Weekly news from the School of Public Health at Washington University in St. Louis
Dear colleagues,
A very warm congratulations to all the students who are graduating from WashU today, including the students who are graduating with their MPH and PhD in public health sciences from the Brown School. We do what we do in no small part to make sure that we pave the way for the next generation, and graduation is a moment to honor the graduates who will lead in the field in the coming decades. To all who are graduating: congratulations. To all of the faculty and staff who helped graduates get to this moment: thank you. I so look forward to our more formal engagement with Commencement as a School of Public Health starting next year.
Space for primary faculty and staff
We are moving forward with plans for space for our primary faculty and staff as discussed at previous School Assemblies. This week construction started on the elements that were needed to be fixed at 4300 Duncan. That space should be ready for move-in sometime this summer. Most of our current faculty whose primary orientation is research shall have offices at 4300 Duncan. The faculty whose primary work revolves around teaching will have primary offices in the Garden Level of Hillman Hall. We shall have flexible space at Duncan to allow for faculty to spend part of their time there co-working as needed as well. We shall have space allotted for research teams at Duncan commensurate with grant portfolios, consistent with our space principles; we shall also have overflow space to accommodate research teams and some administrative functions in Hillman.
In the coming weeks, Sunghei Han, our associate dean for administration, and Amanda Rhodes, our chief of staff and associate dean for strategic initiatives, will be reaching out to all SPH primary faculty to discuss space allocations. Our goal is to have everyone seated where we shall be for the coming academic year. As I have noted before, we are a dynamic, new, evolving School of Public Health, and as such, we would expect some movement in office space over the coming years, but I think the space we have now aligned will serve the school well certainly for the 2025-2026 academic year. A thank you to all members of our school team, and our partners in the university, who have been working to align the space we need as a school.
The past week
We welcomed Catherine K. Ettman, PhD, an assistant professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, to speak in our Talking Public Health seminar series last week. A recording of her talk, and all of the talks we’ve hosted this year, can be found here.
Joining the School of Public Health
We welcome three new secondary faculty and two new staff members this week.
Barton Hamilton, PhD, the Robert Brookings Smith Distinguished Professor of Entrepreneurship at WashU Olin Business, joins the School of Public Health as a secondary faculty member. He studies the economic impacts of health policies and the effects of health-care systems on economic behavior.
Allison A. King, MD, MPH, PhD, the Fred M. Saigh Distinguished Chair in Pediatric Research at WashU Medicine, joins the School of Public Health as a secondary faculty member. She investigates factors that influence a child’s learning opportunities, including the impact of chronic diseases such as sickle cell disease and brain tumors on cognitive function. She also employs implementation science methods to enhance care and outcomes for affected children.
Rebecca Messbarger, PhD, a professor of Italian and a leader in the Medical Humanities minor at WashU Arts & Sciences, joins the School of Public Health as a secondary faculty member. Through the intersecting histories of the gendered body, art, religion, and criminal justice, Messbarger studies how medical science shaped public health in the Enlightenment Age.
Jordyn Bommarito, MPH, joins the school’s financial management and grants team as a research administrator. She will support investigators in achieving their research goals. Jordyn has an academic and professional background in social work and public health and a commitment to advancing equitable, community-centered health initiatives.
Yuxuan Wang, MS, is a statistical analyst working in the Healthier Futures Lab with Salma Abdalla, DrPH, MBBS, an SPH assistant professor. Yuxuan is dedicated to using advanced statistical methods and modeling techniques to enhance public health outcomes. Prior to joining the lab, she worked at a research-focused hospital.
Public Health Ideas
A video of my conversation with Salma Abdalla about a paper she and I co-authored, “Income, education, and the clustering of risk in cardiovascular disease in the U.S., 1999–2018: an observational study.” To read the paper, see here.
Papers of interest
SPH secondary faculty member Elvin Geng, MD, MPH, a professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at WashU Medicine, was published in Implementation Science for a timely editorial he co-authored, “Implementation science grant terminations in the United States.”
Annual performance reviews
SPH annual performance reviews (APRs) are due. Please submit them by this Friday, May 16. If you have questions or need assistance, please reach out to Alexis Crumer in Human Resources.
From the associate dean for administration
An SPH Compass session that was planned for noon today, May 12, has been canceled because of Commencement. Future Compass events will be posted in this space.
To the week, with optimism.
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
Vice-provost for Interdisciplinary Initiatives
Washington University in St Louis
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