Now, the series is available on a CD-ROM, with a welcome address by Dean Barry Bloom and 15 chapters organized around individual lectures. The series was sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

"We have an extraordinary collection of brilliant people describing what they feel are the exciting developments in the disciplines that make up public health," said Dean Bloom. "I encourage people to review the CD because there are real gems to learn from and to think about, particularly for students."

Through the series, Dean Bloom wanted to draw people together to identify and discuss gaps in scientific knowledge as well as discoveries that may change the frontiers of public health.

"When I first came to HSPH, there was a sense of a lack of an intellectual focus to bring people from many departments together, which I found surprising," he said. "I came from an environment where faculty members and students went to seminars in diverse fields so that they were aware of and could talk about what was going on in other areas."

Dean Bloom tapped the talents of junior faculty members to begin organizing the lectures. "Junior faculty have a greater interest in the future of public health because they will be around longer," he said. "I asked a group in each department or area to form a team and come up with recommendations for whom they would most like to have come to the school."

A total of 53 speakers and moderators are featured on the CD.

"The fact that almost every seat in every session was filled, and many of the sessions needed overflow rooms, really does say if you get the best people in the field and you deal with important issues, people will come to listen," said Dean Bloom.

Chapters From The Future of Public Health CD

• Changing Populations, Economics and Policy: How Should Policymakers Respond to a Constantly Changing World of Health Needs and Opportunities?

• Epidemiology at a Crossroads

• Health and the Environment: The Scientist’s Responsibilities

• In the Beginning: The Events of Early Life and their Long-Term Impact

• Who Will Benefit from Our New-Found Knowledge of the Human Genome?

• Extracting Knowledge from the Explosion of Biological Data

• Why Do We All Still Eat Too Much Salt? Narrowing the Gap between Knowledge and Behavior

• Coming to Grips with Cancer: Not a War, but a Long Haul

• Genes and Environment: The Origins of Asthma

• Bioterrorism: Public Health Perils, Public Health Response

• America’s Health System and How to Make it More Effective: Privatization, Politics and the Evidence Base

• How Can We Reduce Disparities in the Health of Americans?

• The Ethics of Research on Vulnerable Populations

• The Future of Schools of Public Health

• Crossing Boundaries: Outside Perspectives on Public Health

A Sample of Speakers Featured on the CD

More than four dozen public health specialists participated in "The Future of Public Health" series, including individuals who held the following positions at the time of the lectures:

• Minister of Health, Mexico

• Former President of Celera Genomics

• Former Vice President of Nutrition, Kellogg Corporation

• Director, Global Health, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

• Editor-in-Chief, The New England Journal of Medicine

• Former Commander, United States Army Medical Research

Institute for Infectious Diseases

• Director, Center for Reducing Health Disparities, National Cancer Institute

• Former Director, UNDP/World Bank/WHO Special Programme

of Research on Tropical Diseases

• President, United States National Academy of Sciences

• Chairman, Harris Poll

The Making of HSPH’s First CD-ROM Project by In-House Web Team

In less than three months, the in-house HSPH web team designed and put together The Future of Public Health CD-ROM, a remarkable merger of interactive-rich media and artistic prowess. The team also created a related web site available at www.hsph.harvard.edu/foph/.

"When we were asked to do the project, we jumped at the chance to develop a creative CD-ROM and web site that utilizes newer multimedia technology," said Deane Eastwood, HSPH webmaster. "We were very happy with the final product and already see other areas where we can utilize similar technology on the HSPH web site."

Christopher Ternan, web designer, built much of the framework of the CD, primarily using Macromedia Flash to support the interactive media. The opening sequence, set to the music of Mozart, pans down a photograph of a multicultural street scene. Phrases central to the public health mission and research gracefully slide across the screen, one by one: health disparities, human genome, global health, prevention, bioterrorism preparedness, diet and nutrition.

The user is invited to ‘enter’ the CD via a link that leads to a well-organized interface. From a single screen, users can access a welcome address, a table of contents, an overview and 15 chapters.

Each chapter can stand on its own and features speakers from the lecture series, their affiliations and links to available archived webcasts. In addition, detailed summaries of individual symposia co-written by HSPH Dean Barry Bloom and science writer Phyllida Brown are available in downloadable PDF files. The material will eventually be compiled into published proceedings.

The web team had to make sure that the CD would be compatible with a wide variety of systems. (The disc can play on Windows 95 and up, as well as Mac OS X.) As a result, Ternan and Chris Jeris, web services technician, spent hours debugging the CD, meticulously checking the work on different platforms and software versions.

"It was a lot of hard work managing the project, but there was a happy ending," said Ternan. "The Future of Public Health CD-ROM was a project that was within our expertise, and we would like to see similar creative projects come our way."

Added Jeris, "Working on the project was a nice marriage of all of our abilities."

The web team worked with two outside vendors to complete the CD-ROM. One vendor was hired to assist in the programming aspect of the work, while the other pressed the discs.

For more information about creating CD-ROMs for HSPH projects, contact Deane Eastwood at deastwoo@hsph.harvard.edu.