Dean to Host Symposium on Future of Public Health
To promote the intellectual common ground among faculty and students of different disciplines at HSPH, Dean Barry Bloom will host a series of panel discussions entitled "The Future of Public Health: A Millennial Symposium" starting this April. Each department will invite panelists to discuss a topic of their choice. All faculty members and students are invited.
"I'm a new dean and that corresponds, at least with my first year, to the new millennium," said Bloom. "It struck me as a very good time to do some long-range thinking about where public health is going. Of the many ways to do that kind of exploration within the context of a complicated school, it hit me that a disciplinary approach might be the most interesting." The Department of Maternal and Child Health will sponsor the first panel, which will convene on Thursday, April 13 from 3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. in the Snyder Auditorium. The topic will be "Early Life Determinants of Health and Well-Being: The Importance of Early Childhood for Global Public Health."
The Department of Epidemiology will sponsor the second panel, entitled "Challenges in Epidemiology for the New Millennium," on Thursday, May 4 from 3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. in the Snyder Auditorium.
"There really is no single intellectual focus at HSPH," said Bloom. "The school is so decentralized into departments and centers that there is no event that brings people together in a common way. In my year of meeting people and speaking with students, I gained the sense that people would welcome intellectual, high-level events on a regular bases that brings students and faculty together from different departments in common intellectual pursuits."
More panels sponsored by other HSPH departments will be planned.
