them to the assigned new locations in Duncan. When faculty and staff arrive at 4300 Duncan the week of August 4, bins will be waiting in designated offices or workstations for unpacking.
For those moving to new locations in Hillman Hall: Those moving to different offices or workstations will receive individual emails from Sunghei Han noting the new locations as well as specific dates to vacate current offices and workstations. Green bins will be made available for packing. We anticipate this notification to be sometime in August. We are coordinating with the Brown School on the dates their teams are moving; we will move after they move, so are waiting on those moves before we can be certain about when our moves will take place.
Please find here a quick-reference one-pager and an FAQ document with answers to common questions, best practices, and available resources.
Many have asked for the opportunity to see the space at 4300 Duncan ahead of moving in. While construction is still underway, we are planning an open house for 10 a.m. to noon Thursday, July 31. In the case that this date and time shift, we will communicate any changes. All are invited to stop by during this time to get acquainted with our new spaces at Duncan. SPH’s Sunghei Han, Cherita Washington, and Amanda Rhodes will be on site to provide direction and answer questions. We invite all faculty and staff to stop by 4300 Duncan to see the space, even if your primary location will be in Hillman Hall.
NEWS FOR ALL
New to WashU Public Health
Lisa M. Klesges, PhD, MS, has been appointed interim associate dean for research at the School of Public Health, effective July 1, 2025. She joins the SPH leadership team with over three decades of research experience, including her role as founding dean emeritus of the School of Public Health at the University of Memphis. She holds appointments as a secondary professor at WashU School of Public Health, and a professor of surgery at WashU Medicine. A behavioral epidemiologist by training, her research focuses on clinical and community interventions designed to support behavior change. This work aims to improve health outcomes across areas such as cancer prevention and control, obesity, tobacco use, and sickle cell anemia treatment adherence, with an emphasis on addressing rural health disparities.
We also welcome two new faculty and several new staff this week. Our new faculty members:
Kim Thuy Seelinger, JD, joins the School of Public Health as a professor of practice. Seelinger studies sexual violence in situations of armed conflict and forced displacement. Formerly at the Brown School, Seelinger took academic leave from WashU from 2023 to 2025 to serve in the prosecutor’s office of the International Criminal Court as the senior coordinator for gender-based crimes and crimes against and affecting children.
Susy Stark, PhD, MS, joins the School of Public Health as a professor. She comes to us from WashU Medicine, where she was a professor of occupational therapy. She uses community-engaged approaches to design and implement interventions to promote successful aging in place and to prevent falls.
Our new staff members:
Mohammed Abba-Aji, MD, MPH, is a physician and population health scientist whose work examines how violence, displacement and other social determinants shape mental health. He joins the School of Public Health as a postdoctoral fellow and will lead the Special Projects Unit in the Office of the Dean, building cross-disciplinary partnerships to expand the school’s impact on population health research and policy.
Rebecca Bollinger, OTD, is an occupational therapy interventionist and study coordinator who works in the laboratory of Susy Stark, a professor at the School of Public Health. Rebecca coordinates the lab’s Home Hazard Removal Program research study and helps to facilitate the Missouri Aging and Disability Research Network.
Jessica Butcher joins the School of Public Health as the student financial services manager. She works closely with Admissions and Recruitment and with students to manage all aspects of awarding and distributing student scholarships and financial aid.
Victoria De La Vega is a project coordinator for iHeard, an initiative of the School of Public Health’s Health Communication Research Laboratory. Tori leads all weekly surveillance activities for multiple sites nationally, managing the resulting survey data, and training new iHeard site teams.
Sherdonna Denholm is the lab coordinator for Susy Stark. Sherdonna handles day-to-day operations in the lab and serves as recruitment coordinator for the lab’s COMPASS: A Novel Transition Program to Reduce Disability After a Stroke research study. Megen Devine is a technical writer who serves as publications editor and research communications writer in the laboratory of Susy Stark. Megen translates research findings for community partners and research participants.
Cameron Dunn, MSW, MBA, is a content creator at SPH’s Health Communication Research Laboratory. They are responsible for monitoring the health information environment locally and nationally, conducting background research, developing survey items, and translating complex scientific information into timely, accurate, plain-language health content for the public and partner organizations on the iHeard project.
Tyra Fowler is a certified occupational therapy assistant who completes assessments and provides interventions for all of the research studies in the lab of Susy Stark.
Amanda Geisler joins the School of Public Health’s finance and grants administration team as a research administrator. She brings a wealth of experience in post-award grant management and financial operations. Previously at the Brown School, Amanda managed complex domestic and international research portfolios and played a key role in system transitions and audit compliance.
Brianna Holden, MSOT, is an occupational therapy interventionist and study coordinator in the laboratory of Susy Stark. Brianna coordinates the lab’s COMPASS study. Additionally, she trains occupational therapists across the country to deliver the evidence-based Home Hazard Removal Program.
Holly Hollingsworth, PhD, is a research statistician and retired associate research professor from WashU Medicine who works in the laboratory of Susy Stark. He assists in research design and complex data analysis and interpretation for the lab’s research studies.
Matt Howard joins the admissions team at the School of Public Health as an admissions communications specialist. He has over three years of experience in enrollment marketing, specializing in using various communication channels to bring students into the world of higher education.
Melissa Krauss, MPH, is the senior statistical data analyst in the laboratory of Susy Stark. She oversees data management and analyses for all of the lab’s research studies.
Alexis Marsh, MSW, directs the iHeard national coordinating center, part of a project led by SPH’s Health Communication Research Laboratory. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she led the laboratory’s RADx-UP initiative, part of a national network of community-engaged projects to respond to COVID-19 health disparities in diverse populations.
Anna Mazzuca joins the School of Public Health as a business manager on the finance and grants administration team. She brings over 20 years of experience in academic administration, including 14 years as business manager at WashU’s Institute for Public Health, where she led financial, operational and HR functions.
Dana Sutter, MSOT, serves as lab manager for Susy Stark, PhD. Dana is responsible for administrative and financial management of the lab and serves as project manager for all the lab’s research studies.
Jennifer Wolff, PhD, is the research director at the SPH’s Health Communication Research Laboratory and the lead scientist on a trial to reduce loneliness and social isolation among homebound older adults by providing them with digital access to programming through a virtual senior center.
Public Health Ideas
As part of Public Health Ideas, a platform for our dean to discuss work and issues in public health with faculty and others, Dean Galea talked to Timothy McBride, PhD, MS, the Bernard Becker Professor at WashU Public Health, about the future of Medicaid funding. See here for the video.
Papers of note
The School of Public Health’s Sara Malone, PhD, MSW, assistant professor; Douglas Luke, PhD, the Distinguished Professor in Public Health Systems Science; Virginia McKay, PhD, MA, assistant professor; Kim Prewitt, manager of sustainability; and Bobbi Carothers, PhD, MA, senior data analyst, co-authored “Clinician perspectives on the multilevel impacts of Pediatric early warning systems (PEWS) in resource-variable hospitals,” published in Frontiers in Oncology.
Jean-Francois Trani, PhD, professor at the School of Public Health, co-authored “The Association Between Structural and Social Determinants of Health and Mood Disorder Symptoms Among Black Adults in the Greater St. Louis Metropolitan Area,” published in the Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities. The senior author is Ganesh Babulal, PhD, associate professor of neurology at WashU Medicine.
Jean-Francois Trani also co-authored, “Longitudinal Associations Between Speech-in-Noise Deficits and Cognitive Function Over 8-Years: The Role of Hearing Aid Use and Environmental Noise Exposure,” published in The Journals of Gerontology; Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences. Ganesh Babulal is senior author.
Patricia Cavazos-Rehg, PhD, a professor of psychiatry at WashU Medicine and a secondary faculty member at the School of Public Health, co-authored “Indicators of Intergenerational Transmission of Cannabis Use Among US Young Adults,” published in Substance Use & Addiction Journal.
Public Health news
See here for a story in the Record about a new analysis that indicates that middle and high school students who participate in sports are significantly less likely to report suicidal thoughts or behaviors — yet sports participation has declined. Massy Mutumba, PhD, an assistant professor at the School of Public Health, is the study’s senior author.
Also, congratulations to the trustees and students newly elected to the university’s Board of Trustees (Record story here). We are excited to note that among the new undergraduate and graduate student representatives for the academic year are two students who care deeply about public health.Michael Kudom-Agyemang is a physician from Ghana and a dual-degree student pursuing a master’s in public health and a master’s in business administration. Kudom-Agyemang works as a research assistant in the lab of Tristan McIntosh, PhD, an assistant professor of medicine, and is passionate about bridging medicine, business and public health to create solutions to health challenges.
Bella Gomez is a rising senior majoring in Latin American studies and in global studies, and minoring in educational studies, all in Arts & Sciences. Gomez is interested in equitable public health policy. Last summer, she participated in the Stimulating Training and Access to HIV Research Experiences (STAR) program at WashU, led by a team including Juliet Iwelunmor, PhD, a professor of medicine and a secondary faculty member at the School of Public Health. As a STAR Scholar, Gomez developed a youth-centered HIV self-testing kit in partnership with the St. Louis Department of Health. She hopes to pursue graduate studies in health law and population health.
Of interest
Professor Rodrigo Reis, PhD, and four other professors from Brazil will be co-teaching a graduate-level course in the fall semester, “People, Health & Place: International Perspectives on Urban Health, Physical Activity, Urban Design, and Transportation.” The course will be delivered in a hybrid format with participation from students at WashU and four universities from Brazil. Additional course details can be found here.
SPH clothing orders deadline July 14
Orders will continue through Monday, July 14, for SPH-branded polo shirts, half-zip fleece tops, green zip-up jackets and North Face jackets. See https://wupublichealth.lipic.com to browse and order options. We have been told that the university bookstore will make WashU Public Health-branded clothing items available online at some point in the 2025-2026 school year, but we arranged for the option to order some items earlier through a university-approved vendor in case there are delays … and, well, some of us are extra eager to get our SPH on.
Let us know
If you have SPH news or events to share, please send details to Elizabethe Holland Durando, SPH director of communications and change management.