Stan, Clarence, and Barry chat with Dean Melinda Pettigrew of the University of Minnesota School of Public Health about the future and vision of public health education.Dean Pettigrew has an extensive public health career. Before her current role, Dean Pettigrew was the Anna M. R. Lauder Professor of Epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health. While at Yale, Dean Pettigrew held several leadership positions including interim dean, deputy dean, senior associate dean for academic affairs, and deputy Title IX coordinator. As a trained epidemiologist, Dean Pettigrew's research research focuses on the epidemiology of respiratory tract infections, the microbiome, and the One Health threat of antibiotic resistance.Listen along as Dean Pettigrew shares their vision of public health and public health education.Join the conversation at healthchatterpodcast.comBrought to you in support of Hue-MAN, who is Creating Healthy Communities through Innovative Partnerships.More about their work can be found at http://huemanpartnership.org/
Hello, everybody. Welcome to Health Shatter. And today we have really a special guest with us. You'll hear from her in a minute. But we're going to be talking about the future and vision of public health and really around the concept of public health education. Good topic for today. We've got a great crew. Always like to give them some high marks and credit.
As we do these shows, our researchers are Maddie Levine-Wolf, Aaron Collins, Deandra Howard, and Sheridan Nygaard. Sheridan also does the marketing for our show and also does some recording. She'll be recording this show, as a matter of fact. Our production manager is Matthew Campbell, who gets all our shows out to you, the listening audience. Co-host for the show with me, as always, is...
Clarence Jones, we have a good time doing these shows. And it's good chatting that we've done over all of these shows. So thank you to you, Clarence. And then, of course, there's Human Partnership, a community health organization, sponsors our shows. They do great work out in the community. I recommend you see, you check out their website at humanpartnership.org.
and you can also check us out at healthchatterpodcast.com. All of our research is available on our website, as well as our shows are transcribed as well, so you can read them or listen to them, whatever your preference is. So thank you to all of you, the listening audience, and everybody involved with the show. So today we have...
Dr. Pettigrew with us, Melinda Pettigrew, who's the new dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota. So welcome, welcome, welcome. It's nice to have you. So she's currently the dean. She started just this last January. Previously, deputy dean at Yale University and an epidemiology professor there as well.
She's published many research publications, especially around respiratory tract infections, etc., recipient of many honors and awards. And I'm sure the selection committee noted those when they selected you as our new dean. So welcome. PhD in epidemiology from Yale. And so she went out there to get her PhD.
her doctorate, but she was in the Midwest when she got her undergraduate degree at Grinnell. So welcome back to the Midwest. So thank you for, thanks for being with us. It's great to have you. So, okay. So, you know, to a certain extent, what really drove us to have you on the show, obviously, is our new dean, but also the concept of public health
and education, and it really came to the forefront, obviously, when we were dealing with COVID. It was really kind of, okay, how do we communicate? How do we educate it? Et cetera. But for sure, I've always adhered to the fact, and many of us in public health have, that successful public health, oftentimes is invisible to the public, correct? Absolutely.
I mean, it's just like what you don't see, and it makes it really good, you know, like clean water. Guess what? There's a lot that goes into, you know, for instance, like clean water. So we have a lot of things to talk about. Clarence, you got a comment.
I actually got my hand up first. I'm very happy to see you and to meet you. I am a community member, and so I come at this from a community perspective. Why is there such a lack of understanding about public health?
I mean, I actually worked in a clinic and you talk about public health thing and it seems like there's such a huge barrier between the biomedical and public health and people don't understand the interconnectionists of them. So why do you think there's such a lack of understanding about public health?
Yeah, that's a huge question. And I think it's one that the field struggles with quite a bit. As Stanton mentioned earlier, You don't see public health when it's functioning well. And we work to prevent disease. So all those things that are prevented that don't get you into the hospital, people don't see them. I also think one of the challenges is that the field is so broad.
Public health touches so many different things. And so when you do that, it's a little bit of everything everywhere all at once. And so I think we even as a field have trouble articulating what public health does. I think the pandemic was a little helpful actually in helping the public understand. You started hearing terms like epidemiologists are not flattening the curve.
And it was a real opportunity for us to engage more with the community because they were hearing these words, they were seeing the social determinants of health play out in action. And so I think that pandemic helped folks understand what public health is.
I also think the downside of that was there was a loss of trust and we missed an opportunity, I think, to really define who we are and to improve coordination.
Yeah. You know, it's, it's, it's interesting. I, um, you know, I was, I was involved with, um, the COVID response when I was at the state health department and, um, oh my God, it's just like, all right, do we really worry? These were some of the questions we had.
Do we have to really worry about informing the public about public health when we're trying to intervene and trying to get this thing banished? So we were dealing with two major things and it became an angst for the professionals, but hopefully to your point, people became more knowledgeable. So this is one thing that I noted over the years.
When I was teaching in the School of Public Health, oftentimes we had some undergrads were taking some courses, especially the education undergraduates were taking some courses because they were required to get some health background in order to get an education degree. But yet, when I was teaching
Basically, what you were pursuing in the School of Public Health was either an MPH or an MHA or a master's oriented professional degree or even a PhD. More recently, however, they've added undergraduate. So I was wondering, all right, so tell me your perspective on this. It's like you can get just about any degree you want. in the School of Public Health now.
So how will that help us going forward?
Yeah, I mean, I think there's a general need in society for public health education, knowledge, and content. I think public health really teaches us to engage with society and to view the world and address its challenges through this public health lens, which is so important. It links to all the other health sciences and other professions, but it does stand apart in some key ways.
So we really prioritize prevention. We prioritize populations over the individual and we prioritize multi-level partnerships. And so being able to look at the world, to engage, to attract people who wanna leave the place better than they found it, I think is really good in general for society and especially in the undergraduate space. We teach students to identify problems, risk factors,
introduce prevention measures to assess interventions and determine whether they're working and not and the impact on health. And we are short about 80,000 full-time positions in the field of public health just to get back to those pre-pandemic levels. And so there's a real need for people with training in this area and that's where the undergraduate space can help.
So we have a new undergraduate program that just started last year at the School of Public Health. And there's many different ways for undergrads to get involved. There's undergraduate public health degrees, there's undergraduate minors that can just expose you to that general way of thinking. And there's also been a rise in accredited programs, bachelor degrees in public health.
And so it's really valuable in multiple, multiple fronts. And even we want everybody to go into public health, there's again, a huge workforce shortage. But even if you don't choose a career that's directly public health, having that community, societal lens, I think makes us better citizens in general.
Yeah, that's a really good point. So for those who go into the field of public health, where would undergraduates mostly be going to? Would they be going to community health programs? Where would master's level, where would PhD level be going to in the work environment?
Yeah, that's a place where I think we need to do a little bit more work and be a little cautious. In other fields, we've seen this when you start bringing undergraduates in, sometimes they start getting positions that are previously held by masters, people with master's degrees or higher level degrees.
And I really think we need to work more to define what those skill sets are that you need at every level so that you don't see this trend to just undergraduate or the cheapest worker in many positions. But our undergrads can go work in the nonprofit sector. They can work as teachers. They can work for the health department. Same goes for masters. Faculty or those with PhDs can go work at the CDC.
They become faculty across the universities. They can work actually in corporate America and in more leadership positions and leading research teams.
Sheridan.
Yeah, so I did not get a public health degree from the University of Minnesota for my undergrad, but it was my minor. And I was a pre-med, and I just had always thought I was going to go medical school, pharmaceuticals maybe. And as we learned how to solve individual problems, I realized there were a lot more systemic problems and that more problems could be fixed upstream.
And that is really what ignited my passion for public health. I'd already dabbled a little bit in high school. I used to do anti-tobacco smoking campaigns in high school, which really tells you I was probably set up for this since the beginning. But I really felt like I found my people when I was having these like bigger level systemic changes, creating
You know, the solutions that actually solve really big problems. That's what really lit my soul on fire. So I was wondering what brought you and like lit your soul on fire in regards to public health.
That's a great question. And I go back to the why quite a bit. I was a biology major and, you know, even going back in time, my parents were both teachers. My mom was a high school chemistry teacher. My dad taught math and my mother pushed me really hard to get a PhD starting probably in third grade. And it was really biology. And I went to Grinnell and it was a liberal arts education.
I loved economics classes. I love literature and I love biology, but I wasn't always like, convinced about what this would do for me. And I was good at it, but it didn't click. It wasn't until my junior year that it was the first time I heard the word epidemiology. A faculty member from Hopkins came to talk about the AIDS pandemic in Africa. And she was talking about the challenge of AIDS orphans.
She was talking about retroviruses and reverse transcription and the need for drugs and diagnostics. And she also talked about the impact on society how things fall apart when you have people in their major wage earning years or leaders of families that are that are getting sick. And that's when this light bulb went off. And, you know, I was like, Epidemia, what's that? I want to do that.
And it brought together all the stuff that I was interested in the economics, the politics, the science and I hear that a lot. It's a great field for people who want to solve complex challenges, as you said, and have an impact. And you really need these skills and that big picture thinking and the outside of the box and learning how all these things connect and interrelate with each other.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, Dean Pettigrew, I know that you're new in your position, and I want to build on what Sheridan just asked you. Is there space or conversation for education in those who are not in undergrad, who might be in high school, who might be in elementary school, to talk more about public health? Is there conversations about those kinds of things?
Because I don't think that people would identify, I mean, from a community perspective, I don't think people talk about it as public health. And so there is not that attachment to it. So anyway, just conversation.
Yeah. And so I think part of the challenge is time, but I've done this at Yale and we're doing it now. There's a need, I think, to engage people earlier and teaching them about what public health is. And we have a faculty member here who's running a summer camp And they'll be talking about how drones can be used in public health to help sampling and gather information.
And so it's gonna be middle school kids. And I think they'll really have a fun time flying the drones and learning about health. And so I think there are things that we can do that way to engage in the conversation. We've worked on pipeline programs.
I haven't learned yet how much is going on here specifically, but there's often programs to expose people in middle school or high school with what you need to do to be an MD or a career in nursing. And we can, I think, partner with those groups and expose them to public health. We do see a lot of people come into public health who originally thought they might
view themselves as an MD or going into medicine. By the way, I think it's great to have a combined MD, MPH degree, but we also want those people who don't necessarily want to be a clinician get exposed to public health. So engaging with the community, working with high schools. We also have folks in our biostatistics department who are going out into public schools in Minnesota and working on
statistical skills, math skills, and using the words public health. And so there are lots of different touch points. I think we need to be intentional about it and really focus on things where they're sustainable and continuity. I think what I don't want to see is the fly in, fly out. Because I think that erodes trust over time. But there's certainly a need for it.
And figuring out how to do that and do it in a sustainable way that's in partnership with the folks that we serve is going to be a priority of mine going forward. So thank you for that.
You know, it's interesting. You know, in my career in public health, I always carried the... the torch of how it is that we as public health professionals could meet with medical professionals on the bridge. We can meet together and solve things. And there was a point in time, and maybe it still exists, where the distinctions between medicine and
public health have to be clearly communicated to the public so that they really understand the difference. But I will say this, that I'll go out on a limb on this one, that perhaps the best colleagues that I had in my career were those, and to your point, were physicians with a public health background. where they really got it.
They truly understood the need for medical care, perhaps at the individual level, but then they also understood health at a public health level as well. And it always struck me as a wonderful combination to really communicate effectively with the public. So I've got... This is kind of history, I guess, a little bit.
You know, when I think about all the different arenas in public health, the School of Public Health, You know, like my background was in maternal and child health. Okay. And oh, my God, you know, there's maternal and child health. There's dental health. There's public health administration. There's health education. It goes on and on and on and on. Okay.
Do you still see those arenas as being vital? Or do you see the arenas changing? In other words, you know, should there be a, you know, I'll just say a major in maternal and child health. should there be a major in any of these things? Or are we looking at a different grouping of needs going forward?
Yeah, so that's a really hard and interesting question to answer. Public health really does embrace many, many areas.
Right.
And as I mentioned earlier, it's a bit of everything everywhere all at once. I do think there is still a need for public health to embrace all of these areas. Things are changing, but there's still many public health challenges that we haven't fixed yet. So I wouldn't do away with maternal and child health. I think we can focus on, I think of the content areas. and the core disciplines.
And then I think where we need to do more work is with the cross cutting and the skills. And so I think we need to focus on the skills needed to affect change and how to address these challenges and teach the students how to think and how to solve problems, how to lead, how to collaborate, how to work with partners with humility. And so I would like to
these same disciplines still exist, but not every school of public health can do all of them. And so I think there's also space for schools to really define and programs to really define their areas. And I think this will help students also coming into the field.
If you could say, I'm going to go to school X because their strength is in maternal and child health, or they really focus on community-based participatory research and interventions and stuff So I think we need to define that a bit. I think there's also a little tension going on in the field about public health over, you mentioned history has gone through all these transitions.
And 100 years ago, there was a lot more social activism and agents of social change. And then as we've shifted to this biomedical model, is this a biomedical discipline? Or are we agents of social change? Are we policymakers? Those types of things. And perhaps there's room for both.
So do you see maybe new arenas in the School of Public Health? Let's throw one out. Maybe a degree where your focus is on disparities, just disparities, looking at disparities, as opposed to thinking that each one of the existing arenas, there's kind of a line item of disparities. Maybe pull that out and make it a major within public health.
Yeah, I think, honestly, I don't know the best way to set it up. I think health equity has to be integrated in all the work that we do, right? And so whether you're in maternal and child health or dental, I think you need to think about health equity. So whether it becomes a separate, unique thing or a cross-cutting thread that underlies all of the work, I don't have the best answer for that yet.
But health equity is a new arena that I think is really important communication, how do you communicate complex technical information? How do you tailor it to the specific audience that you're speaking to? How do you combat disinformation that is so prevalent in our society? These I really think of as the skills that the students need and they needed to be embedded without.
There's also technological advances like AI And that's going to touch every aspect of society, and we need to be talking about it more. Yeah.
Yeah, good point. Aaron, I see you've joined us. Aaron is one of our other researchers. Thanks for joining us. Go ahead, Clarence.
This is not a trick question, okay?
It might feel like it, though, right?
No, no, no. I don't want you to feel like it at all. The question is, what is the role of community in public health?
It's absolutely critical, right? And so I think we as a field for too long, especially in the last few decades, schools of public health, you know, our missions or our faculty incentive structure rewards are really for research and teaching. There's a place where we need to be humble and work with the community to identify what problems are important to them, as opposed to
what we think is important, which isn't always aligned. And so I think for communities, we need to work with them in partnership so that they can tell us what their priorities are. And so that's one place where community is important. We also can't just develop our interventions and policies in the ivory tower because when it comes time to implement them,
It has to work within the culture of the community, you know, that it's intended. And we need to be having these conversations. And so things that are co-developed, co-created, done in conversation. And that, again, takes time and it takes trust. And I think that's where the challenge is. Thank you.
You know, so again, you know, I'll put on my history hat here. The state health department used to be housed in a building literally right on campus there, like two blocks away from the School of Public Health on Delaware Street. one of the reasons why was it was thought, and by the way, that was the only state agency at the time that was that close to the university.
And it was thought that it was important for the health, the state health department to be integrated as best as possible with the health sciences at the, at the, at the university of Minnesota. And then in, you know, call it political wisdom or whatever, it moved to St. Paul. So it would be near the political arena of things. But it begs this question going forward.
How is it that the School of Public Health with all the different arenas that exist in it, how is it that it will continue to link with the state health department local health departments? How is it that it'll link with, you brought it up with business, education, how is it that you, I guess you as the head of it all are gonna help to foster those linkages going forward?
Yeah, that's another big, huge question that we're tackling at the school right now. So we, as I mentioned, cannot tackle public health challenges in a vacuum. And it means we're positioned and I think mandated, required to lean into interdisciplinary partnerships and collaborations.
I think it's important to be clear on who our partners are and also that there are different levels of partnerships. And The specifics are going to differ with who and when and time. And so at a sort of lesser level, our faculty can provide content area expertise. They can provide information.
So if the legislature is meeting and they need information on sports gambling and its health effects or gun violence, our faculty can be ready and willing to go talk to them about things. But I also think we have to be transparent, I think, and intentional about these partnerships. There's questions about stability, transparency.
We have overlapping missions, I think, but sometimes they're distinct and time is really important too. For example, I mentioned the incentive structure in academia, research and teaching. So how do we change the incentive structure so that these collaborations are valued? How do we capture this work so that we can count it towards promotion and tenure?
Are the structures in place to support these collaborations and facilitate them? Again, we don't want to fly in and fly out with key partners. We want to build something that's sustainable. And on the health department end, you know, they often have things that they're mandated to do, right? And so they have to get their work done.
And so if something doesn't fall squarely directly in the mandate, there's also the potential on their side, you know, to refocus when time gets short. And so I think we need to be selective and intentional with our partners and be transparent on both sides upfront about what we can and cannot do.
And then from my standpoint as Dean, I'm really thinking about how do we set this up to support this kind of work? Because we know it's so critically important, but there's also sometimes a mismatch between cultures and priorities and missions. And that's where things get challenging. So I don't know if I've answered your question fully. No, I get it.
So let me bring this one up because I'm pretty sure in order to graduate with any degree in the School of Public Health, students are still required to do internships. Okay. Many, certainly in my career and also Clarence in your career as well, would link with us. Okay.
You know, at the state health department, you know, what kind of, you know, can I do an internship in cardiovascular or can I do an internship at a community health center or with a community oriented program with this kind of broad swath of things that are going on in public health, where do you see students going for internships now?
And would they be appropriate in order for them to get their degrees?
Yeah, I think we have a lot of students that go to the Minnesota Health Department or Department of Health, and that's a great place.
I've seen many of them.
Yeah, and it can be a win-win for both sides because students can bring their skills with data analysis and interpretation. They can be an extra set of hands, especially... um, in agencies that may also be facing staffing shortages and, or, or be underfunded. And so it can be good for them to have the extra pair of hands.
It was also great for the students because they get real world experience and they get to apply things outside of the classroom where it might be quite different and they get to learn what, what challenges are you facing? You know, it's, it's very easy to come up with ideas that work in a classroom setting and then you get out there in the field and you say, Oh,
I didn't think of this or there's this challenge that comes up or it takes too much time to get the data or there's challenges with those types of things. So we can set up these programs and we have set up these programs. I also see students going and helping in community-based organizations and also have to recognize that many of these organizations are also short staffed.
And so over the long term, it'd be great to think about ways that we help support the organizations in supporting our students to help them, right? Because it takes time to get an intern on board and takes time to train them and get them up to working in a specific environment. And so thinking about how we can do that in a sustainable way. And so I favor the more intentional
selection of, of, of key partnerships that are aligned with our areas of faculty expertise aligned with our student interests so that it's not 1000 different one-offs that it's, it's, it's a really intentional, thoughtful process where, where both partners benefit.
Yeah. Yeah. And, and I can tell you right now, um, The students that I worked with at the state health department were great. I mean, they were really, really. Also, I could add on to that, it helps with their networking. They get to know people in the field that way as well. So it's truly a win-win in that sense.
And it's also now, it's part of our accreditation requirements as a school of public health, because I think the field recognizes these applied practice experiences. The students need to have them to graduate and our accreditation body has said that too. It's the right thing to do. It's good for public health, and it's mandated by our accreditation body.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Clarence.
Nadine Pettigrew, thank you again. There are so many current threats to public health. This is just your personal view. What three threats come to your mind right away when we talk about public health?
I'll say my individual ones and then the ones that come to mind is appealed. My area of research really now is antibiotic resistance. And so that's what's always on top of mind. And I think about that from a one health standpoint, antibiotic resistance in agriculture, antibiotic resistance in the community, in the hospitals, antibiotic resistance in the environment.
So it's really truly a one health threat. In terms of the bigger overall threats, Climate change, I think, is huge. And it really impacts everything that we do. Violence, war, mobile populations, conflict is huge. And then there's all the stuff that kind of got lost during COVID, vaccines, the chronic diseases, just the health care system and how we function. as a whole. It costs too much.
There are challenges with access.
And I think that needs a lot of work.
Thank you.
You know, there's a lot of themes that come up in the field of public health, like the Surgeon General is really on to, and we had a show just recently on the theme of loneliness. And the reason I bring that up is, you know, things like mental health and public health, you know, as a field. And given all the craziness that's going on in the world,
people are really affected and it's affecting their mental health. Just think about war, or you think about violence, or you think about the economics of everything. And so I see public health education embracing some of these themes of today. that frankly, I have a feeling will be around with us for a while. So another question I have are grants.
Okay, because, you know, I know in the School of Public Health, you know, researchers, certainly, for instance, at the state health departments, even in community health, I know that Clarence and Human Partnership is connected with, you know, grants, etc. How is it that, you know, you integrate grant work? Okay, you know, going forward. And obviously what goes side by side with that is education.
So you get these grants, you bring in students to help you, or you bring in other entities to work with you, but there's this big kind of overlapping umbrella of education around grants. So how is it that you see grants being integrated into the whole works?
Yeah, well, grants are... Absolutely core to our mission. I don't know the exact number off the top of my head. It's probably 70, 80%. I'd have to double check that of our budget model is funded by research grants and indirects. So it's a huge part of what we do and will continue to be a huge part. The University of Minnesota School of Public Health has a long history of
high quality, impactful research. And so we definitely have to continue that. Where I see a shift or hope to see a shift is more focused on the interdisciplinary and the collaborative grants across the school. These larger center grants being known for areas of expertise, collaborations with the other health science schools on these grants.
And so I think those are the types of grants that are going to be needed to really move the field forward and to address many of these complex issues. So, you know, less of a focus on the sort of rugged individual. I'm going to sit in my basement and work on my one esoteric question that I'm interested in. And, you know, there's a value of that.
There are many basic science discoveries that were done with that method. But the world is increasingly interdisciplinary. And it's increasingly clear that one individual can't be expert at all things. to address these challenges. So collaborative grants, I think are gonna have to be the way moving forward.
I agree with that a lot. So let's circle back a little bit to from an education standpoint and let's call it just lessons learned. What do you think the lessons learned at least so far? have been and what implications it have going forward for education for students based on the pandemic.
I mean, we were just kind of, to be honest with you, we were just kind of thrust, you know, public health professionals were kind of just thrust into this response mode. And it's just going forward, you know, just so we don't trip over one another, with all the logistics again, because it will happen again sometime. So what do you think we've learned from that that have implications for teaching?
Yeah, I think we've learned several things. We learned that what we are in public health already knew is that public health has been underfunded for far too long. And so the infrastructure and the skills weren't, And we really need to rebuild the workforce so that we're prepared for the next challenge. I think we also learned, especially I learned, you know, you mentioned mental health before.
That wasn't discussed enough, in my opinion, early on. You know, I think I'm an infectious disease person. We talked about flattening the curve, slowing transmission.
But really thinking from a system-wide view of all the aspects of health, you know, the isolation, the mental health challenges that arose, the problems with school that, you know, people who were inside for a long time, that was very real.
The importance of the social determinants of health was really brought to the forefront, health inequities, the disparities, and who was more severely impacted. And I think a big lesson and something that we really need to work with our students and trainees on is how do you communicate? There was a lot of trust and increased polarization and division.
So how do you translate that technical knowledge in a way that people understand? How do you make decisions with incomplete information? And how do you continue to communicate as the evidence base evolves and articulate why those changes are being made, what you've learned, and how you're shifting decisions? There were real gaps, I think, in that area.
And in the past, we've had a lot of students who are really good with their knowledge base, but that being comfortable working in the gray
Yeah, yeah.
And that you don't know, you can't know, you have to act before you know absolutely everything. You know, research often takes a really long time. During the pandemic, people had to make decisions quickly with incomplete information. And how do you do that? How do you do it effectively? And how do you communicate that in a way that people trust what you're saying and feel safe?
that your intentions are good and in the right place.
You know, Clarence brought up a great point before. Excuse me one sec, Clarence. And that was this, you know, who in the hell are public health professionals? Okay. And then, so that's number one. And then number two is all of a sudden you're thrust into this pandemic. And it's, to your point, it's like, why should I trust you? I don't even know what you guys do. in general.
So maybe we have to get kind of down to the base core of trying to communicate effectively, truly what public health professionals do. And then, you know, people can say, aha, great. I've got that in my head now. Now, all of a sudden the pandemic hits and say, oh yeah, okay, you guys, let's help us now. Okay. We know who you are. We trust you. Take it from there. Clarence.
Which leads me to my question, which is community-based participatory research. Where are we going with that? I mean, you kind of mentioned that a little bit earlier. The importance of school, is that going to be a more focused?
I don't know.
My question wasn't really formed well, but I just thought, see, BPR.
Yeah, I think there's an increasing acknowledgement, appreciation, understanding of the value of community-based participatory research. What I'm hoping to work on is aligning our structures to support that kind of work. That kind of work is so important and it takes time.
It takes time to work with folks in the community to establish the relationships, to establish the trust, and it has to be sustainable. I mentioned that I think twice before that we don't want to fly in and fly out. And so really identifying communities that we work with and
I feel like my job as dean is to stand up the structures that support, incentivize, recognize, and reward that type of work on the part of our faculty. And we do have faculty working in those spaces. We have faculty working on improving dementia care in African immigrant communities, for example. And those really are done in partnership and co-created interventions that are
that are culturally acceptable and in partnerships so that the communities are defining the needs and being able to talk about what challenges they're facing. And so it's happening. I also think there's more work that we can do as schools and I can do personally to support that because I'm not sure our university incentive structure or the tenure structure is fully set up today
to reward that type of work. And so that's a challenge that I worry about because people will spend their time, you know, focusing on the things they need to do to get promoted. And trust is so hard. Once you lose it, it is so hard to get it back. So hard. And so being able to support our faculty who are doing this important work and so that they have the time and know that it's valued.
And I think it's important that I message that.
So how can communities support you?
they can be willing to come out and meet with our researchers. And I think there's a lot of trust issues and it will be, you need to hear from them. And it's not always clear to me how folks get in or what those mechanisms are. So I'm relying on the faculty right now to be the point people. And that's an area where, I would love your ideas about how, because people have to be able to talk
You know, I need to know where to go. So haven't figured that part out fully yet. The lines of communications. Yeah. I'm still doing meet and greets, though. So if there are key folks in the community that you think it's important that I meet with, I'd be happy to have ideas.
Thank you. Hopefully health chatter helps that. you could certainly use this as a mechanism to get your ideas and thoughts out, even on different thematic things in the field of public health. All you have to do is raise your hand to Stan and Clarence and say, hey, we need to do a show with you on whatever, and we'll be happy to help in that way to be able to get more people
education out, not only from a student level, but community level, professional level, continuing education level, whatever it may be. Last thoughts, Clarence.
You know, I appreciate, Dean Pettigrew, your candor. You said a lot of things that resonate a lot with me in terms of community, in terms of outreach. And I know that there are many people that...
We call them treasures in our community that will be more than willing to support the School of Public Health in its work and to be able to help our communities become healthier because that's what we want. We want a healthy community and we realize that it's going to take an academic and community partnership to make that happen. And so, you know, We're here for you.
Let's say I put it like that. I speak for me and my buddies. Okay.
Thank you. Yeah. Melinda last, last thoughts from you.
I just really appreciate that you invited me here and I appreciate the discussion and then the back and forth and, and, and my ideas are evolving as I learn about the community and the school. And so let's keep the lines of communication open and try and touch base in the future.
Absolutely. And again, you can connect with us and say, hey, do you guys know somebody that I can talk to about... whatever it may be. And chances are, believe it or not through health chatter, we've, we've probably talked to some of those people. So we'd be happy to, to provide that, that service to you. Also, if there's any, um,
information that you would like to share with us that we could put on our website besides the background research that our team has put, we can include that as well. So just, you know, shoot us an email with anything that you would like to include. So thank you so much. It's been a pleasure meeting you, albeit via Zoom call. But you have a great smile and keep smiling.
It'll be really nice to have you in our community. For those of you in our listening audience, I want to thank you all for listening in. Our next show will be on healthcare access with ironically, one of our professor colleagues from the School of Public Health. So stay tuned for that. So in the meantime, everybody keep health chatting.