Weekly news from the School of Public Health at Washington University in St. Louis
Dear colleagues,
Looking ahead to 2025-2026 meetings
We have started to schedule out meetings for the 2025-2026 academic year. All meeting dates can be found here. We do not have rooms allocated yet, given some uncertainties on space availability, but those details will be added in time. As mentioned in our most recent School Assembly (notes here), there will be a series of regular meetings in the upcoming academic year, and all will be listed on the website, but just for a summary, here are the ones I will be hosting directly:
Talking Public Health seminars — weekly, with invited speakers from inside and outside the WashU community presenting about science.
All other meetings below will be monthly:
School Assembly — for all faculty and staff, to discuss items relevant to ongoing school structure and function.
Thinking Public Health — conversations for faculty, staff and students. Chatham House rule conversations, intended to be open discussions about difficult topics linked to public health.
Faculty and dean breakfasts — opportunities for informal conversations about issues of the moment relevant to faculty.
Early-stage investigators (ESI) meetings with dean — open to early-career faculty (self-identified; if you think you are early-career and will benefit from being a part of these, you are welcome). These meetings will center around mentoring and a broad range of issues (from science to the world around us), and also will be an opportunity for conversations about other issues relevant to ESI faculty. This will be part of a fuller suite of faculty development opportunities being shaped by Dean Haire-Joshu and team.
Staff and dean breakfasts — an opportunity for informal conversations about issues of the moment relevant to staff.
Student coffee chats with dean — open to all students, an opportunity for informal conversations about issues relevant to students.
Doctoral student meetings with dean — open to doctoral students, these also will focus on mentoring and on issues of particular relevance to doctoral students. This is part of the fuller suite of doctoral trainee development opportunities.
A transition note, doctoral programs
One of the questions that has come up as we transition educational programs from the Brown School to the School of Public Health is around doctoral programs. The doctoral programs in Public Health Sciences, Social Work, and Computational and Data Sciences will continue to emphasize the value of transdisciplinary research training, and will not change in any appreciable way in the near future. While we shall, as a School of Public Health community, work toward envisioning a future of education, students and faculty will have ample opportunity for engagement with that process, and to shape how these programs evolve over time.
With respect to the very specific question around faculty mentoring of doctoral students, faculty from across schools (Public Health, Brown, others) will continue to mentor students on their research and progress toward program milestones, maintaining the same expectations and timelines. No action is required for committee members transitioning to the School of Public Health. Happily, a recent university policy change now allows faculty to mentor students across different schools, making all of this easy. If you have questions, please feel free to reach out to Professor Patrick Fowler, who is the current public health doctoral program director in the Brown School and will continue in the same role at the School of Public Health.
The past week, events
We welcomed three speakers to our Talking Public Health seminar series last week — Deshira Wallace, PhD, an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Department of Health Behavior; Jenny S. Guadamuz, PhD, MSPH, an assistant professor at the School of Public Health at University of California, Berkeley; and Kim Thuy Seelinger, JD, a research associate professor at the Brown School. Recordings of their talks will be available here.
The coming week
We welcome two outside guests for our Talking Public Health series this week.
Kirsten Beyer, PhD, MPH, MS, a professor in the Division of Epidemiology & Social Sciences in the Institute for Health & Humanity at the Medical College of Wisconsin, will speak at noon Tuesday, April 29, on “Structural Racism in Housing and Health Outcomes in the United States.” The talk will be in 333A Goldfarb Hall. RSVP here to attend in person or over Zoom.
And Anusha M. Vable, ScD, MPH, an associate professor and associate director of the Center for Health Equity in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of California San Francisco, will speak at noon Thursday, May 1, on “The Education System as a Potential Solution to Health Inequities.” This talk also will be in 333A Goldfarb Hall. RSVP here to attend in person or over Zoom.
Also this week, WashU’s annual global health conference — “Global Health at WashU: Focus on Impact” — will be Wednesday, April 30, in Hillman Hall’s Clark-Fox Forum, and Thursday, May 1, in Moore Auditorium on the Medical Campus. If you have not registered yet, there is a waitlist. See here for details.
Joining the School of Public Health
We welcome new secondary faculty and a staff member to the School of Public Health this week.
Nathaniel Dell, PhD, is a clinical social worker and an assistant professor of psychiatry at WashU Medicine. He uses evidence-based approaches to promote the well-being of people living with mental illnesses and substance use disorder, and leverages big data to identify the needs of hard-to-reach populations such as refugees, people who are unhoused, and survivors of human trafficking.
Nickole Forget, MD, is an associate professor of medicine at WashU Medicine, where she provides medical care to underserved populations and mentors medical students and residents. Her research is focused on finding ways to improve health care for uninsured and underinsured people.
Juliet Iwelunmor, PhD, is a professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at WashU Medicine and a passionate advocate for sustaining evidence-based health interventions. She uses participatory research to study how to make interventions last by amplifying the voices of communities and young people in these health interventions.
Denise Wilfley, PhD, is the Scott Rudolph University Professor and a professor of psychiatry at WashU Medicine. Her research focuses on the prevention and treatment of eating disorders and obesity. She uses technology, community partnerships and implementation science methods to achieve real-world impact in colleges, secondary education and primary-care settings.
Abby Marler joins the dean’s office as a projects and events specialist. She comes from an event-management background, previously working in wedding and social event planning.
Public Health Ideas
A video of my conversation with Maura Kepper, PhD, an assistant professor at the School of Public Health. We discussed a paper Maura co-authored, “Multilevel factors influence the use of a cardiovascular disease assessment tool embedded in the electronic health record in oncology care.”
Public health news
A Q&A with Dr. Ross Brownson in the Source and on our website about how researchers can influence policy in today’s landscape of fractured public trust.
From the associate dean for administration
Thank you to those who joined our first SPH Compass session. Here are slides from the presentation, with helpful resources related to information technology, human resources, and WashU’s Shared Business Services Hub, along with contact information to make navigating administrative processes smoother.
Also this week
This week, in The Healthiest Goldfish, some thoughts on “What is the worst that could happen (for U.S. health)?” here.
I hope everyone has a pleasant week.
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
Past PHiPs, as well as Community notes, are archived here. You are receiving this email if you signed up for it or are a core member of the SPH community. Please feel free to reach out to