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2 Academic Public Health and Population Health
Pages 5-12

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From page 5...
... Key points from the panelists are provided in Box 2-1. Dora Hughes from The George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health began her remarks with a quote from James Baldwin: "Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced." The current crises -- and in addition to those outlined in the introduction, she included wildfires, floods, and climate change more broadly -- reveal the consequences of not facing or acknowledging key public health issues such as "avoidable, unfair, and remediable differences in health." She highlighted three key roles for academia in times of a public health crisis: advocacy for science and transparency, supporting or facilitating coordination on the marshalling of data and evidence in responding to the crisis, and providing support for governmental public health officials.
From page 6...
... An additional role of academia in a public health crisis is to facilitate and develop an infrastructure for coordination and collaboration, perhaps under the auspices of public health organizations. A third potential role for academia, Hughes asserted, in a similar vein to what she called truth telling about science and evidence, is supporting and providing cover for public health officials operating on the front lines of a crisis.
From page 7...
... we teach about it, how we craft the questions that we ask in our scholarship," and academics must face these issues in a comprehensive and direct way, "not as an extracurricular pursuit." Research indicates, added Johnson, that members of the general public as well as medical students and residents have erroneous beliefs that there are biological differences between Blacks and Whites, and these beliefs influence decisions made by public health and health care practitioners. The recognition that racism is an organized and hierarchic social system "based on an ideology of inferiority" strips racism of the power it has to influence the allocation of societal resources, Johnson stated.
From page 8...
... Sharfstein added that leaders in academia need to think of public health as a field that becomes activated in crisis. Little things, began Ziad Obermeyer from the University of California, Berkeley, can matter a whole lot, and a small, technical issue can put in motion a series of larger actions that can have enormous negative consequences.
From page 9...
... When Obermeyer and his colleagues studied this issue, they learned that this algorithm builds in inequities toward populations of color, those with lower incomes, rural populations, and anyone who lacks adequate health care access or who "is treated differently when they get access to [the] health care system." Obermeyer and colleagues worked with the company that develops the software to change the algorithm to remove the built-in inequity.3 A similar bias, Obermeyer noted, is built into some government policies.
From page 10...
... Sandro Galea from the Boston University School of Public Health outlined what he called three distinct traumas that the nation is experiencing -- COVID-19, economics, and the "reckoning with centuries of structural racism" -- and these traumas call for strategies for the academic enterprise to deal with them. Galea underscored other speakers' comments calling on academia to speak the truth, to bear witness, and to serve as a moral compass.
From page 11...
... DISCUSSION WITH AUDIENCE INPUT Sharfstein relayed an audience question about recruiting, engaging, and supporting students, especially students from disadvantaged backgrounds, at a time when learning is largely virtual, and students may face many logistical, economic, and public health issues. Sharfstein shared an example about his school's program that has redesigned course offerings.6 The school additionally provides full scholarships for public health training for 50 people who are working in other sectors to respond to public health challenges, and who may not otherwise be able to receive formal public health training.
From page 12...
... Forms of research that require deep listening and time may not align with the ways in which academics are recognized, Johnson added, and that type of research is needed to inform thinking about the workforce and the nature of academics in public health and population health. In a similar vein, Kangovi commented on the need for leaders in academia to ask themselves what it means "to be a public health student and who can afford to be a student in public health and who gets to do science?


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