Faculty & Staff

Dear Colleagues,

These are exciting times for our School. With the new year come several momentous new appointments to our leadership team that will position us well for years to come.

First, I am absolutely thrilled by the successful outcome of our search for a new chair for the Department of Sociomedical Sciences. As you may have heard, we will be welcoming Lisa Metsch, PhD, as SMS chair on July 1. Dr. Metsch is an innovative and renowned researcher on the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS among people who abuse substances. She currently directs the Division of Health Services Research and Policy, among other appointments at the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine. I invite you to read more about her in this edition of Momentum.

I also want to welcome Jennifer P. Wisdom, PhD, as Assistant Dean for Research Resources. An Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry, she will be joining our faculty in the Department of Health Policy and Management. Dr. Wisdom leads a number of studies examining the organization, financing, and delivery of mental health and addiction services. She has a deep interest in the services and infrastructure that support a successful research career. With the able assistance of Halley Riley, she will translate these interests into developing the next generation of research support services offered to our faculty by the R2 office.

Last, but by no means least, I am delighted to announce that we have recruited a talented and seasoned development professional to serve as our new Associate Dean for Institutional Advancement. Jill Barkan will be joining us from NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, where she has spent the past ten years as director of Fundraising Programs. Ms. Barkan, who has two decades of development experience, will come onboard in mid-March. I could not be more pleased to have her experienced and proven hand guiding us as we seek to grow our institution.

As you may have heard, Natasha Lambropoulos, who has done an outstanding job leading our Development team, will be leaving us in late February for an exciting new position at Memorial Sloan Kettering. I’m sure you will join me in wishing her well and thanking her for her wonderful work on the 2011 Gala, in developing our now-strong alumni association, her efforts on behalf of CII, and many other projects.

I hope you will take a moment to read in this edition about this year’s thrilling Commencement speaker Michelle Bachelet, Executive Director of U.N. Women and former President of Chile, and also about next week’s Grand Rounds presentation on a life-course approach to neurocognitive health by Michelle Carlson, PhD, Associate Director of the Center on Aging and Health at Johns Hopkins. We are fortunate to have the opportunity to learn from such luminaries.

I want to close with a few reflections on my recent trip to Davos, Switzerland, for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. As you may have heard, I had the privilege of organizing and participating in a special Ideas Lab panel titled “Future Demographics, Future Cities,” along with two other Columbia deans—Carol Becker of the School of Arts and Mark Wigley of the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, plus Kartik Chadran, an associate professor at the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science.

The presentation was a result of an ongoing collaboration among the deans of these four schools to consider both the necessities and opportunities for design of cities of the future given the aging of the world’s populations. We proposed that city dwellers of all ages would benefit in health and wellbeing if cities were designed to meet the needs and goals of old and young and foster engagement and synergies across generations. We further demonstrated dimensions of this: designing for win-wins in public health, architecture, engineering, and for artists. It’s a special honor to be invited to give these presentations, and what other university could make a more convincing claim to broad expertise on the future of cities than Columbia University in the City of New York! University President Lee Bollinger introduced the panel and later declared it a proud moment for Columbia.
 
Also at Davos, the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Ageing Society, of which I am a member, released a new book titled Global Population Ageing: Peril or Promise. This monograph was launched by Margaret Chan, Director General of the World Health Organization, along with several of us who edited it. I recommend it to anyone interested in the implications of this historic demographic shift—and not merely because HPM professor Jack Rowe and I contributed to the publication.

I am delighted to let you know that our school was invited to provide a day of education this summer to the World Economic Forum’s young global leaders. These outstanding individuals in their 30s and 40s are in residence at the WEF for a three-year fellowship and will be with us in New York this summer to learn about public health.

It’s a treasured opportunity to spend a week among CEOs and political leaders from around the globe and to represent public health needs as well as our School. I was able to make many promising contacts with the business and foundation community. It was humbling to think that I was the only dean of a school of public health in attendance at this convocation of titans. I was honored to represent this great institution and raise awareness of and support for the valuable work you all do.

With best wishes,