The foundations of excellence in public health
The core principles on which we shall build a great School of Public Health at WashU.
Dear colleagues:
I hope everyone has had a good month. We have been moving ahead with our plans to advance our public health agenda at WashU, and in this month’s note I wanted both to update on those plans, and also talk about some of the underlying principles behind the School of Public Health we are building at the University.
But before I start, a short story. It is the story of Ernst Wynder, whose pioneering work at WashU School of Medicine with his mentor, Evarts Graham, helped establish the link between smoking and lung cancer. This work would help form the intellectual basis for the landmark 1964 Surgeon General’s report on smoking and health, perhaps the most influential Surgeon General’s report ever, and one that has saved millions of lives in the US and worldwide. Wynder and Graham’s research did much to change the conversation about smoking and health and, ultimately, change law and culture. The world is significantly healthier for their efforts.
I start with this story because I think it is a terrific testament to WashU’s long history in advancing the health of the public, a history which began well before the current work towards creating a School of Public Health here. I also choose this story because I think it illustrates some core principles that will underlie what we do as we build the School. Some thoughts then about these principles and why I see them as foundational to building a great School of Public Health at WashU.
This first principle is our commitment to bringing together excellent faculty, faculty who are intellectually curious, who are driven by the call of science and scholarship, who are heterodox in their thinking, and who see the work of public health science as central to the science done in a great research university like WashU. It was this commitment that attracted great scholars like Wynder and Graham, and which has kept WashU a place where innovative, ambitious thinkers come to advance the boundaries of their field. As we build a new School of Public Health at WashU, this commitment will remain at the heart of all we do.
To this end, as I mentioned in last month’s note, we are now launching our first search for the full-time inaugural cohort of faculty for the School across all tracks (tenured/tenure, research, practice, and teaching tracks). This search is for faculty internal or external to WashU. I would encourage faculty who see their work as being best served by being part of a research-intensive School of Public Health to put their name forward, to apply. I note that I am not unaware that there remains much we do not yet know about what the School will look like in its early years, and that being part of an inaugural faculty must include embracing some uncertainty. I have chosen to join WashU because I have come to believe that the institutional support for making this an outstanding School is unprecedented, and that there is here a truly unique opportunity to do great things together. I hope that many will see this opportunity as I do.
The second principle is the understanding that while we have a focus on research intensity, we are building a School of Public Health, and that at the heart of a School is teaching. Our goal is to have an outstanding teaching program that prepares students for the next generation of work in population health science and scholarship. This means providing creative educational programs, opportunities for mentorship (echoing Graham’s mentorship of Wynder), flexible offerings that give students the option of learning in the digital space, and a second-to-none classroom experience. This education will ground students in the fundamentals of public health while also continuing to evolve as the field evolves, incorporating the latest advances in public health thinking and pedagogy.
The third principle is that the aspirations of an excellent School must rest on work at the interstices of disciplines. Evarts Graham was a surgeon by training. Yet at WashU he did not confine his interests to the operating room. By working with epidemiologist Ernst Wynder, he demonstrated the wide-ranging intellectual openness that is fostered by an interdisciplinary approach. This means that we want to encourage interdisciplinarity, and welcome scholars who are comfortable with working across fields. WashU is an academic community with eight schools. Building a great School of Public Health here means finding synergies between WashU schools, to support the work of all, an effort I have called Public Health Plus. We will nurture research networks that are designed to cross schools at WashU. This will evolve and change over time, but my hope is that the spirit of interdisciplinarity, of public health plus other disciplines, will never change. I am grateful to the faculty and staff at the Brown School, the School of Medicine, Arts & Sciences, and the Institute for Public Health for all they have done to support the School of Public Health as it emerges at WashU, reflecting the value of an interdisciplinary approach to all we do. I look forward to building on this example and continuing to build partnerships across the WashU community.
Fourth, we aspire to build a School that cares deeply about local and global impact, about science and scholarship of consequence that can contribute to improving the world around us. This aligns with the goal of WashU’s Here and Next initiative to “mobilize research, education, and patient care to establish WashU and St. Louis as a global hub for transformative solutions to the deepest societal challenges.” This does not mean that we are leaning only into practical science, just that we will aspire to a balance between different forms of scholarship in population health. It means doing work that recognizes the responsibility that comes with trying to set the stage for interdisciplinary efforts to create a better world. When Wynder and Graham did their work, they were pursuing a line of inquiry which had global implications, ultimately shaping a healthier world for all. I have long made the case for a muscular public health, a public health of consequence, which engages with the practical concerns of the moment, aligning all we do with what can do the most good for health. This means working at all levels—national and global, yes, but also in our own backyard here in St. Louis—to shape healthier populations.
Finally, none of the above can exist in a vacuum. We can build a School with excellent faculty, that works across disciplines, that cares deeply about local and global impact, only if we build a School that is supportive, kind, and collegial. We aim to create structures that encourage idiosyncratic thinking, the sharing of ideas, in a context of respect for one another and a shared effort to make sure that everyone in the School can succeed. I again return to the aspiration of Here and Next to “foster freedom of inquiry and expression of ideas in our research, teaching, and learning” and “create an environment that encourages and supports wide-ranging exploration at the frontier of discovery by embracing diverse perspectives from individuals of all identities and backgrounds.” Wynder and Graham pursued work which was controversial, subject to corporate pressures and a skeptical public. Such work can only be done in an intellectual community that values the pursuit of ideas for their own sake, which can handle the airing of controversial views, and which is animated by a commitment to civility and respect and an embrace of those who think differently. I have written before about the importance of civility, respect, and the importance of engaging with ideas and people we might find disagreeable. A great School of Public Health is one where we can indeed reach out and engage with a range of people and ideas, supported always by a basis of civility and the assumption of mutual good faith.
I close, as I did in my September message, on a note of enthusiasm. It is enormously exciting to create something new. The new School of Public Health at WashU presents a unique opportunity for this great university to take the outstanding work in health it has been a leader in for decades, to lean in, and to push on science that helps us understand how to improve the health of populations. The School remains a work in progress, but everything we do will be guided by these principles. I hope that, within WashU, faculty who see their work advanced by being part of such a community will join us, and that we will create bridges to all faculty, inside and outside of the School of Public Health, to advance our field going forward.
As I noted in my September note, this month I will be at WashU for the Public Health at WashU Annual Conference, where I will share a vision for the future of public health at the university. I will summarize these thoughts on the future of public health in my November note to the Community.
I am having the wonderful good fortune of meeting more and more members of the WashU community as the months roll on. Thank you to everyone with whom I have had conversations, whose thoughts have helped shape my own thinking. I indeed look forward to meeting everyone who is interested in a conversation in the coming months.
Until then.
Warmly,
Sandro
