Faculty & Staff

Dear Colleagues,

Welcome to the new academic year. It is already launched by a large number of auspicious events. In fact, it's been more of a blast-off than a beginning.

As you will see in this issue of Momentum, we welcomed 537 new Masters and 34 new Doctoral students this month—the biggest incoming class in our history. We also welcomed seven new faculty members. I hope you will enjoy reading about them below.

We've kicked off the year with events we can all be proud of, and more are on the horizon.

• On September 8, we held a very well attended national conference in Low Library to mark the tenth anniversary of 9/11, understand what we have learned about disaster response and prevention, and consider what we still need to know and do. We were honored to host as speakers FDA commissioner Margaret Hamburg, and Dr. Nicole Lurie, assistant secretary of Health and Human Services for Preparedness and Response, as well as numerous other policymakers, scientists, media and thought leaders. What did we learn? Please see the report below in this issue. I want to thank Drs. Sandro Galea, our Epidemiology chair, and Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness, and Epi Administrative Director Barbara Aaron for doing us all proud in creating and leading this important conference.
• On September 14, we inaugurated our Grand Rounds series for this year, focussed on the theme "a Lifecourse Approach to Prevention." Dr. John Santelli, chair of our Heilbrunn Population and Family Health Department, is collaborating with me in leading what I believe will be an inspiring and provocative series. The signs are outstanding: our inaugural lecture by Drs. Eric and Denise Kandel combined molecular biology, neuroscience and epidemiology to help us understand how and why tobacco can be a gateway drug. How exciting that we filled Alumni Hall to the rafters and that the audience was rapt and asked so many thought-provoking questions!
   Please join us for the next Grand Rounds on November 16, led by Drs. Santelli, Galea and myself.
• On September 18-19, many members of our faculty were involved in conferences and events associated with the historic U.N. Summit on Non-Communicable Diseases. Our NCD Task Force, led by Dr. Moise Desvarieux, produced a position paper for the U.N. on the prevention and control of NCDs that I hope you will take time to read.
• On October 18, the School will host its first gala. In a time of tight budgets, I am thrilled to report that the school garnered significant support from the New York community and beyond, even before the official invitations were mailed. We owe thanks to some very hardworking members of our Board and to our tireless Interim Senior Director of Development, Natasha Lambropoulos.
• On Oct. 19, you are all invited to hear this year's Calderone Prize winner, Dr. Harvey Feinberg, president of the Institute of Medicine, give the Calderone lecture on 11 AM at the Paley Center for Media (25 W.52nd St.). The Calderone Prize, the highest prize in public health, is awarded by the Mailman School - through an international selection committee - for transformational leadership in public health. The topic of Dr. Feinberg's speech is: Public Health in a Time of Government Austerity. Please use this link to RSVP.

I must also mention the continuing progress on and excitement around our new MPH curriculum. On September 23, the University Senate approved all 25 of our new Certificate programs—a major milestone for which we have many faculty members to thank, beginning with our Vice Dean of Education Melissa Begg. I also want to thank the dozens of faculty members who worked through the summer and continue to work on writing syllabi. I hope you have all seen our new Prospective Student website, which is getting great reviews from the students coming to our Open Houses.

I've had the opportunity to speak about our educational leadership at a number of events in recent months and I want to let you know that the rest of the public health world is watching with admiration, eager to follow our lead.

I look forward to an important year of public health progress led by this wonderful school and all its members. While there are many challenges ahead for us to tackle, the directions are important and impactful.

Warm regards,

Linda P. Fried

Dean and DeLamar Professor