Spring 2010 - At Your Service - Berkeley Health

University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health

Berkeley HealthThe Magazine for Alumni and Friends

SPRING 2010

AT YOUR

SERVICESERVICEServing the Underserved pg. 4 Serving the Underserved pg. 4

Learning to Lead pg. 15 Learning to Lead pg. 15

With an estimated national shortage of 250,000 public health professionals, the need for superior public health education, research,

and action has never been more urgent.

Your support can help attract and retain the best students to Berkeley regardless of their fi nancial means—students who are passionate about

protecting your health and the health of those you care about.

Our students are passionate about making the world a healthier place.

Make your tax deductible contribution online at sph.berkeley.edu/giving or mail your gift (payable to the “School of Public Health Fund”) to:

For additional information about making a gift to the School of Public Health, call Pat Hosel, Assistant Dean, External Relations and Development, at (510) 642-9654.

External Relations & DevelopmentSchool of Public Health

University of California, Berkeley417 University Hall #7360Berkeley, CA 94720-7360

The CAMPAIGN for the SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTHU N I V E R S I T Y O F C A L I F O R N I A , B E R K E L E Y

Healthier Lives in a Safer World

Thanks to Berkeley...

1Berkeley Health Spring 2010 1Berkeley Health Spring 2010

DeanStephen M. Shortell, Ph.D., M.P.H.

Assistant Dean, External Relations and DevelopmentPatricia W. Hosel, M.P.A.

EditorMichael S. Broder

Associate EditorLinda Anderberg

DesignArcher Design, Inc.

Contributors Linda Anderberg, Michael S. Broder, Christopher E. Bush, Megan Coffee, Abby Cohn, Helen Halpin, Stephen M. Shortell

PhotographyJim Block, cover, pp. 1, 5–6, 9, 15–16, 18, 20, 28, 32; Shutterstock, cover, pp. 4, 8, 10–13, 17, 19, 20; Peg Skorpinski, pp. 2–3, 14, 27, 31–32; Jupiter Images, p. 4; iStockPhoto, pp. 13, 30; Jacqueline Barin, p. 23; Michael S. Broder, pp. 24–25; Edwin Rene Urriola, p. 24; Oasii Lucero, p. 32

Communications Advisory BoardLinda Anderberg, Michael S. Broder, Patricia A. Buffl er, Patricia W. Hosel, Joan Lam, Meredith Minkler, Linda Neuhauser, James Robinson, Steve Selvin, Stephen M. Shortell, John Swartzberg, Michael P. Wilson

Berkeley Health is published semiannually by the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health, for alumni and friends of the School.

UC Berkeley School of Public HealthOffi ce of External Relations and Development417 University Hall #7360Berkeley, CA 94720-7360(510) 643-2556

© 2010, Regents of the University of California. Reproduction in whole or part requires written permission.

HELPING THOSE WHO NEED IT MOST Three students share their experiences giving back to underserved communities—with the Suitcase Clinic in Berkeley, at an urban hospital in Los Angeles, and to minority populations with chronic diseases.

A HEALTHY FUTURE STARTS IN CALIFORNIAPolicy experts work for the health of Californians, making strides in the areas of quality of care, the social determinants of health, and chemicals policy.

LEARNING TO LEAD At the Center for Health Leadership, students learn skills they can put to use out in the world, online, or even on the soccer fi eld.

Fresh Perspective: Megan CoffeePOST-EARTHQUAKE HAITI: A TINDERBOX FOR DISEASE

Student Spotlight: Jacqueline C. Barin IN RURAL INDIA, AN UNDERGRAD FINDS HER CALLING

Alumna Spotlight: Vicky Breckwich Vásquez LEADING THE CHARGE FOR HEALTH EQUITY

University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health

Berkeley HealthThe Magazine for Alumni and Friends

SPRING 2010

The Campaign for the School of Public Health Around the School Alumni Notes

FEATURES

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DEPARTMENTS

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2 Berkeley Health Spring 2010

One result of our engagement, and that of many others on campus, is that UC Berkeley was recently recognized as the top university in the country for its contributions to society by the Washington Monthly annual rankings. These rankings are based on three broad categories: (1) social mobility in terms of recruiting and graduating low income students; (2) research in terms of producing cutting-edge scholarship and Ph.Ds; and (3) service in terms of encouraging students to give something back to their country.

Our students learn through discovery and service. The creativity and critical thinking skills required in research and knowledge production are equally needed in service. We need to be constructive skeptics, not only in the develop-ment of new knowledge, but in its application. In brief, the service that our faculty, students, and staff provide to our communities becomes itself an object of analysis in the quest to improve human health. We examine our service to see what works and doesn’t work under varying situations and circumstances.

This issue of Berkeley Health tells some of the stories of people at the School who are committed to service and how they are acting on that commitment in a variety of ways— through clinical care, policy making, community activism, and other means.

Knowledge for its own sake is an enjoyable and worthy pursuit. But knowledge put to use advances human civilization. As a professional school at the world’s leading public university, we have a special obligation to link knowledge to action, or as we express it, to move “from publication to public action.”

LEARNING FROM

DISCOVERY & SERVICE

UC Berkeley public health graduate students perform a variety of service activities on Volunteer Mobilization Day.

FROM THE DEAN

3Berkeley Health Spring 2010

We are reaching out to those students with a particular interest in serving vulnerable communities—locally, across the country, and throughout the world. For example, the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program (JMP) is training primary care physicians to serve the urban poor, while the Suitcase Clinic, started by a JMP student more than 20 years ago, has provided millions of hours of free care to people in need in Berkeley and surrounding areas.

Through the School’s Center for Health Leadership, students learn the skills to serve as leaders wherever their paths take them—in areas as diverse as community health educa-tion, reproductive rights activism, and teaching new media tools. Other outstanding examples of service spotlighted in this issue include

students and graduates working in Haiti in the wake of the disastrous earthquake; in India on community development projects to improve maternal and child health; and in Berkeley combating health inequities.

The School is frequently called upon to serve the State of California in the policy arena. Members of the School community are helping to implement good health policy, advising the State Legislature, and leading initiatives to improve care.

Speaking at the Commonwealth Club, Jane Goodall made the following comment: “We look around the world and we see many problems. But equally we look around the world and we fi nd many solutions, and our job is to replicate the solutions and to live

with courage and not to live in fear and to live with determination that we will create a more healthy and a better world. It’s we who can make the difference.”

I hope you will be inspired by what you read in the following pages, and that these stories will spark some new ideas for your own personal commitment to service.

“We need your service right “We need your service right now, at this moment in history…now, at this moment in history…I’m asking you to help change I’m asking you to help change

history’s course.”history’s course.”—President Barack Obama, upon signing the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act

Stephen M. Shortell, Ph.D., M.P.H., M.B.A.Dean, School of Public HealthBlue Cross of California Distinguished Professor of Health Policy & ManagementProfessor of Organization Behavior

People face different barriers to getting health

care in the United States. Race, gender, location,

disability, life circumstances, and socioeconomic

status all play a role in forming the broad

category of “underserved populations.”

HELPING THOSE WHO NEED IT

MOST


erhaps the most inspirational examples of service to the underserved are the passionate and motivated students who came to the UC Berkeley School of Public Health seeking training in order to be more effective at helping people. Many of them have already seen the limitations of narrowly focused treatment without regard to the larger context, and are seeking broader methods. They want to be the best they can be at changing the world, and are already making an impact as they learn.

HOLISTIC APPROACH TO HOMELESS CARE

In a way, Matthew Goldman’s commitment to providing medical care to the homeless population in Berkeley is not unusual. Every student in his 16-person UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program (JMP) class also volunteers at the Suitcase Clinic, a student-founded and -run organization offering free health and social services to underserved populations. And more than 100 Berkeley undergraduate volunteers, many of them public health majors, constitute the backbone of Suitcase. In addition, physicians from the community, residents at Highland Hospital, and JMP faculty members donate their time to treat patients.

Though the mere fact of his service is not unique in a community so dedicated to serving the underserved, Goldman stands out when you consider that he is simultaneously pursuing a master’s degree in public health, attending med school, and conducting thesis research on models of health delivery reform. Amidst this intense training, he and his colleagues still fi nd time to give back to the community.

“Generally speaking, the JMP tends to recruit very social-justice-oriented students,” Goldman says, “and Suitcase aligns very naturally with those values. We have a lot of excitement and enthusiasm in engaging these medical needs.”

Goldman began his work at Suitcase doing patient intake, which includes getting the patient’s clinical history and assessing needs. “Doing intake was great,” he says. “And it

was some of the most valuable clinical experience I’ve had. At Suitcase, we’re the fi rst people that the patient’s going to talk to, and that’s really fun and exciting. You hear some pretty amazing stories, and it’s really rewarding to get to engage with these people.”

continued on page 6


p

MATTHEW GOLDMAN

In his second semester, Goldman will be coordinating the Youth Clinic, which he chose partly because he feels the youth homeless population—generally older teens or adults in their early twenties—have the greatest need for accessible, non-intimidating services. “That community will hardly seek services from anywhere,” he explains. “At the Youth Clinic you can just drop in, no appointment necessary. It’s a safe environment, it’s relaxed, there’s food and a free foot washing service. Youth Clinic is unique in its openness and I think it has a good reputation in the young homeless community.”

Considering that youth treated at the Suitcase Clinic for minor infections or other concerns might otherwise end up at Highland Emergency Room, the Suitcase Clinic provides a cost benefi t to society in addition to much needed service. Yet Suitcase, like many nonprofi t organizations, struggles with funding and long-term stability. As coordinator of the clinic’s mission—another volunteer role—Goldman hopes to put his interest in health policy to work creating a more stable future for Suitcase. He’d like to see the clinic fl ourish for another 20 years and beyond, providing services for the homeless and training for JMP students long after he’s become a successful practicing doctor with a


HELPING THOSE WHO NEED IT MOST (continued)

FISAYO OKE

continued on page 8

commitment to social justice and a love of health policy.

A BRIDGE OVER THE HEALTH CARE DIVIDE

Another student who embraces health policy is Fisayo Oke, who is getting her M.P.H. in health policy and management in May and can’t wait to dive right into hospital administration. “I hope to run a hospital in the future,” she declares enthusiastically.

Thanks to the Max Factor Family Internship, an annual scholarship that supports summer work for a student serving underserved populations in Los Angeles County, Oke found a hospital that’s a great fi t for her. She worked in White Memorial Medical Center, a nonprofi t teaching hospital in downtown Los Angeles, and was impressed with the environment she found there.

“White Memorial serves the inner city east L.A. community,” she says. “The population they serve is predominantly Latino and low income. What really amazed me about the hospital is, unlike a stereotypical inner city hospital, they are really focused on delivering the best quality care and using the most innovative processes. They’re not looking at their patients and thinking, ‘Oh, we can’t make much money from you, so we’re just going to give you minimal care.’”

Oke was inspired by the mission of White Memorial and the commitment of “every single person, from the physicians to administrators.” She has been invited by her internship supervisor to work at a sister hospital after graduation. “I was fortunate to be able to work there with the Max Factor funds, she says. “Now I’ve taken it from money to an internship to a potential career opportunity. I’m excited about the way it has all come together.”

Oke grew up in Nigeria and speaks frankly about family members dying unnecessarily due to lack of medical care. “In Nigeria there is a very huge class divide,” she says. “There’s a big difference between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’.” When she moved

to the United States, Oke expected things to be different, and better. But she realized that, in many ways, they’re not.

“There are populations here who face the same challenges that people that I knew back at home faced,” she says. “It’s the same. I want to do something about it. At least do my part to close that gap.”

Although she has long had an idea of what needs to change and what she wants to do about it, her time


The School recently launched the Kaiser Permanente Public Health Scholars Program, which recruits students from underserved communities with the goal of placing them in organizations that serve vulnerable populations after graduation.

Several recent appointments to the School’s faculty have expertise in and dedication to examining the underlying causes of health inequities in order to better address them.

• Assistant Professor Mahasin Mujahid examines the multi-level determinants of cardiovascular health and cardiovascular health disparities.

• Professor Lonnie Snowden focuses his research on racial, cultural, and ethnic disparities in mental health.

• Assistant Professor Julianna Deardorff is looking at young Latinas’ pubertal transition and how it compares to that of other girls.

Would you like to support motivated students and world-class faculty? You can target your tax-deductible gift to support student excellence and/or faculty excellence at givetocal.berkeley.edu/publichealth.

THE SCHOOL REAFFIRMS ITS COMMITMENT TO THE UNDERSERVED

The UC Berkeley School of Public Health has a long-standing commitment to reducing health disparities and ensuring that everyone has access to health care. In the past year, the School has strengthened its efforts in that area:

at Berkeley has helped Oke to better articulate her mission and have a greater understanding of the issues. She feels her class on eliminating health disparities taught by lecturer Iman Nazeeri-Simmons has been especially valuable in giving her the historical and social context behind health disparities. “I thought my eyes were open prior to this class,” she says, “but I’ve realized that there are many underlying factors to the outcomes we see today. Now I’m even more motivated to make a difference in the lives of underserved people.”

Oke is very grateful for her time spent at Berkeley, although she almost didn’t apply, partly for fear of not being able to get in. She now works as a student ambassador with the School’s Graduate Recruitment and Diversity Services in order to encourage minority and disadvantaged students to apply to and attend Berkeley. “To me one of the ways to really help a community is to endow them with an education,” she says. “I talk to many students who come from underserved communities and let them know that, ‘Yes, you can get an education. Yes, you can do it.’”

CULTURALLY COMPETENT CARE, CLOSE TO HOME

For Geraldine Slean, a second-year JMP student, it was personal experience that brought disparities in care into high relief. Her parents come from an underserved background: Her mother emigrated from Peru to the United States with type I diabetes.

“Due to complications she actually lost her vision completely. She has been completely blind ever since I was a baby,” Slean recalls. “So she’s encountered a lot of diffi culty in her medical care, which she has to receive regularly. There have been language barriers, cultural barriers, a lot of misunderstanding and miscommunication. And also insurance and economic issues; it’s been very hard for her.”

Accompanying her mother on her frequent doctor visits gave Slean an intimate look at doctor-patient interactions and how they can go wrong. “Both my mom and the doctor were not communicating directly, sort of coming at each other from different places and not quite intersecting,” she says. “I realized it’s very important to have doctors who are more empathetic with better language skills and cultural understanding, and a willingness to meet the patients where they are.”

Slean is committed to improving medical care for the underserved, especially Latino populations and those who have chronic diseases that need careful management. She was attracted to the JMP program due to its wide, interdisciplinary approach to medicine and health. She wants to see a more contextual approach to doctor-patient interaction, and hopes to bring in her undergradu-ate education in anthropology and Latin American studies. In her practice, she plans to view health through many different lenses: environmental, patient-centered, anthropological, and, of course, a public health perspective.

She is a member of the Program in Medical Education for the Urban Underserved (PRIME-US), which provides support to medical students with


HELPING THOSE WHO NEED IT MOST (continued)

“I thought my eyes were open prior to this class, but I’ve realized that there are many underlying factors to the outcomes we see today. Now I’m even more motivated to make a difference in the lives of underserved people.”

demonstrated interest in working with urban underserved communities, particularly in the Bay Area. “The benefi t of the program is that through our preceptorships, clinical experience, and site visits, we’ve been exposed to great leaders in the fi eld who have experience dealing with these populations and issues that really affect these groups of people,” she says. She also feels the program helps show students all the different facets to working with underserved populations and takes a broader look at what factors are contributing to health disparities. And she fi nds her fellow PRIME-US students and their stories very inspirational.

Slean’s thesis focuses on “diabetes distress,” a relatively new concept. “When people are diagnosed with diabetes, it’s such a complex disease with so many complications and co-morbidities that people get really overwhelmed with all the self management that’s required,” she says. She believes that good physician-patient interaction is key to helping patients with diabetes management, especially for minority patients. After she graduates, Slean would like to continue to work with minority diabetics and try to promote behaviors that help patients achieve good self management.


GERALDINE SLEAN


n some ways, those who work in the fi eld of public health are eternal optimists. Faced with huge, seem-ingly insurmountable problems, they begin at once to search for solutions. If they can’t fi x everything all at once—which is usually the case—they prioritize the most critical tasks or those that are easiest to carry out. They remain dedicated to not only a bold vision of a healthier future, but the oftentimes long and arduous task of actually achieving it. For many at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, work towards this vision starts and develops in California.

Undisputedly unique, California provides a dynamic environment in which to effect positive change. The third largest state geographically, it is the most populous and most culturally diverse in the nation, with minorities constituting about 57 percent of its population. California is also often a thought leader for the nation, both from a business standpoint, in

sectors such as the Internet and green technology, and in developing cutting-edge policies and regulations that are often later adopted by the federal government. And the Golden State boasts one of the fi nest public university systems worldwide: the University of California.

“As a part of a public university, we take seriously our obligation to use our comparative advantage in research and teaching to improve human health in the state,” says Dean Stephen Shortell. “We take our production of knowledge and translate it into public policies and practices that are going to improve health.”

The right place for right careShortell is well positioned to contribute meaningfully to improving health policy; in addition to serving as the School’s dean, he is the Blue Cross of California

A HEALTHY FUTUREstarts in

CALIFORNIABy Linda Anderberg

Michael Wilson works to protect the next generation from

the billions of pounds of potentially harmful chemicals produced

in our nation every day.

Helen Halpin believes we can reduce to zero the hospital acquired

infections that kill more than 10,000 Californians per year.

Thomas Rundall helps to shape federal guidelines such that they

are more useful to people working to improve health.

I


Distinguished Professor of Health Policy and Manage-ment. When Cindy Ehnes, director of the state’s Department of Managed Health Care, asked the School to work with the department on improving care for patients with chronic disease and reducing hospital acquired infections, Shortell agreed to chair the Technical Expertise Group for the Right Care Initiative (RCI). The objective of the initiative is to measurably improve clinical outcomes by 2011 in three trouble spots: cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and hospital acquired infections (HAIs). Shortell contributes his expertise towards the fi rst two, where the goal is to prevent catastrophic events in cardio-vascular disease and diabetes by helping California hospitals and care groups to perform at the national 90th percentile. Professor Helen Halpin serves as a principal investigator in preventing HAIs. (See “From Publication to Public Action,” page 14.)

“Data from California’s health plans shows that we’re not doing very well in California in controlling three things: people’s blood pressure, their lipids and cholesterol levels; and for diabetics, their blood sugar levels,” says Shortell. These data are drawn from Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS) scores of the plans, a tool used by most U.S. health plans to measure performance on important dimensions of care and service. Shortell says, “Most were nowhere near being in the ninetieth percentile, which is the goal.”

Since 2008, Shortell and colleagues from UCLA have helped to identify interventions that would help medi-cal group leaders improve their levels on the blood pressure, blood sugar, and cholesterol markers. They provide examples of interventions that have been proven to succeed—like employing pharmacists to work directly on the medical care team to help with medication management and training patients to improve self management of their illnesses at home.

“We’re drawing on the literature that we and others have produced about interventions that work to improve chronic care management,” says Shortell. “We’re making it available to the health insurance plans and medical groups in the state and providing assistance in changing their behavior to get better results for these patients.”

Even within a couple of years, the health care plans under the RCI have shown measured improvements. Most of the plans have seen a positive gain in their HEDIS scores, and some have already achieved the 90th percentile goal. For example, in 2008, Anthem Blue Cross received an RCI award for “Improvement in Blood Pressure and Cholesterol Control Measures.” By 2009, Anthem Blue Cross was extremely close to the 90th percentile in these two measures.

The Right Care Initiative ends in 2011, but Shortell believes the work it has generated will continue. “This project has been very consequential in terms of scope,” he says. “Many groups will have been working on it over the course of three years. It’s a very good thing we’re doing. And it’s not just a research grant. We weren’t the initiators; we were asked to help out and we are stepping up to play a leadership role in improving health care outcomes for Californians.”

A 2020 vision of healthThomas Rundall, professor of health policy and management, is another faculty member who’s work-ing to bring together stakeholders in California for the health of the state’s population. He plays a lead role in facilitat-ing California’s response to Healthy People 2020, a national health agenda that communi-cates a vision and strategy for improving the health of the nation’s popu-lation and achieving health equity. The School has hosted a series of Public Health Roundtables to collaborate with the State of California Department of Public Health, other local public health agencies, and community-based organizations in the health sector in order to advance a new vision for creating Healthy People 2020 in the state of California.

continued on page 12


“We want to be viewed as a facilitator, to convene groups together, to help them in discussions about how to develop Healthy People 2020 for the state,” says Rundall about the School’s role in the project. The School has already hosted three roundtables between stakeholders, with plans to hold one each semester until the guidelines are developed and implemented.

Although the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has been producing Healthy People guidelines since 1980, Rundall believes in the past the 10-year targets have not been widely used and did not drive the public health agenda in a meaningful way. He’d like to see changes to the approach in order to increase the effec-tiveness. “In past years, the Healthy People planning documents for improving the public’s health were more medically oriented and focused on disease, conditions, and specifi c injuries—and identifi ed activities that could either reduce the incidence of those specifi c diseases or reduce the disability and harm that’s caused by them,” he explains.

Healthy People 2020 is taking a different approach. “Instead of focusing on specifi c diseases, this effort is going to focus on social determinants of health, and will try to identify activities that can be engaged in across national, state, and local levels to create healthier environments for people to live in,” he says. “Those in turn will have a favorable impact on many different types of diseases and injuries.” These shifts in focus for Healthy People 2020 should make it easier for public health professionals to put the guidelines to better use and improve public health initiatives.

Although Rundall characterizes this kind of project as “an enormous challenge,” he also believes it is absolutely necessary. “Public

health must become an effective partner and collaborator in developing policies that promote healthy environments and healthy behaviors across every stage of life,” he says.

A sea change towards safer chemicalsChemicals are an enormous problem. More than 42 billion pounds of chemical substances are produced

or imported in the United States each day, and about 700 new chemicals are introduced into commerce each year. Global chemical production is doubling every 24 years, rapidly outpacing population growth. Although it’s largely unknown what effect the 83,000 industrial chemicals used in the United States have on health, studies are drawing an increasing correlation between chemical exposures and

obesity, cancer, decreased fertility, and chronic diseases.

“What kind of world are we going to deliver to the next several generations?” asks Michael P. Wilson, Ph.D. ’03, M.P.H. ’98, a research scientist at the Center for Occupational and Environmental Health. “During human development, for example, hormones exert effects at the parts per trillion level in blood. We are

HEALTHY FUTURE (continued)

“We are the first university in “We are the first university in the country that is building an the country that is building an intentionally interdisciplinary intentionally interdisciplinary program in green chemistry.”program in green chemistry.”


now seeing endocrine disrupting substances in human blood at levels far higher than that.”

California is leading the nation in the nascent fi eld of green chemistry and chemicals policy, and Wilson and research scientist Megan Schwarzman, M.D., M.P.H. ’07, are at the forefront of this effort to create, produce, and use chemicals that are “benign by design.” In 2004, the California legislature commissioned a chemicals policy report from Wilson, which was published in 2006 and described three fundamental weaknesses in U.S. chemicals policy—the data gap, the safety gap, and the technology gap—that are hampering investment and innovation in green chemistry. The Legislature passed two laws in 2008, AB 1879 and SB 509, which Governor Schwarzenegger called “the most comprehensive green chemistry program ever established.” The California Environmental Protection Agency commissioned another report that same year by Wilson, Schwarzman, and colleagues at UCLA, which was signed by 127 University of California faculty members and helped to spur the scientifi c and political momentum around the state’s Green Chemistry Initiative.

“It’s a success story,” says Wilson, “with UC Berkeley working out these kinds of science policy questions and the legislative leadership following through with action. California is now in a leadership role, and it’s attracting national and international attention because of the potential impact on U.S. policy and the economy.” This attention is also leading to action: In April, U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg introduced the Safe Chemicals Act of 2010, which could substantially re-write the federal Toxic Substances Control Act.

In recognition of the central role chemistry plays in global sustainability and to support the efforts of California’s Green Chemistry Initiative, Wilson and Schwarzman began working with faculty members across the campus to establish the Berkeley Center for Green Chemistry (BCGC) in 2009. BCGC is becoming an interdisciplinary center with Berkeley faculty and researchers working in the fi elds of new chemistries, health and the environment, and policy and economy.

“We are the fi rst university in the country that is building an intentionally interdisciplinary program in green chemistry,” says Wilson.

Schwarzman agrees: “What’s unique about this is the interdisciplinary element. Environmental health sciences can help inform the design of safer substances and the policies required to make their adoption a reality. The combination of expertise in the sciences, policy, and business can make the necessary change happen.”

Center members will collaborate on teaching, research, and service in the green chemistry fi eld. In the fi rst year, thanks to a $250,000 grant from the California EPA’s Department of Toxic Substance Control, the center is developing undergraduate and graduate curriculum in green chemistry. The new curriculum will not change core requirements for chemistry students, but will integrate principles of green chemistry into existing courses and labs.

“In addition to the policy weaknesses, one of the underlying problems is that chemists, in their educa-tion, are not trained in the principles of toxicology, environmental fate, exposure, or basically the health and environmental effects of the substances they are designing and working with,” says Wilson. “It’s a universal problem across the United States.”

Schwarzman hopes bringing a public health focus to the chemistry curriculum will help shift the framework of how chemists currently view their chosen fi eld. “A fundamental principle of public health is that of prevention,” she says. “And at its base that’s what green chemistry is trying to get at. So we move from having to clean up pollution to preventing it. That’s a fundamental public health principle, but it is not something that naturally underlies the fi eld of chemistry. We’re hoping it will in the future.”


There are two research grants that I am conducting at the present that directly feed into California policy. The fi rst is my participation in the Right Care Initiative, a statewide quality improvement initiative led out of the Department of Managed Health Care. Arnold Milstein, M.D., M.P.H. ’75, the medical director of the Pacifi c Business Group on Health and a thought leader at Mercer, Inc., and I are the cochairs of the “get to zero” hospital acquired infections (HAI) campaign.

The harm associated with HAIs—measured in terms of their impact on the public’s health and high costs to the health care system—is staggering. It has been estimated that more than 1.7 million persons or as many as 10 percent of hospital inpatients develop HAIs each year, with an estimated 99,000 attributable deaths, at a cost of $28-33 billion dollars.

California enacted legislation requiring mandatory reporting of HAIs for two years beginning 2009, followed by public reporting beginning in 2011

(SB 1058). At the present time, there are no standardized data on infection rates in California’s hospitals. However, under a million dollar grant from the Blue Shield of California Foundation, we conducted a statewide survey on HAI prevention in California’s hospitals (response rate 78 percent) and made the fi ndings available to state policy makers to inform their programmatic decisions on reducing HAIs. We will be conducting a second survey of the hospitals this spring to examine hospital responses to the mandatory reporting requirement and changes in hospital policies and practices to reduce HAIs.

The other major project I conduct in California that has a signifi cant service component is the California Health Benefi ts Review Program (CHBRP), which is authorized by the Legislature and directed out of the UC Offi ce of the President. We are conducting a comprehensive analysis of all proposed bills that include mandates for health insurers and health plans to offer specifi c benefi ts or services. The analysis has three parts: 1) a review of the

medical effectiveness literature for the proposed mandate, 2) an analysis of the impact of the mandate on health care expenditures and premiums, and 3) an analysis of the impact of the mandate on the public’s health. There are three vice chairs responsible for each of these analyses—medical effectiveness at UCSF, cost analysis at UCLA, and public health analysis (myself) at UC Berkeley.

Both the Legislature and the Gov-ernor’s Offi ce have found this work to be enormously helpful through the introduction of comprehensive evidence and objective analysis into the legislative process. They frequently cite the CHBRP reports when consider-ing these bills. The project has been a tremendous success in demonstrating the value of involving academics with specifi c expertise in a multi-campus initiative to inform state policy. In both of these projects, California is leading the way in engaging university faculty in a meaningful way in service to the state and the development of good public policy.

FROM PUBLICATION TO PUBLIC ACTION

By Helen Halpin, Professor of Health Policy

All Berkeley professors are expected to perform three functions: research, teaching, and service. As a professor of health policy, I fi nd that one of the most rewarding parts of my job is in service, which involves translating the fi ndings from the research that my colleagues and I have done into meaningful public policy. In fact, my research program is grounded in asking questions that are policy relevant and that will immediately inform the public policy debate.


LEARNING TO

By Michael S. Broder

At the Center for Health Leadership (CHL) at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, students learn leadership skills they can put to use wherever their paths might ultimately take them, in public health or another fi eld, in community or government organizations or the private sector. The center, founded in 2008 with support from the Eustace-Kwan Family Foundation, expands upon the School’s offerings to develop and produce transformational leaders in public health.

Developing leaders is more than an academic exercise; students hone their leadership skills through active involvement with communities and organizations. Turn the page for a few examples of current and future leaders who are making a difference in the lives of others.

The word “leadership” is most often associated with heads of companies and organizations, but you don’t have to be a private

sector CEO to be a leader. Leadership happens in different environments and takes many forms. People can lead by inspiring

others, by creating mutually benefi cial partnerships to effect positive change, and by helping people empower themselves.


LEAD

SCORING GOALS FOR A

HEALTHIER COMMUNITY

What if there were an activity that was not only fun, but also brought families and communities together, got kids to be physically active, guided them into positive lifestyles, reduced violence, and educated people about health? It sounds too good to be true. But Comité de Refugiados Centroamericanos (Central American Refugee Committee), better known as CRECE, has discovered just the thing: soccer.

Building on a model used in Cuba, CRECE has organized teams in East Oakland to compete in soccer, which is very popular in Latin America and resonates with Oakland’s Latino population. More than 200 children are participating

in the 16 soccer teams. And it’s not only for the kids; parents are involved as coaches, and entire families come to support the youths and the community.

“It’s exciting because traditionally when sporting teams are created for youth, it’s very much based on tryouts and your abilities, and whether you have the funds to pay for your uniform,” comments Abby Rincón, M.P.H. ’86, director of diversity at the School of Public Health. “This doesn’t have any barriers like that. Everybody’s welcome.”

Tanya Olmos, a master’s student in health and social behavior, has been collaborating with CRECE through Multicultural Health in Action (MHIA), a program of the Center for Health Leadership. Olmos and other students have been developing a health education component to enhance CRECE’s soccer program, working with


LEARNING TO LEAD (continued)

TANYA OLMOS

community partners such as La Clínica de La Raza, a multicultural health care provider in Oakland. “We’ll be giving health education workshops around asthma, diabetes, and nutrition, at the parks where they have their practices,” Olmos explains.

The MHIA students recognize the limits of what they can do while pursuing their degrees and ultimately graduating. “When you’re sitting across the table from someone and they’re asking for your help, it’s a huge responsibility. We don’t want to promise all these things, and then when the end of the semester comes, our internships start and we have no time,” says Olmos.

For that reason, they are focusing on efforts that are sustainable, such as creating links between CRECE and other organizations and services that will remain after the students are no longer involved. Another idea they are developing with sustainability in mind is training the parents to be promotoras (health educators) within the community—a different kind of “soccer mom.”

Olmos and others are also working on arranging asthma training for the coaches. “A lot of the children have asthma. This is a huge concern, because the coaches aren’t really trained if someone has an asthma attack,” she says. The students are developing an asthma action plan, which includes recommendations such as having the coaches document the children’s medications so they can tell paramedics if necessary.

Undergraduates have gotten in on the act too. In order to encourage the kids in the soccer program to believe in college as an attainable goal, Berkeley undergrads are leading them on tours of the campus and providing academic tutoring.

Olmos’s ideas about service and about leadership have evolved as a result of this experience so far. “When you think of leadership, a lot of time the thought comes up of one single person doing something, and they’re the leader,” she says. “We’re going in as a group. I think we’re leaders in our own right, but the fact that it’s a group brings about very many more ideas than you could bring about on your own.”

A TOOLKIT FOR LEADERSHIP

After Lauren Lessard completed her bachelor’s degree in political science at UC Santa Cruz, she expected that her next degree would be a master’s in public policy. But working in the offi ce of Congressman Sam Farr (D-Carmel), she discovered that her policy interests really centered on reproductive health. She recalls, “It was a volatile time in D.C. when I was there. They were passing a partial birth abortion ban, and I started to realize where I needed to be—not among the black suits in D.C., but on the ground, advocating for women and activating people my age.”


“We’re going in as a group.“We’re going in as a group. I think we’re leaders in our own right, but the fact that it’s a group brings about very many more ideas than you could bring about on your own.”


From the congressman’s offi ce, she went to work at Planned Parenthood, and following that, a Peace Corps assignment in Suriname. “I thought, my gosh, if women in the United States are having this much trouble accessing reproductive health services, I can’t imagine what it would be like for women abroad.” The Peace Corps experience, she says, was eye-opening. “I realized I’d now uncovered all these issues that I’m active and frustrated and excited about, and that I didn’t have the tools to address any of them.”

To equip herself with the skills and knowl-edge she needed, Lessard applied to the UC Berkeley School of Public Health and was admitted into the M.P.H. program in maternal and child health. She was selected to be one of 12 inaugural members of the Center for Health Leadership’s Fellows Program, a new 18-month leadership development program coordinated by Ellie Schindelman, M.P.H. ’80. The program aims to develop leaders “from the inside out” and strengthen their abilities to make a positive difference in the world. The fellows engage in activities including training workshops, mentoring, assessments, experiential exercises, peer coaching, conversations with health leaders, and action learning projects within the School and in the community. Many of the activities are carried out in teams. Lessard is a member of a project group working on a needs assessment for the Center for Public Health Practice’s internship program—working with students, advisers, and preceptors to see how students can be better supported as they enter and return from their internships.

Her group is also undertaking a case study with the Alameda County Public Health Department. “We’re working on the Life Course Initiative—a new philosophy in public health that’s being implemented throughout the country,” she explains. “We’re seeing how the county health department is exploring this new philosophy for

all their programs.” What she learns from the case study will serve her in good stead this summer: She’ll be interning with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, which is also introducing the life course model. “The concept is preconception health care. So it’s really broadening women’s health—not only is it good for women today, but it’s essential for the health of all future generations,” she says.

Lessard is enthusiastic about applying what she’s learned to the fi eld of reproductive health. “I think the Fellows Program is great for those who are specifi cally interested in their M.P.H. as a professional degree as opposed to



LAUREN LESSARD

an academic one,” she says. “We can then take the M.P.H. and go out with needs assessment tools, program tools, leadership skills, and actually work to improve the health of populations.”

NEW WAYS TO SPEAK OUT

YouTube. Facebook. Twitter. Social media are changing the way we communicate with one another, and are making it easier for people to have their voices heard. Just ask Caricia Catalani, Dr.P.H. ’09, cofounder of VideoVoice Collective.

“Traditionally speaking, if you wanted to, say, have a story covered about your neighborhood or contribute to the knowledge about the place where you live, you’d have to be able to access people who have their fi nger on the button, whether it’s the CNNs of the world, or the Encyclopaedia Britannicas of the world, or the Fox Newses,” says Catalani. “What new media tools allow people to do, for a lower cost than ever before, is to be their own broadcasting station, their own newspaper. And it’s an incredibly exciting opportunity.”

Catalani came to the School of Public Health as a doctoral student to study community-based partici-patory research (CBPR), an approach that equitably involves communities in the research process. She had always been a “techie,” she says, and she loved the photovoice methodology, in which inexpensive photo cameras are put into the hands of community members as a way to bring their perspectives into the dialog. She decided to apply the same concept to video. In her dissertation, she evaluated the use of photovoice and videovoice in community-based participatory research, with professor and CBPR expert Meredith Minkler, Dr.P.H. ’75, as her adviser.

Her dissertation inspired her to found VideoVoice Collective with her partner (now husband) Anthony Veneziale, a fi lmmaker. VideoVoice’s health advocacy, research, and evaluation team works to “turn documentary fi lm on its head” through fi lm partnerships with marginal-ized communities. In one such partnership, residents of post-Katrina New Orleans were trained to produce their own media. “We put cameras in the hands of the low-income community members there so that they could use them to tell their own stories, to talk about how they’d like to see their communities rebuilt, and what sorts of long-term solutions they saw for building an even more resilient New Orleans,” Catalani explains.

Now she is back at the School of Public Health as a lecturer with the Center for Health Leadership, training others to use the same tools to advance public health. Her class, “Video and Public Health Leadership,” which she teaches with Ellie Schindelman, gives students hands-on experience shooting and editing videos, uploading them to YouTube, and using them to engage community members in

advocacy and organizing for public health.

“One of the things we’re fi nding in our class is that, as we teach people those skills, they end up using them almost immediately in their ongoing work,” says Catalani. “We’re not even done with the class yet, and many of our students

have already started using the tools.” One student, Maria Hernández, interviewed students of color, asking them what they wish they had known about college when they were in high school. She turned the interviews into a fi ve-minute fi lm, which she then shared with high school students in underserved communities who are considering

“We put cameras in the hands of the low-income community members there so that they could use them to tell their own stories.”



college. Another student, Heidi Tuason, had taken footage during her summer internship in the Philippines, where she worked with low-income women around reproductive rights issues. Using what she learned, she is crafting the footage into a video to use in advocacy for women’s reproductive health.

The popularity and success of the class encouraged CHL to explore similar themes in its annual leadership conference, held April 15–16 in Berkeley. Titled “21st Century Tools for Health Leadership: Using New Media and Health Communication Technologies,” the

conference looked at the ways in which new media are being used by health organizations, and the opportunities and threats the tools pose for health leaders.

At this stage in their development, new media could still take off in any number of directions. “It’s critical that these tools don’t become like the mass media, owned and controlled by a few conglomerates,” says Catalani. Through partnerships and training, she, her team, and her students are doing their best to keep the ownership of new media tools where it can do the most good—in the hands of those who know their communities best.



CARICIA CATALANI


By Megan Coffee, M.D., Ph.D.

FRESH PERSPECTIVEA member of the Berkeley public health community

speaks out on a current topic of interest

POST-EARTHQUAKE HAITI: A TINDERBOX FOR DISEASE

I have been running a tuberculosis (TB) ward and also serve as an infectious disease con-sultant for the doctors here, who are primarily trained in surgery, emergency, or critical care medicine. These consultations have included evaluations of infections caused by earthquake trauma, post-orthopedic surgical infections, and tetanus—as well as infections caused by the disruption of infrastructure and destruction of housing, such as typhoid, untreated TB, and varicella.

Much of my day is spent caring for TB patients. I provide care in a tent where the temperature is usually 90 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Many patients arrive critically ill, with longstanding TB and oxygen saturations in the 60s and 70s, which is much lower than one would ever see in a chronically ill patient in the United States. Managing these patients has been challenging. There is some laboratory capacity, but most decisions are made solely based on clinical evaluation. Sometimes my job is simply to make sure I have managed my patients’ fl uid status and avoided heat stroke. I also make sure they have enough food and water, which is diffi cult as the hospital can run out of food for up to a day at a time. The resources are intermittent. We have dialysis, but usually do

not have oxygen, and too many patients die for want of oxygen. Although we have been able to fi nd enough TB drugs to treat the known and clinically apparent TB cases, we do not have the basic diagnostic tests (e.g., AFB spu-tum smears) to evaluate questionable TB cases. Many of my TB patients are HIV-infected, and they are disproportionately younger women.

This raises substantial concerns about the long-term effects of this disaster on the public health infrastructure. Haiti faced the largest per capita burden of TB before the earthquake. Now there is the risk for increased spread without the infrastructure to manage daily treatment, the follow-up for sputum clearance (an indicator of infectiousness), and the management of TB medications to avoid the spread of anti-TB drug resistance.

At the moment, Haiti has very little general antibiotic drug resistance overall. So I have been encouraging doctors to use medicines which we think of as “weak” in the United States, but which are actually more powerful when the bacteria are not resistant. So we can use penicillins and cephalosporins, and we do not need Vanco or expensive broad-spectrum antibiotics commonly used in the United States.

My work here has highlighted the need for immediately addressing infectious diseases in a disaster response. There are patients who have extensive, complex surgeries and then develop infections because of inadequate basic post-operative care. Some of these patients develop tetanus following these surgeries. Tetanus could have been prevented if there had been enough tetanus globulin or enough tetanus vaccination throughout the population before the earthquake. Moreover, we are seeing more cases of epidemic diseases, such as typhoid and varicella, which are spreading through the tightly packed tent cities of hundreds to thousands of people, where displaced persons have been sheltered.

With my background in infectious disease mathematical modeling, I keep thinking of how the density of the populations in tent cities creates the perfect kindling for transmission and disease outbreaks. I also begin wondering how the selection pressure of the antibiotics brought by expatriate doctors will affect the development and spread of drug resistance long term. This would be one legacy we do not want to leave behind.

The UC Berkeley School of Public Health has two centers dedicated to public health emergency preparedness and response: The Center for Infectious Diseases & Emergency Readiness and Cal PREPARE. For more information or to get involved visit www.calprepare.org.

As an infectious disease research fellow at the UC Berkeley Center for Infectious Disease and Emergency Readiness (CIDER) and at UCSF, I conduct research using computer models to better predict and control infectious diseases. However, since late January, I have been working at Hôpital de l’Université d’état d’Haiti, the public university hospital in Port-au-Prince and the largest hospital in Haiti.


“The woman was asking Shubha for our help because she was concerned that her daughter-in-law, who was about sixteen and was six months pregnant, had refused to see a doctor,” says Barin. “Her mother-in-law was very wor-ried because she hadn’t received any prenatal care, vaccinations, or medications. So she took us to her home where we saw her daughter-in-law, who appeared malnourished. We began talking with her, telling her that if she didn’t seek care now, she was risking her life and that of her baby. We were able to eventually convince her. I have a video of her squirming while getting her fi rst vaccination as all the villagers cheered: The mobile health team had successfully spread awareness and vaccinated all the pregnant women that village.”

For Barin, it was tangible evidence of the positive effect prenatal care efforts can have as India works to deal with one of its leading public health issues, maternal and infant mortality. In Uttar Pradesh, the province where Barin worked, pregnancy-related complications are the leading cause of death for women between ages 15 and 49.

From interest to action

Barin became interested in reproductive health issues early in her college career. As a freshman

majoring in medical anthropology, she attended a symposium at the School of Public Health and was immediately hooked. “I was so fascinated that I instantly scheduled an appointment with the undergraduate adviser to put me on the waiting list for the public health major,” she recalls.

Her public health coursework and an intern-ship with Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health in San Francisco further convinced her she had found her calling. But when as a junior she discovered the new Global Poverty and Practice minor, offered by the UC Berkeley Blum Center for Developing Economies, a whole world of new opportunities to pursue her interest opened up.

In addition to coursework, the cornerstone of the minor is an experience that allows students to connect the theory and practice of poverty and its alleviation. To fulfi ll this requirement, Barin applied for and received a competitive Tata International Social Entrepreneurship Scheme fellowship offered through Tata Group, one of India’s largest corporate conglomerates.

“The fellowship is a collaboration between UC Berkeley, Cambridge University, and the Tata Group,” says Barin. “The fellowship allows fi ve or six students from each school,

UC Berkeley and Cambridge, to work on various community development projects throughout India.”

With her interest in women’s health issues, Barin found the perfect project with Tata Chemical Society for Rural Development (TCSRD), a department within Tata Chemical that works to improve the lives of villagers in the area surrounding its main plant in Uttar Pradesh. Barin joined the health team to conduct research on the effectiveness of local Village Health Committees (VHCs) in promoting maternal and infant health.

Maternal health by committee?

Because India’s enormous, diverse, and still primarily rural population makes it diffi cult to administer top-down programs, the govern-ment has supported a decentralized approach to addressing public health issues. It has tried to weave health program administration into the existing village and regional governmental system by encouraging the creation of VHCs within the councils that lead most villages. These VHCs are supposed to build and maintain accountability mechanisms for community-level health and nutrition services provided by the government. To help them succeed, the National Rural Health Mission offers guidelines on the committees’ frame-work, functions, and responsibilities, as well as 10,000 rupees (about U.S. $250) in funding to support local initiatives.

“For example,” says Barin, “pregnant women in a particular village might be concerned if they don’t have accessible transportation to a

One day last summer as she prepared to do her research with a mobile health clinic in rural India, public health undergraduate Jacqueline Barin noticed an elderly villager approach. The woman seemed agitated as she began speaking with the clinic’s director, Shubha Sharma.

By Christopher E. Bush

STUDENT SPOTLIGHT: JACQUELINE C. BARIN

IN RURAL INDIA, AN UNDERGRAD FINDS HER CALLING


hospital. So their VHC discusses the issue and tries to fi nd a way to address it. In this case, the VHC might be able to fi nd someone who has a vehicle in that village or a nearby village and arrange to have it accessible for women when they need transportation to a hospital.

“The VHC can also address village needs to higher level authorities. If there’s a polio outbreak, the VHC members can notify the government authorities and say, ‘We need more vaccines distributed here.’”

A number of Indian organizations and corpora-tions, including the TCSRD, have initiated programs to support the development of VHCs. But administrators of these programs often lack data about the committees’ effectiveness. So for her research project, Barin traveled with TCSRD’s mobile health clinic and conducted surveys of VHC members in 30 villages as well as regional governmental offi cials who admin-ister the broader government health services.

What she found was a number of large challenges that can limit a VHC’s ability to really improve a village’s health programs. “For one thing, they have this dependence on TCSRD,” says Barin. The committees often will only meet when prodded by the corporation.

Other issues revolved around lack of incentives and fi nancial oversight. “Some VHC members are unmotivated because they’re not fi nancially compensated to participate,” says Barin. “There is the government money. The problem

is, there’s no regulation of how this money is allocated and who’s checking up. When I visited one village I was invited to the home of the village leader, the pradhan. It was a pretty nice, big house in a very poor and rural village. Why is that? Because the pradhan pockets

the government money for all these programs. There are high levels of corruption both within and outside the government.”

Finally, Barin found that the VHCs tend to be very male dominated—women’s voices are often excluded from their meetings. In the 30 villages she studied, only 16 percent of VHC members were female. “The fact that VHCs are mostly men trying to discuss women’s health issues—there’s a problem there,” says Barin.

After eight weeks, a good start

At the conclusion of her summer research, Barin presented her fi ndings, as well as suggestions for improving VHC effectiveness, to a Tata senior management team in Mumbai. She recommended adding leadership positions especially for women to the VHCs, as well as third-party oversight of how the government funding is spent. She also encouraged TCSRD to invest in more training and community health awareness activities in the villages it serves.

Barin realizes, however, that the problems with VHC effectiveness can’t be solved overnight. “All these recommendations come with additional challenges,” she says. “Defi nitely not something a Berkeley undergrad can solve in eight weeks.”

Her experiences in India and in the Global Poverty and Practice minor program have shaped Barin’s future goals, however. After she graduates in May, she hopes to gain more public health experience abroad, either in the Peace Corps or as a research associate with a public health organization back in India. She also has longer-term plans to return to graduate school for a master’s in public health.

One thing is certain: She wants to continue fi nding ways to address maternal and child health issues. “Whatever I’m doing, that’s the arena I want to remain in,” she says.

Above: A villager and TCSRD fi eld coordinator provides health advice to a patient at a community health clinic in Uttar Pradesh.

Below: Jacqueline Barin with a group of children immediately following a health education puppet show performed by the TCSRD mobile health clinic team


Always a multitasker, the School of Public Health alumna has loaded her professional and volunteer plate sky-high since graduation. She leads the City of Berkeley’s pioneering efforts to study and combat communitywide health inequities, while mentoring 30 to 40 undergraduate and graduate interns at the city’s Public Health Division. Off the job, Breckwich Vásquez runs a Peruvian nonprofi t that she founded in her mother’s memory.

Breckwich Vásquez traces her incandescent passion for serving the underserved to child-hood. She credits the example set by her Peruvian-born mother, who spent 35 years as a public health nurse in a bustling Los Angeles County clinic. “My mother taught me from an early age about service to others,” she says. “You can’t just work on your goals; you have to think about making other people’s lives better.” In public health, Breckwich Vásquez saw a powerful vehicle for doing just that.

She was taking time off in the Peruvian jungle the year after earning her doctorate when the City of Berkeley came calling.

The Public Health Division was creating a new unit—one that would evaluate Berkeley’s health problems and engage residents and city leaders alike in addressing them. Was Breckwich Vásquez interested in heading the effort? After depleting a handful of international calling cards, she decided to pack her bags and head back to Berkeley.

“I went to the Dr.P.H. program to take on leadership,” says Breckwich Vásquez, who had spent several years as a health educator and advocate. “This was a perfect fi t.”

Though Breckwich Vásquez had no offi cial job description, she nonetheless swung into action as chief of Berkeley’s new Community Health Action & Assessment Section.

Her duties soon became both evident and urgent. In 2007, her unit issued a citywide Health Status Report that revealed sharp dispari-ties in wellness and lifespan among Berkeley’s 105,000 residents across racial, income and neighborhood lines. Among the fi ndings: African American residents were far more likely to get sick and die from hypertension, heart disease, and stroke than white residents.

“It’s heartbreaking that we have our own neighbors and part of our family here in the

city who are dying prematurely,” says Breck-wich Vásquez. She views the health inequities as consequences of deeply embedded social inequities, mostly notably race and racism. “We can’t forget about the social determinants of people’s lives,” she says.

Her team outlined four priority areas—encom-passing everything from supporting healthy pregnancies to managing chronic diseases and preparing for disasters—and met with community members and city representatives to coordinate a plan of action. Among the responses, the city is pursuing a pilot study aimed at reducing heart disease in two hard-hit neighborhoods and is seeking healthier food options for middle-school youngsters at corner markets.

Tanya Moore, co-director of the city’s Chronic Disease Prevention Program, praises Breckwich Vásquez for bringing scientifi c rigor to her work while building strong connections with residents to truly understand them and their needs. “She really cares about the kind of

Vicky Breckwich Vásquez, Dr.P.H. ’05, practices public health on steroids. Figuratively speaking, that is.

Vicky Breckwich Vásquez in Peru with members of the Ferrer Agricultural Cooperative

By Abby Cohn

ALUMNA SPOTLIGHT: VICKY BRECKWICH VÁSQUEZ

LEADING THE CHARGE FOR HEALTH EQUITY


relationships we have,” Moore says. “This is something she does not just because it’s a job, but because it’s in her heart.”

Student interns from the School have played an invaluable role in the city’s interventions. “They are the workhorses of our program,” says Breckwich Vásquez. Augmenting a thinly stretched city staff, the students conduct research, surveys, and interviews, and are a wellspring of fresh knowledge and ideas.

But Breckwich Vásquez had another motive for bringing interns onboard: She wanted to expose students—particularly students of color—to real-life public health work and encourage them to consider careers in the fi eld. Observing that public health has traditionally lacked diversity in its ranks, she says, “Unless we start bringing in more students who refl ect the population they serve, we’ll continue that gap.” She recently extended her outreach to students from nearby Berkeley City College.

“It’s a lot of students to organize,” concedes Breckwich Vásquez. “I did it because I love working with students.”

Former intern Warren Lee says Breckwich Vásquez helped guide him on his public health path. “No matter how busy she was, she took some time out of the day to sit down and talk with me,” says Lee, a 2006 UC Berkeley graduate in integrative biology now earning his master’s at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Dr.P.H. student LeConté Dill says Breckwich Vásquez “has a lot of intuition around the needs of students and is always looking for ways to support her students and her staff.” Dill worked with Breckwich Vásquez fi rst as a city staff member and more recently during a yearlong Dr.P.H. in Action program. “She defi nitely encouraged me,” Dill says.

Beyond Berkeley, Breckwich Vásquez’s dedica-tion to service has reached Peru’s Northern Andes. Her nonprofi t, called SALUD Peru, helps villagers improve conditions in and around her mother’s hometown of Ferrer by funding projects initiated and carried out by the

community itself. The program has built class-rooms, repaired a health clinic, and installed a water system.

“It’s amazing work,” says Breckwich Vásquez, who started the organization after her mother’s death four years ago and visits Peru once or twice annually. “This is something I do for me to live her memory.”

At just 4 feet 10, her mother, Juana Guiller-mina Vásquez, was a towering presence. The public health nurse gave her all to her low-income patients, many of whom were Latino immigrants, often shuttling them to

evening English classes or navigating them through a maze of bureaucratic services. She was a devoted single mother as well.

Growing up in Los Angeles, Breckwich Vásquez spent most days in her mother’s clinic. She called patients into exam rooms, made photocopies, fi lled out lab slips—and once shipped herself up the dumbwaiter along with a stack of patient fi les. (“I was kind of curious about where all the medical records went,” she says with a twinkle.)

Those early experiences were formative. At UCLA, Breckwich Vásquez was active in student groups assisting Central American refugees in Los Angeles and community health workers in Mexico. Breckwich Vásquez earned

her bachelor’s in Latin American Studies in 1991 and stayed at UCLA for an M.P.H. and a master’s in Latin American Studies.

After working for several years in private and public health care agencies, she concluded that she “wanted to be a decision maker.” And that’s what led her to the School.

Her focus was community-based participatory research (CBPR), a method in which those being studied become active partners in that public health research. Breckwich Vásquez “has a real gift for identifying multiple stakeholders and involving them in the process,” says Meredith Minkler, Dr.P.H. ’75, professor and director of the School’s Health and Social Behavior Program and a leading expert in CBPR.

Minkler makes a practice of showing outstand-ing dissertations to prospective graduate students. That’s not the case with Breckwich Vásquez’s thesis. “Her work was so over the top that I rarely show it to students because it’s too intimidating,” Minkler says.

Vicky Breckwich Vásquez orients a new crop of student interns at the City of Berkeley Public Health Division.

26 Healthier Lives in a Safer World Spring 2010

As seen in the charts on these pages, we are currently 66 percent of the way to our $110 million Campaign goal and have raised more than three times our goal for research funding.

Progress toward our goal for building a new home for the School has been slower. This is consistent with national trends: According to reports, donors are directing their gifts toward programs rather than building projects. However, new facilities are critical if the School is to continue to attract additional outstanding faculty, meet the growing demand for trained health care professionals, and conduct more interdisciplinary research to solve society’s health problems.

Highlighted on this page are some of the generous gifts that have been made to The Campaign for the School of Public Health:

• The Eustace-Kwan Family Foundation established and provides ongoing support for the Center for Health Leadership to inspire and prepare graduate students to be effective health leaders and professionals. The center’s activities include practice-based seminars, courses, internships, and community projects designed to strengthen leadership competencies and opportunities.

• A grant from a fund established by Kaiser Permanente at the East Bay Community Foundation established the Kaiser Perma-nente Public Health Scholars Program to expand California’s public health workforce, with an emphasis on recruiting students from

underserved communities and placing them in health departments and other organiza-tions that serve vulnerable populations. The fi rst cohort of 14 Kaiser Permanente Public Health Scholars was admitted in Fall ’09; a second cohort of up to 20 scholars will enter in Fall ’10.

• Lisa and John Pritzker established the Lisa and John Pritzker Fund to support students in the area of child and family health, as well as allow the School to recruit faculty members who are experts in maternal and child health and other community-oriented specialties. The fund also may be used at the dean’s discretion to meet changing educational needs.

• Lola E. Reshetko bequeathed the majority of her estate to UC Berkeley in order to create scholarships for students in the School of Public Health and for biological sciences students in the College of Letters & Science. Each of the School of Public Health scholarships is named in honor of a notable faculty member who advanced public health. Reshetko’s cousin, George McKray, facilitated the establishment of the scholarships.

• T.S. and Jogi Khanna set up an irrevocable unitrust, which will in time establish the T.S. and Jogi Khanna Endowed Fund to advance scientifi c research on the biological determinants of health and diseases, such as cancer and heart disease.

• The Fred H. Bixby Foundation created the Bixby Center for Population, Health, and Sustainability to highlight the critical impact of population on the global environment, global public health, and civil and interna-tional confl ict, and help to address the well-documented unmet need for family planning around the world. A portion of the gift has been designated for the new building fund.

Many of our supporters have recognized the importance of bolstering the School’s ability to recruit and retain top professors. Since the start of the Campaign, the School has added three endowed chairs—an important source of funds for faculty research, and for support of master’s and doctoral students who work with the faculty on their research.

More than two years since the public launch of The Campaign for the School of Public Health, our friends and alumni have overwhelmingly demonstrated their commitment to creating “healthier

lives in a safer world.” Despite the current economic climate—in which people are forced to make tough choices about their philanthropy—many have recognized the School of Public Health’s

strides toward achieving its vision of a healthier future. More than 3,554 individuals and 331 organizations have contributed to The Campaign for the School of Public Health to date.

Thanks to Berkeley… and You

PROGRESS OF THE CAMPAIGN FOR THE

SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

The CAMPAIGN for the SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH


27The CAMPAIGN for the SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH Spring 2010

Jane Garcia (center), chief executive offi cer of La Clínica de la Raza, accepts the Organizational Public Health Hero award from presenters Carmela Castellano-Garcia and Dr. David E. Hayes-Bautista.

Angela Glover Blackwell (right), founder and CEO of PolicyLink, accepts the Regional Public Health

Hero award from presenter Dr. Anthony Iton.

• Karl E. Peace created the Jiann-Ping Hsu and Karl E. Peace Endowed Chair in Biostatistics to support the teaching and research of a nationally recognized scholar in biostatistics. Professor Mark van der Laan, who has received numerous international awards for his work in biostatistics, holds the chair.

• Friends and colleagues of former School of Public Health dean Edward E. Penhoet established the Edward E. Penhoet Distinguished Endowed Chair in Global Health and Infectious Diseases, to support the teaching, research, and scholar-ship of an eminent faculty member. The chair is currently held by Professor Arthur Reingold, a board-certifi ed physician with more than 25 years of experience in the study and prevention of infectious diseases in the United States and developing nations.

• Most recently, Leonard D. Schaeffer created the Leonard D. Schaeffer Endowed Chair in Health Economics and Policy to support an eminent faculty member’s work in health economics and policy.

Both the Penhoet and Schaeffer chairs were matched dollar for dollar by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation as part of the Hewlett Challenge, a landmark grant to endow 100 new chairs at UC Berkeley.

These are just some of the ways in which your gifts to The Campaign for the School of Public Health are making a difference—strengthening our ability to confront the health challenges of the 21st century and beyond.

Congratulations to our 2010 UC Berkeley Public Health Heroes

International Public Health Hero Dr. Tom Lee (right) meets School of Public Health Dean Stephen Shortell

(left) and award presenter Richard Blum at a reception preceding the awards ceremony. Lee is cofounder and

director of the Global Health Access Program.

For more information about the Public Health Heroes, visit www.publichealthheroes.org.

27 Spring 2010 Healthier Lives in a Safer World

GIFTS TO THE CAMPAIGN FOR THE SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

THROUGH MARCH 31, 2010

$60,000,000

$50,207,000

$5,040,900

$2,812,800

$3,000,000

$4,137,000

$16,000,000

$15,000,000

$110,000,000

GOAL: $110 mil

$73,073,600

$10,875,800

$16,000,000

$20 mil$0 $40 mil $60 mil $80 mil $100 mil

Building / Capital Campaign

Discretionary / Opportunity Funds

Faculty Excellence

Research / Programs

StudentExcellence

OverallGoal


Two individuals and one organization were honored at the 14th annual

Public Health Heroes Awards Ceremony on March 24.


For third-year Boston University medical student Edward “Eddie” Bellfi eld, the 11-month M.P.H program at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health provided a great opportunity—to get warm. A native of Ventura County, Bellfi eld greatly missed the sunny California weather during his time spent in chilly Boston. “California’s a great place, great weather,” he says. “I didn’t think the New England climate would affect me as much as it did. There is a reason why seasonal affective disorder has the acronym SAD!”

A member of the School’s fi rst group of Kaiser Permanente Public Health Scholars, Bellfi eld is taking a “time out” from medical school to fi t

42 units of public health coursework into one year of intensive study. He doesn’t mind the workload though: “Pretty much anything

they throw at me, I think, ‘All right, it’s still not as bad as med school!’” he jokes. “Anyway, given the fact that I’m

learning all kinds of really neat stuff in the midst of health care reform, it’s very much worth it.”

As a UC Berkeley undergraduate majoring in chemical biology, Bellfi eld cofounded the

University’s fi rst pre-medical fraternity, Sigma Mu Delta, volunteered at the

Berkeley Free Clinic, and served as commissioner on Berkeley’s Com-munity Health Commission. Those experiences introduced him to the value of public health, and he

planned to get an M.P.H at some point during his medical training.

“For me, the public health education is going to be a strength,” he explains.

“It really broadens your knowledge of what


Supporting Student Excellence

For Eddie Bellfi eld, Medicine and Public

Health Go Hand in Hand

29The CAMPAIGN for the SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH Spring 2010

resources are out there and what remedies are available. It will allow me to not just be someone who complains but someone who can do something about it.”

Once he completes his M.P.H, Bellfi eld will have one fi nal year at Boston University School of Medicine. He then plans to come back to California once again to complete his residency in pediatrics. From where he stands, so close to the fi nish line, it all seems imminently achievable, but Bellfi eld doesn’t take his path to goals for granted.

“Even getting to undergrad in the fi rst place, I was already an outlier there,” he says. “Back where I’m from, Oxnard, it’s a mostly Hispanic city. My parents, both are Hispanic—my dad is half Mexican and my mom is from Mexico. I was the fi rst person in my family to go off to a four-year university. My parents have always encouraged me and my siblings to push ourselves. But from what I’ve seen that’s very diffi cult to do when everyone around you doesn’t have that same mindset. It’s extremely diffi cult to break out of that mold.”

Although Bellfi eld didn’t have a lot of academic role models growing up, he was gifted with a strong sense of culture and community. His family attended a Latino church, and it was important to his parents that he and his siblings were immersed in Latino culture. He says, “Defi nitely, I think that’s one of the things that my parents really had going for me was the idea that, despite all that happens and despite where you end up, you’re still one of us. Your name may be Edward John Bellfi eld, but don’t let the name fool you!”

Bellfi eld recalls being surprised and inspired by the outpouring of support he received the fi rst time he returned to his hometown church. “I was probably the fi rst from that community to go off to college. The fi rst time I went back home, I went to that church, and I couldn’t believe how everyone was really proud of me. Like one of their own is fi nally making it. That felt really good. I’m not only representing my family, I’m representing the whole community there.”

In addition to family and community, Bellfi eld believes that entities and individuals who provide scholarships for students are also a great source of support and inspiration. “In addition to the fi nancial support, which allows me to focus on my education, it is good

motivation that you have this organization that’s backing you, that believes that you can succeed. You don’t want to let them down.”

Bellfi eld now has a lot of experience and many tools for success in service to the Latino community, in primary care and pediatrics. He has done work in Latino cultural competency among the physician workforce, and is currently working with the Compass Care program at UCSF Children’s Hospital, which provides palliative care for children with chronic life-threatening conditions.

Last year, Bellfi eld’s synthe-sis of medicine and public health came together in a very positive way when, while working at the Boston Medical Center, he was able to help a

Latina patient learn that she still had a job. The woman had come in to the clinic with back problems, but had just that day received a letter from the factory where she worked, and was worried she was being fi red. Bellfi eld was able to translate the letter for her, and reassure her that it was only a warning and she was still employed. “It was a huge relief; I think that did more for her than anything we prescribed for her that day. That was a great moment for me because I was able to actually help this woman with something that was really affecting her well being. From that, and from many other experiences, I’ve learned that medicine is much more than just treating and diagnosing.”

“Public health education is going to be a strength...It will allow me to not just be someone

who complains but someone who can do something about it.”

29 Spring 2010 Healthier Lives in a Safer World


Help Train Tomorrow’s Leaders

Scholarships and fellowships provide more than just fi nancial support. For students like Eddie, the message of “We believe in you” provides powerful inspiration along the path to success.

Please send that message to other deserving School of Public Health students by making a gift the School of Public Health Annual Fund or the Tomorrow’s Leaders in Public Health Fund. Visit givetocal.berkeley.edu/publichealth to make your gift today.


The Policy Advisory Council—a body that

advises the dean and supports the School

in its efforts to attain the highest level of

quality in professional education, research,

and service—is pleased to welcome to its

ranks Anthony B. Iton, M.D., J.D., M.P.H.

’97. Iton, who has enjoyed a distinguished

career contributing to health policy and

community health, recently joined The Cali-

fornia Endowment’s 10-year Building Healthy Communities: California

Living 2.0 Initiative as senior vice president of healthy communities.

Prior to his appointment at The Endowment, Iton served since 2003

as both the director and county health offi cer for the Alameda County

Public Health Department. In that role, he oversaw the creation of an

innovative public health practice designed to eliminate health disparities

by tackling the root causes of poor health that limit quality of life

and lifespan in many of California’s low-income communities.

Iton also served for three years as director of Health and Human

Services and school medical adviser for the City of Stamford,

Connecticut. Concurrent with that, he served as a physician in internal

medicine for Stamford Hospital’s HIV Clinic. In addition, Iton served

for fi ve years as a primary care physician for the San Francisco

Department of Public Health.

His varied career also includes past service as a staff attorney and health

policy analyst for the West Coast regional offi ce of Consumer’s Union,

the publisher of Consumer Reports magazine. Iton earned his B.S. in

Neurophysiology, with honors, from McGill University, in Montreal,

Quebec, his J.D. at the UC Berkeley School of Law, his medical degree

from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and his M.P.H. from

the UC Berkeley School of Public Health.

Health Policy Expert Joins Policy Advisory Council

You can help educate tomorrow’s public health leaders, recruit and retain world class faculty, advance scholarly inquiry through research and programs, build a new, state-of-the-art home for the School of Public Health, or provide funds for the Dean’s use in meeting changing needs. Whichever you choose, you will help to preserve and enhance the School of Public Health’s excellence—and allow it to keep making the world a healthier place.

For more information on including the School of Public Health in your will or living trust, contact the Offi ce of Gift Planning at (800) 200-0575 or [email protected], or visit givetocal.berkeley.edu/giftplanning.

Your bequest will help make the world a healthier place

The CAMPAIGN for the SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTHU N I V E R S I T Y O F C A L I F O R N I A , B E R K E L E Y

Healthier Lives in a Safer World


Around the School


News and Notes

Buehring named to academic affairs post

Professor Gertrude C. Buehring will serve as the School’s associate dean for academic affairs effective July 1, 2010. “Her extensive experience with and commitment

to the School and her past leadership as head of our Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology Division will benefi t all of us as she assumes her new responsibilities,” said Dean Stephen Shortell. She replaces retiring Executive Associate Dean Thomas Rundall.

Shortell cochairs international conference on health policy in JerusalemDean and Blue Cross of California Distinguished Professor of Health Policy & Management Stephen M. Shortell cochaired the Fourth International Jerusalem Conference on Health Policy in Dec. 2009, with Dr. Avi Israeli, head of Health Policy and Management at The Hebrew University Hadassah Medical School and former director-general of the Israel Ministry of Health. The three-day conference was sponsored by the Israel National Institute for Health Policy Research. Shortell delivered a keynote address that provided a framework for improving the care model for the treatment of chronic disease. Distinguished Professor of Health Economics & Public Policy Richard M. Scheffl er presented a session about ADHD.

UC Berkeley research garners nearly $65 million in federal stimulus moneyUC Berkeley has more than 130 projects underway that are being funded by nearly $65 million in new money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009. The School of Public Health received many of the stimulus grants. Patricia Buffl er, professor of epidemiology and dean emerita,

received a two-year, $2.3 million ARRA grant from NIH that will accelerate her 14-year study of the causes of childhood leukemia. Professor Daniel Portnoy received a two-year, $5 million program project grant from NIH to investigate how bacteria that cause illnesses such as tuberculosis, Legionnaire’s disease and food-borne listeriosis are able to evade the body’s immune system.

Ethiopian Ministry of Health consults Joint Medical Program on medical curriculumKevin Mack, director of faculty development for the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program (JMP), and director of JMP’s Offi ce of Educational Technology, was invited by the Ethiopian minister of health to assist in the design and use of case-centered learning in the 14 new medical schools that will be created in that country in the next year. Ethiopia is one of the African countries with the most critical shortage of physicians.

New center researches childhood health and diseaseProfessor and Head of Epidemiology Ira Tager was awarded $1.5 million by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to establish a formative Children’s Environmental Health and Disease Prevention Center at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health in collaboration with the Stanford University School of Medicine. The overall goal of the new center is to study the effects of in utero and childhood exposure to ambient air pollutants and bioaerosols on birth outcomes and the relation of these early life exposures on the occurrence of asthma in the lower half of the Central Valley of California. Professors of Environmental Health Science John Balmes and S. Katherine Hammond are collaborating.

Berkeley gets $5 million CDC grant to improve emergency response and preparednessIn order to promote public health systems research in emergency preparedness and response, the CDC has awarded a major grant to the Center for Infectious Diseases and Emergency Readiness (CIDER). CIDER will receive more than $1.49 million a year for the next four years to establish and run a CDC Preparedness & Emergency Response Research Center named Cal PREPARE.

For the full stories and more recent news, visit the School’s web site at sph.berkeley.edu and click on “News.”

Joint initiative brings much needed

environmental health training to India

The fi rst master of public health program

in occupational and environmental

health and safety ever offered in India

was offi cially launched Jan. 2010 by

Sri Ramachandra University (SRU) in

collaboration with UC Berkeley. Research

capacity and advanced training in this

fi eld is very limited in India and does

not meet the growing demand for pro-

fessionals in areas such as occupational

safety, indoor air pollution control, and

water quality assessment. Establishing

such a program was a key objective of

the SRU-Berkeley Inter-Institutional

Collaboration, which was initiated in

2002 with support from the NIH Fogarty

International Center. Professor Kirk R.

Smith and Professor Kalpana Balakrishnan

of SRU serve as principal investigators.

Professor Kirk Smith (right) at the launch celebration

Around the School


Faculty Kudos

Stove sensor project takes top prize for wireless innovation

A groundbreaking “stove use monitoring system” (SUMS) developed at UC Berkeley won the fi rst-place $300,000 prize in the 2010 Vodafone Americas Foundation

Wireless Innovation Project, which selects three wireless projects with the potential to save lives and solve critical global challenges.

The winning device, “100 Million Stoves,” is a simple wireless SUMS, powered with the excess heat of the stove, which can be attached to the millions of new low-emission stoves being used in developing regions. The low-cost technology will allow the assessment of household energy programs, enable feedback from users, and provide transparent verifi cation of carbon credits.

The “100 Million Stoves” team consists of Professor of Global Environmental Health Kirk R. Smith and his research group; three small Berkeley companies (BioLite, Electronically Monitoring Ecosystems, and Berkeley Air Monitoring Group); and the Department of Environmental Health Engineering at Sri Ramachandra University in Chennai, India.

Spear named honorary citizen in rural China

In Dec. 2009, Professor Emeri-tus Robert C. Spear was made an honorary citizen of

Xichang County in the Sichuan Province of China in recognition of his commitment to solving a persistent local problem: schistosomiasis, a debilitating, water-borne disease. Spear established an international collaboration which has been active for the past 15 years, involving colleagues at UC Berkeley and the Sichuan Institute of Parasitic Disease in Chengdu, China. Spear’s group has previously been honored by the provincial and national governments; the

honorary citizenship recognizes their work on behalf of people at the local level.

Campus honors outstanding mentors

Associate Professor of Epidemiology Lisa F. Barcellos received a 2010 Graduate Mentoring Award from the UC Berkeley Graduate Division and Graduate

Assembly at an event in April. The award honors members of the Berkeley faculty who have shown an outstanding commitment to mentoring, advising, and generally supporting graduate student researchers.

Ellie Schindelman, M.P.H. ‘80, a lecturer at the Center for Public Health Practice, received the Faculty Award for Outstanding Mentoring of Graduate Student

Instructors (GSIs). Sponsored by the Graduate Council’s Advisory Committee for GSI Affairs and the GSI Teaching and Resource Center at UC Berkeley, the award recognizes faculty who have provided GSIs with outstanding mentorship in their teaching at Berkeley and in preparation for their future teaching careers. Schindelman was nominated for teaching Public Health 333, which prepares new GSIs to teach public health classes.

Chancellor recognizes Minkler for public service

Professor Meredith Minkler, Dr.P.H. ’75, who directs the School’s Health and Social Behavior program, received a Chancellor’s Public Service Award for Research in the Public Interest. She was nominated for numerous achievements, including a project investigating the health and working conditions of San Francisco’s Chinatown restaurant workers; the California Senior Leaders Program; and her dedication and true leadership on campus and in the nation around community-based participatory research.

Biostatistics professor promoted

Alan Hubbard has been promoted to associate professor in the Division of Biostatistics. His development of the “population intervention model” (a form of causal

inference) and his ability to bridge theory and practice were recognized, along with his outstanding teaching.

Herd recognized for advancing diversity

Associate Professor of Behavioral Sciences Denise Herd (center) received the Chancellor’s Award for Advanced Institutional Excellence in recognition of her contributions to advancing equity, inclusion, and diversity at the School of Public Health and the UC Berkeley campus. Among the accomplishments for which she was honored was her leadership as a member of the Berkeley Diversity Research Initiative’s Executive Committee. Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau (left) and Vice Chancellor Gibor Basri (right) presented her with the award at a special reception held in her honor.

Two honored by Joint Medical Program

The UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program (JMP) presented several awards at its annual research symposium in February. Jodi Halpern, associate professor of bioethics, received the JMP Mentor Award in recognition of her service on numerous master’s committees. Maureen Lahiff, lecturer and academic coordinator in biostatistics, was honored with the Friend of the JMP award for her statistical advice and support for students in the JMP master’s program.

Around the School


Study links reduced fertility to fl ame retardant exposure

Women with higher blood levels of PBDEs—a type of fl ame retardant commonly found in household consumer products such as foam furniture, fabrics, and carpets—took longer to become pregnant compared with women who have lower levels of PBDEs, according to a study by researchers at the Center for the Health Assessment of Mothers and Children of Salinas. The study, published January in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, found that each 10-fold increase in the blood concentration of four PBDE chemicals was linked to a 30 percent decrease in the odds of becoming pregnant each month.

Disability may be on the rise again after 20-year decline

Disability rates among non-institutionalized older Americans increased between 2000 and

2005, a trend that could seriously impact the quality of life of seniors in the coming decades if it continues, according to a study led by researchers at the University of Toronto and UC Berkeley. The fi ndings are troubling because they suggest that the steady decline since the 1980s of disability rates among older adults may have ended. Assistant Professor Amani Nuru-Jeter coauthored the study.

Auto exhaust linked to thickening of arteries, possible increased risk of heart attack

Swiss, California, and Spanish researchers have found that particulates from auto exhaust can lead to the thickening of artery walls, possibly increasing chances of a heart attack or stroke. They found that the artery wall thickness among those living within 100 meters (328 feet) of a highway increased by 5.5 micrometers per year, or more than twice the average pro-gression observed in study participants. Study

coauthor Michael Jerrett, associate professor of environmental health sciences, believes that controlling air pollution from traffi c may provide much larger benefi ts to public health than previously thought.

Cutting greenhouse pollutants could directly save millions of lives worldwide

Tackling climate change by reducing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse emissions will have major direct health benefi ts in addition to reducing the risk of climate change, especially in low-income countries, according to a series of six papers that appeared Nov. 2009 in the British journal The Lancet. The studies, three of them coauthored by Kirk R. Smith and one coauthored by Michael Jerrett, used case studies to demonstrate the co-benefi ts of tackling climate change in four sectors: electricity gen-eration, household energy use, transportation, and food and agriculture.

Research Highlights

Pediatrician Ronald Dahl believes adolescence is a critical window of time in human development—one which presents unique opportunities to intervene in complex issues and problems. It’s also a period about which there are many unanswered questions. For instance, why is there such a tremendous increase in rates of morbidity and mortality during adolescence, when physically it is the healthiest period in the lifespan?

Dahl’s research focuses on regulatory systems, such as self regulation, emotion regulation, and sleep and arousal regulation. In fact, it was his fascination with sleep that fi rst led him down his current path of inquiry. Why, he wondered, should the brain need to disengage from responsive-ness to the external environment for long periods of time? “That mystery captivated me, and several hints were developmental—there’s something about plasticity and learning and adapting that requires sleep,” he says.

“Adolescence is a key time in self regulation,” says Dahl. “It’s when young people are more exploratory, more sensation-seeking, experi-menting with their ability to control their emotions, but when they’re more vulnerable to having emotions tip the balance to where they make risky decisions as well.” Rates of drug and alcohol use, aggression, violence, depression, suicide, and homicide all increase in adolescents. But, he says, this stage of development also holds great potential. “It’s a time when their passions can become connected to positive things—when kids can become idealistic about the world, or a particular religion, or a big goal.”

Studying this model of adolescence requires looking across disciplines at the biological changes, the social context, and the cultural and environmental infl uences that interact at that stage of life. Dahl is excited about the opportunity Berkeley offers to build transdisciplinary teams to examine these issues. He hopes he and his colleagues will gain insight that can inform clinical and policy interventions.

Dahl has been at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine since 1987, most recently as the Staunton Professor of Psychiatry and Pediat-rics and Professor of Psychology. He will arrive at UC Berkeley in the fall and will teach in the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program.

Ronald E. DahlProfessor, Community Health & Human DevelopmentM.D., University of PittsburghB.S., B.A, Pennsylvania State University

Meet the New Faculty


Alumni Notes


Alumni Notes

1950sMelvin Kirschner, M.D., M.P.H. ’55 “I just published a book entitled All Medicines Are Poison! It discusses the sorry state of our country’s health care system. I’ve worked in the health care arena for almost 60 years, 10 years in public health and 47 years as a family physician. Though retired, I continue to be an active biomedical ethicist. My book and my many years of experience suggest ways in which our country’s health and health care can be improved.”

1960sLawrence W. Green ’62, Dr.P.H. ’68, M.P.H. ’66, was elected to membership in the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academies—one of the highest honors in the fi elds of health and medicine. Green is a professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and co-leader of the Society, Diversity & Disparities Program at the UCSF School of Medicine and Comprehensive Cancer Center.

George Blue Spruce, D.D.S., M.P.H. ’67, who is generally acknowl-edged as the fi rst American Indian dentist to practice in the United States, is now the subject of an autobiography, Searching for My Destiny (University of Nebraska Press,

2009). His life story reaches back to the ancient Pueblo culture cherished by his grandparents and parents and extends to state-of-the-art dentistry and the current needs of the American Indian people. He reached the zenith of his career as director of the Phoenix Regional Indian Health Service and assistant surgeon general of the United States.

1970sArnold M. Zeiderman, M.D., M.P.H. ’75, and a group of about 25 from the Global Medical Foundation participated in a medical mission in Cartagena, Colombia, in February for a full week of clinics and hospital surgeries. The mission was coordinated with the Granitos

de Paz Foundation in the Rafael Nuñez sector. The Global Medical Foundation, through its medical missions, provides high quality, free medical and surgical care to indigent people in communities where daily living is a struggle and medical care almost non-existent.

K. Paul Knott, M.P.H. ’79, was named head of BioBusiness Center at North Carolina Community College (NCCCS) after serving as curriculum coordinator at the center for the past four years. The BioBusiness Center, part of the NCCCS BioNetwork, is located at the college’s Enka site, and supports business development for start-up life science companies across North Carolina through local, regional and statewide partnerships and collaborations.

1980sRonald Miller, D.D.S., M.P.H. ’80 “For the past 20 years I have been working as a dentist at the Sonoma Developmental Center providing dental care to the developmentally disabled population. Presently have two sons attending Cal and a third son who can’t wait to attend Cal in two years! Wife Lisa, also a Cal grad, is chairman of the Math Department at Napa High School.”

Kathryn Saenz Duke, J.D., M.P.H. ’82, was named director of the Public Health Trust at the Public Health Institute effective Nov. 1, 2009. The Public Health Trust works in partnership with government agencies, attorneys, and public health advocates to direct lawsuit settlement funds toward developing

Solar suitcases continue to travelAfter seeing doctors in northern Nigeria attempt risky deliveries in the dark due to lack of reliable electricity, Laura Stachel, M.D., M.P.H. ’06 (a Dr.P.H. candidate at the School) and her husband Hal Aronson developed a “solar suitcase” to reduce maternal mortality in developing regions by providing health workers with lighting, blood bank refrigeration, and mobile communication using solar electricity. They began an organization—Women’s Emergency Communication and Reliable Electricity

(WE CARE Solar)—and engaged students, faculty, philanthropic organizations, engineers, and even schoolchildren in their efforts. When Haiti was struck by a major earthquake, WE CARE Solar raised money from families and friends and built more of the devices for use in the devastated island nation. Nine countries are now using solar suitcases, with others poised to follow, and countless volunteers are involved in the effort. (See “A Solar Solution to Save Women’s Lives in Nigeria,” Berkeley Health, Fall ’09.)

In recent months, Stachel and WE CARE Solar have garnered much recognition for this work. In April, Stachel was presented with the Graduate Student Award for Civic Engagement—one of the UC Berkeley Chancellor’s Outstanding Service Awards. The same month, WE CARE Solar won the Social Impact Assessment prize in the Global Social Venture Competition (organized by the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley in cooperation with other partners). WE CARE Solar also took second place in the Big Ideas competition—held by the UC Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society—which recognizes the best student ideas that demonstrate the ability of information technology to address a major societal challenge. In addition, WE CARE Solar has been designated as a fi nalist in the Ashoka Changemakers “Healthy Mothers, Healthy World” competition. And most recently, Statchel received a Jefferson Award from CBS-5 in San Francisco.

Alumni Notes


and supporting a range of health programs. Previously Duke was the founding director for the Public Health Institute’s Medicine for People in Need.

David Hoskinson, M.B.A., M.P.H. ’83, is vice president at MEDNAX, Inc. He writes, “Now a senior exec helping manage 1,500 docs and 800 advanced practice nurses with 3,000 staff in 280 cities operating as a national medical group—the nation’s largest provider of physician services to Medicaid benefi ciaries with pediatric and obstetrical specialty service needs. Headquartered outside of Fort Lauderdale, where I live on the beach.”

Joseph Telfair, Dr.P.H., M.S.W., M.P.H. ’83, has been tapped to lead the Center for Social, Community, and Health Research and Evalu-ation at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG). Telfair is a professor in the Department of Public Health Education in the School of Health and Human Performance. A faculty member at UNCG since 2006, he serves as principal investigator, evaluator, or project director on a number of research and evaluation projects at the local, state, regional, and national level. He is a member of several public health, genetics, and research advisory committees for the NIH, HRSA, and national non-governmental agencies, including the American Public Health Association.

Susie Osaki Holm, M.P.H. ’86 “I used to wonder why anyone would live in Minne-sota, yet here I am! My husband, who did an endocrinology fellowship at UCSF where we met, is from here. I am grateful for the M.P.H. I earned from the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. It took me to Mozambique, Nepal, and Ethiopia. Mark and I are living happily with our seven cats.”

Carol L. Brosgart, M.D., M.P.H. ’89, has been named chief medical offi cer and senior vice president of Children’s Hospital & Research Center Oakland. Brosgart is a widely regarded public health physician with

expertise in the areas of HIV/AIDS, chronic

viral hepatitis B and C, seasonal and pandemic infl uenza, and health care policy. She has been an active and highly respected member of the Bay Area medical community for more than four decades. She joins Children’s Hospital Oakland fresh from a break after retiring from biotech pioneer Gilead Sciences in July 2009. Brosgart held several positions during her 11-year career at the Foster City biotech fi rm, including vice president, clinical research and vice president, public health and policy. She contributed to the development of the world’s leading therapies and public health policies for the treatment of HIV/AIDS, chronic hepatitis B, and seasonal and pandemic infl uenza.

1990sLaMar Hasbrouck, M.D., M.P.H. ’90, was

named public health direc-tor of Ulster County, N.Y., in Nov. 2009. Previously, he worked for the CDC for 11 years, most recently as director of the CDC’s offi ce in Georgetown, Guyana.

Prior to assuming the Guyana post, he was a senior medical offi cer of the CDC’s Global AIDS Program management team. Hasbrouck also has served as a medical offi cer/epidemiologist for the CDC’s Division of Violence Prevention; a short-term consultant with the World Health Organization in Dhaka, Bangladesh; an Epidemic Intelligence Service offi cer with the CDC’s Epidemiology Program Offi ce; an assistant professor of medicine at Emory University; and an adjunct professor of community medicine at Morehouse College. He has also been on CDC missions to Nigeria, Namibia, Uganda, and Haiti. Hasbrouck received a 2009 Meritorious Honor Award from the U.S. Department of State.

Arnell Hinkle, M.P.H. ’90, RD, CHES, executive director of the California Adolescent Nutrition and Fitness program, has been awarded an Ian Axford (New Zealand) Fellow-ship in Public Policy. She is one of fi ve Axford fellows based in Wellington, New Zealand, from Feb. to Sept. 2010. Her project, “Policy Implementation for Health Equity: Examining


Washington named dean of UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine

A. Eugene Washington, M.D., M.P.H. ’75, was appointed dean of the David Geffen School of Medicine and vice chancellor of health sciences at UCLA effective Feb. 1. He previously served as executive vice chancellor & provost and professor of gynecology, epidemiology, and health policy at UCSF. A member of the UCSF faculty since 1983, Washington chaired the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences for eight years and directed the UCSF Women’s Reproductive Health Research Career Development Center for six. He

cofounded UCSF’s Medical Effectiveness Research Center for Diverse Populations in 1993 and served as director for 12 years. He also cofounded the UCSF-Stanford Evidence-based Practice Center and served as its fi rst director from 1997 to 2002. Prior to joining the faculty at UCSF, Washington worked for the CDC in the U.S. Public Health Service.

Washington has published extensively in his major areas of research, which include prenatal genetic testing, cervical cancer screening and prevention, non-cancerous uterine conditions management, quality of health care, and racial/ethnic disparities in health outcomes. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academy of Sciences in 1997. He also received the Outstanding Service Medal from the U.S. Public Health Service and has been recognized by his peers and staff at UCSF.

Alumni Notes


Alumni Notes, continued

Healthy Eating-Healthy Action (HEHA) in Maori and Pacifi c Communities,” will determine the level of engagement of local indigenous and immigrant communities—particularly low-in-come communities—in the implementation of the government’s HEHA campaign, and assess the food systems and built environment of Maori and Pacifi c Islander communities. The resulting policy report and community case study will be disseminated in New Zealand and the United States.

Bruce Kieler, Dr.P.H. ’94, M.P.H. ’88, participated in the Nuclear Uniform Curricu-lum Summit, sponsored by the U.S. Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), in Washington, D.C., in February. Kieler is a public health specialist on NEI’s pilot team that is developing a standardized curriculum for use at American

colleges and universities offering training in nuclear power plant operations, management, and maintenance. Over the past two years he has obtained more than $1.2 million in federal and state grants and Congressionally-directed set-asides for nuclear training programs at community colleges in the Texas Gulf Coast Region. In March Kieler was an invited speaker at the National Workshop on Tamil Language Instruction, held at the University of Texas at Austin.

Sybille Rehmet, M.D., M.P.H. ’96 “Back in Europe after working in communicable diseases surveillance and response in Cambodia; now with the European CDC on outbreak preparedness and response. Looking forward to being back in touch with the Berkeley PH community!”

Kim Rhoads, M.D., M.P.H., M.S. ’96, was appointed director of cancer education and community partnership for the Stanford Cancer Center and the Cancer Prevention Institute of California (CPIC), formerly

the Northern California Cancer Center, effective Mar. 1. She continues to serve as an assistant professor of surgery at the Stanford University School of Medicine. One of her priorities—in both her new position and her continuing academic research—is to fi nd ways of reducing cancer outcome disparities among racial and ethnic minorities in California. In her new role, she is working to enhance research collaborations between the clinician-scientists at the Stanford Cancer Center and the cancer prevention scientists at CPIC. In the realm of community education, she is working closely with CPIC education professionals to build strong academic/community partnerships that improve cancer prevention and outcomes.

Catherine Zandonella, M.P.H. ’99, has authored a book on environmentally healthy living. Published in March by National Geographic Books, Green Guide Families: The Complete Reference for Eco-Friendly Parents covers everything from how to reduce expo-sures to toxic chemicals around the house to how to have an eco-friendly birthday party for your kids. “It contains all the information I’ve learned from the UC Berkeley EHS program about environmental health hazards, combined with my own personal insights from being the parent of two children,” she writes. Zandonella is a science writer who has been published in magazines including Nature and New Scientist.

2000sIsaac Ergas, M.P.H. ’01, was awarded a grant from The Sloan Foundation to begin development on a short live-action fi lm about Dr. John Snow and his fi ght against cholera (www.snowthemovie.com). Specifi cally, the fi lm focuses on Snow’s activities in London during the sweltering summer of 1854 and the days

Gerberding named president of Merck VaccinesJulie L. Gerberding, M.D., M.P.H. ’90, was named president of Merck Vaccines effective

Jan. 25. She directed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the primary federal agency for conducting and supporting public health activities in the United States, from 2002 to 2009. During her tenure at CDC, Gerberding led the agency through more than 40 emergency response initiatives for health crises including anthrax bioterrorism, food-borne disease outbreaks, and natural disasters, and advised governments around the world on urgent public health issues such as SARS, AIDS, and obesity.

In her new role, Gerberding leads the company’s $5 billion global vaccine business. She is responsible for the commercialization of the current portfolio of vaccines, planning for the introduction of vaccines from the company’s vaccine pipeline, and accelerating Merck’s ongoing efforts to broaden access to its vaccines in the developing world. She also collaborates with leaders of Merck Manufacturing Division and Merck Research Laboratories to manage the critical linkages between basic research, late-stage development and manufacturing to expand Merck’s vaccine offerings throughout the world.

Gerberding is a member of the Institute of Medicine and a fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the American College of Physicians, and is board certifi ed in internal medicine and infectious diseases. She is also a clinical professor of infectious diseases at Emory University and an adjunct associate professor of medicine in infectious diseases at UCSF. She has received more than 50 awards and honors, including the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Distinguished Service Award for her leadership in responses to anthrax bioterrorism and the 9/11 attacks. She was named to Forbes Magazine’s 100 Most Powerful Women in 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008, and was named to TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Infl uential People in the World in 2004. She was the UC Berkeley School of Public Health’s Alumna of the Year in 2003.

Alumni Notes


leading up to the historic moment of removing the handle from the Broad Street Pump. Ergas is working on his M.F.A. in fi lm and television production at the University of Southern California. He previously served as a community development volunteer in the Peace Corps in Cameroon, Africa, and then worked on several cancer-related epidemiological studies at Kaiser Permanente’s Division of Research in Oakland.

Elizabeth Dell, M.P.H. ’02, produced a movie, B-GIRL, directed and written by her

sister, Emily Dell. B-GIRL tells the modern day underdog story of a brilliant young female dancer from New York City forced to fi nd her

inner strength through the one art form she knows: breakdance. The movie had preview screenings in major cities across the United States in Dec. 2009 and January, and an offi cial DVD release party in Los Angeles in January.

Deborah Edelman, Dr.P.H. ’04, moderated a Public Health Education and Health Promotion session on “Children’s Health: A Focus on Asthma” at the American Public Health Association meeting in Nov. 2009. That same month she spoke in Taipei at an international seminar called “Communication is Key: Best Practices From the Management of Global Health Outbreaks,” sponsored by the French Institute for International Relations along with several Taiwanese and Chinese health organizations and academic institutions.

Laura C. Keranen-Gallagher, M.P.H. ’61, died Dec. 28, 2009, at age 72. The recipient of many national awards for her work as a public health educator, she earned her bachelor’s degree in journalism at Case Western Reserve University and her master’s in public health at UC Berkeley. She was a consultant and lecturer for a number of agencies in the Bay Area, and was among the fi rst in the nation to demonstrate that health education for prevention and disease management could and should be integrated into health care delivery. Keranen-Gallagher worked with the American Cancer Society, California Division, and taught at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. Her last position was director of health education for Kaiser Permanente, Northern California. Upon her retirement in 1998, she moved to Nevada City, California. She is survived by her husband of 30 years, Desmond Knox Gallagher; a brother and sister-in-law, a niece, a nephew, a stepson and his family, and many cousins.

Duane Lee Sewell, M.P.H. ’57, died Jan. 10, 2010, in his home in Oakland, at age 81. He received his bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of New Mexico and later served in the U.S. Armed Forces in Germany. After his honorable discharge from the military, he took a position with the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, serving in New Mexico. He completed graduate studies at the University of Western New Mexico and the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. He then began his career with the American Lung Association, where he served as executive director for many years. He is credited with many pioneering advances in the control of lung disease. Sewell is survived by his wife Arnita, his son and daughter, and four grandchildren.

Vertis Raymond Thompson, M.D., M.P.H. ’74, died April 12, 2009, in Oakland.

Dr. Robert Scott, a physician who received the UC Berkeley Public Health Hero Award in 2006, died on Oct. 8, 2009, at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Oakland. He was 65.

Scott had been practicing medicine in Oakland for more than three decades. He

was renowned for his work fi ghting HIV/AIDS on many fronts: giving free treatment to indigent patients in Oakland, spreading awareness of and compassion for people with HIV/AIDS, and setting up a volunteer practice in Zimbabwe.

Born in Chicago, Scott earned his bachelor’s degree at Parsons College, followed by a M.S. degree and M. Ed at University of Illinois. He earned his medical degree at UCSF in 1974, followed by the completion of an internship in medicine at Emory University Hospital. In 1975, Scott held a residency in Internal Medicine at Stanford University Hospitals until 1977.

In 1983, Scott founded AIDS Project of the East Bay in Oakland. In 2004, he became the fi rst African American doctor to become licensed to practice in Zimbabwe. At the time of his passing, he maintained, on a volunteer basis, more than 800 patients in Zimbabwe, all of whom were treated free of charge through the efforts of the AIDS Ministry, which he cofounded at his home church, the Allen Temple Baptist Church in Oakland.

If you would like to make a donation in someone’s memory, please make your check payable to the “School of Public Health Fund” and include a note indicating the name of the person you are memorializing. You can make your gift online at givetocal.berkeley.edu/publichealth or mail it to the attention of Pat Hosel, Offi ce of External Relations and Development, UC Berkeley School of Public Health, 417 University Hall #7360, Berkeley, CA 94720-7360.

In Memoriam


Elizabeth and Emily Dell

University of California, BerkeleySchool of Public Health50 University Hall #7360Berkeley, CA 94720-7360

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Spring 2010 - At Your Service - Berkeley Health

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