Fall 2011 - Visions of a Healthy Future - Berkeley Health

University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health

Berkeley Health

FALL 2011

The Magazine for Alumni and Friends

Visions of a

Healthy Future 4

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Transforming Our Chemical Legacy

14

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The Future of Big Pharma

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Toward a Sustainable Planet

Thanks to

Berkeley. . .

Former President Bill Clinton, visiting UC Berkeley to speak about inequality, global poverty, and social responsibility, accepts a gift of Cal gear from Jennifer Jehnsen ’10 (B.S., Environmental Sciences) and Farzana Abed ’10 (B.A., Public Health).

Our students are transforming the world into a healthier place.

Our students are making an estimated national shortage of 250,000 public health With the world apublic healthier place. professionals, the need for superior health education, research, and action has never been more urgent.

With an estimated national shortage of Make your tax deductible Your supportprofessionals, can help attract andthe retain the best Berkeley students 250,000 public health need regardless of their financial means — students who are passionate contribution online at for superior public health education, research, about protecting your health and the health of those you care about. givetocal.berkeley.edu/publichealth and action has never been more urgent. or mail your gift using the Make your tax deductible contribution online at sph.berkeley.edu/giving support or can attract and retain themagazine. mailhelp your gift using the envelope in this envelope in this magazine.

Your best Berkeley students regardless of their For additional information about making a gift to the School of financial means—students who are For additional information Public Health, call Pat Hosel, Assistant Dean, External Relations passionate about protectingat your health and about making a gift to the and Development, (510) 642-9654. the health of those you care about.

School of Public Health,

HealthierLives Lives inin a Safer WorldWorld Healthier a Safer

call Pat Hosel, Assistant Dean, External Relations and Development, at (510) 642-9654.

The Campaign for the SChool of publiC health

universit y of california, berkeley

University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health

Berkeley Health

FALL 2011

The Magazine for Alumni and Friends

9

FEATURES

4 9 14 18

Transforming Our Chemical Legacy Scientists work to uncover the links between everyday chemicals and health effects in order to shape public policy and public health interventions.

An Ounce of Prevention, A Pound of Cure Growing rates of childhood obesity are putting our nation’s healthy future in jeopardy.

What can we do to help children and adults eat well and stay physically active?

The Future of Big Pharma As major pharmaceutical companies see shrinking profits in 2011, what lies ahead for the industry and the health of the public it serves?

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Toward a Sustainable Planet

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Climate change and rapid population growth together pose a major threat to global health. Fortunately, some major players at Berkeley are on the case.

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From Publication to Public Action

24

Spotlight: Georgia Green

26

Spotlight: Fatima M. Rodríguez

Raising the Next Generation: A “How-to” Manual Effects of Exported E-waste KEEP IN TOUCH

Speaking Your Language

Starting with this issue,

Berkeley Health will become an

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Fresh Perspective: Steve Francis

Blinded by Novelty: The Student’s Dilemma

DEPARTMENTS 28 38 44 45

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

Dean Stephen M. Shortell, Ph.D., M.P.H.

Design Archer Design, Inc.

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

Contributors Linda Anderberg, Michael S. Broder, Christopher E. Bush, Abby Cohn, Steve Francis, Linda Neuhauser, Stephen M. Shortell, Sarah Yang

Director of Communications and Public Relations Michael S. Broder Associate Director, Communications Linda Anderberg Director, Annual Fund and External Relations Programs Eileen Pearl

Photography Jim Block, cover, 2, 4, 11, 12, 15, 21, 27, 38, 42, back cover; Steve McConnell, inside front cover; Shutterstock, 6, 9, 10, 13, 18, 22, 41; iStockphoto, 9, 40, 41; Martine Holston, 20; Peg Skorpinski, 23, 29, 30, 31, 33, 35, 37, 38, 42, 43, 44; Georgia Green, 25; Akiko Yamada, 26; Seth Holmes, 39; Nephi Nevin, 39; Jupiter Images, 40

Communications Advisory Board Linda Anderberg, Michael S. Broder, Patricia W. Hosel, Joan Lam, Robin Mejia, Linda Neuhauser, Amani Nuru-Jeter, James Robinson, Steve Selvin, Stephen M. Shortell, John Swartzberg, Rob Tufel, David Tuller, Michael P. Wilson On the cover: Deirdre Parsons M.P.P./M.P.H. ’12, Steve Francis M.S. ’11, and Henrissa Bassey M.P.H. ’11 are among the School of Public Health’s students and graduates who are helping to create a healthy future.

annual publication distributed in the fall. To make sure you don’t miss any news about the School of Public Health during the year, subscribe to Berkeley Health Monthly, our e-newsletter for alumni and friends. Sign up at sph.berkeley.edu/subscribe.

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

UC Berkeley School of Public Health Office of External Relations and Development 417 University Hall #7360 Berkeley, CA 94720-7360 (510) 643-2556 © 2011, Regents of the University of California. Reproduction in whole or part requires written permission.

Berkeley Health Fall 2011

FROM THE DEAN

Applying Knowledge to

Emerging Challenges hanks to advances in the biomedical and behavioral sciences and their translation into policies and practices, most people around the world are living longer, healthier lives. But whether or not this trajectory continues will depend on the investments we make today in the face of newly emerging challenges. These new threats will disproportionally affect vulnerable populations and communities, exacerbating existing inequalities. Our faculty, students, and alumni are anticipating and addressing these issues, seeking to optimize health at every stage of a person’s life, for current and future generations.

Exposure to toxic chemicals Primarily due to Berkeley faculty initiatives, California was the first state to develop a biomonitoring program in 2006. This effort and others led by the Berkeley Center for Green Chemistry are helping to protect susceptible populations from more than 83,000 industrial chemicals currently in use in the United States.

The health effects of these chemicals is largely

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unknown—but what we don’t know can hurt us. The School’s Center for the Health Assessment of Mothers and Children of Salinas (CHAMACOS) has demonstrated this fact.

Following a cohort of mothers and children over time, CHAMACOS investigators have found an alarming association between a mother’s exposure to various chemicals and pesticides during pregnancy and early fetal and childhood development.

Rise in obesity Some features of the recently passed health care reform legislation (Affordable Care Act) contain provisions to reduce the increase in health care costs that are now approaching nearly 20 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. But improvements in health care delivery alone will do little to put a dent in costs without initiatives to reduce the underlying burden of illness that the American

population places on the delivery system.

Central to this issue is the alarming increase in obesity among adults, and of particular concern, among children. The School and its partners are taking a multi-pronged approach to this problem, including improving nutrition and physical activity, changing laws, and implementing new technologies to help flatten and reverse the obesity trajectory.

Diminished disease solutions It’s interesting that the antibiotics most commonly used today were discovered in the 1950s and ‘60s. This lack of innovation in drug development is one reason MRSAs, antibiotic-resistant infections, are a growing concern worldwide. Will the advances needed to combat not only emerging and continuing infectious diseases, but also currently hardto-treat or untreatable diseases such as some cancers and Alzheimer’s disease, come from the U.S. pharmaceutical industry or elsewhere?

At the Berkeley Center for Health Technology, professors and students work to make sure that drug innovation is balanced with access to treatment. And biostatisticians like Professor Nick Jewell train the next generation of analysts needed to ensure that new drugs are safe for use.

Global threats Beyond our own borders, faculty and students are looking at global problems that threaten our future, such as climate change and population control. Professor Kirk Smith has been working on “two-for-one” solutions to greenhouse gas emissions problems—making a major contribution to mitigating the impact of climate change and improving health at the same time. Simultaneously, faculty and students at the School’s Bixby Center for Population, Health, and Sustainability are addressing the great need in many parts of the world, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, to reduce fertility. They are working on new approaches to promoting reproductive health and supporting women’s freedom of choice.

Knowledge into action If the above weren’t enough to keep us challenged, did you know that e-waste from discarded electronics such as our cell phones and laptops generates 40,000,000 tons of garbage annually? No one yet knows the health and environmental impact of such waste. But, as you will read, our students and faculty are “on it.” It is an example of the School’s ability to anticipate future problems

and then use the most relevant tools and approaches for addressing the issue. At the same time we influence those who need to develop new policies and practices to act on the emerging evidence.

What you should take away from this issue of Berkeley Health is not only that we generate great science to address challenging problems, but that we also work with policymakers and those on the ground to translate that knowledge into improved health for those most affected now and 50 years from now.

As written by Goethe and quoted in every Institute of Medicine report, “Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.”

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

Berkeley Health Fall 2011

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Transforming Our Chemical Legacy

By Linda Anderberg

Rachel Morello-Frosch and Julia Varshavsky

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FEATURE

The placenta was once viewed as an impenetrable wall, shielding a growing baby from toxins and pollutants in the environment, and from the mother’s blood. In the last 40 years, a combination of advancing technology and increased research has discredited this idea as nothing more than wishful thinking. Scientists now know that chemical exposures begin in utero and, in the last five to ten years, hundreds of industrial chemicals have been found in the umbilical cord blood of newborn babies of all ethnicities and among all economic levels across the nation. In fact, the more scientists look, the more they find. The question now is not whether children are being exposed in the womb to chemicals and pollutants, many of which are known toxicants, but whether these exposures result in harmful effects.

t’s not only unborn children who may be at risk, but their would-be parents as well. A rapidly expanding body of research indicates that chemical exposures may be linked to a host of reproductive health problems in women, including infertility, miscarriage, abnormal fetal development, endometriosis, and diseases and cancers of reproductive organs. Men are also affected by these exposures: Professor of Maternal and Child Health and Epidemiology Brenda Eskenazi and colleagues found in a recent study that male workers in China exposed to benzene show genetic abnormalities in their sperm, which can result in birth defects or miscarriage of their offspring. Other studies have linked chemical exposures to lowered sperm count and testicular cancer. Taken together, these reproductive and developmental health risks seem to indicate that our current methods of producing and distributing chemicals could be putting the procreation and prosperity of our species in serious jeopardy.

Protecting vulnerable populations from the some 83,000 industrial chemicals currently in use in the United States will take a Herculean effort. For most chemical compounds, including the new ones introduced every day, the health risks—if any—are mostly unknown, in large part because the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act is outdated and has the government approving new chemicals at an average pace of seven per day with no mandated safety studies.

“We have a lot of chemicals that are currently registered and allowed to be used commercially without sufficient testing,” says Rachel Morello-Frosch, associate professor

at the School of Public Health and the Department of Environmental Science Policy and Management.

“So we are widely exposed to many substances, and we don’t know the health risks of that. The unspoken assumption is that those chemicals for which we have no information are safe. But we need to remember that ‘no data’ doesn’t mean ‘no problem.’”

Solving this very complex public health problem requires the combined efforts of scientists, chemists, policymakers, lawyers, and the business sector. At UC Berkeley, researchers are taking concurrent steps to effect change, including defining the problem’s scope, linking exposures to health outcomes with a body of rigorous scientific evidence, deciding the most helpful ways to disseminate findings and information to the public, and putting pressure on companies and policymakers to change chemicals policies and transform chemical design.

Blood always tells An important first step is increasing the reach and efficacy of biomonitoring efforts, and in this arena there has been increased technology and interest, as well as some impressive progress. Biomonitoring—the assessment of exposure by measuring chemicals in biological samples such as human blood, urine, or breast milk—is considered a stronger assessment of exposure than indirect methods, such as measuring chemicals in air or water. It holds the promise of generating particularly useful information for shaping public policy and public health interventions. continued on pg. 6

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FEATURE

Our Chemical Legacy, continued

Much of the advancement of this work is happening in California, primarily because in 2006 the state established and funded the nation’s first biomonitoring program, known as Biomonitoring California (BC).

Morello-Frosch works on a study called Chemicals in our Bodies, in collaboration with BC and the UCSF Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment. The pilot program recruits pregnant women in their third trimester and tests their blood and urine, and the umbilical cord blood of the infants for the presence of chemicals, both in current use and “legacy chemicals” that have been banned and are no longer in use.

As exposure detection methods and technologies improve, biomonitoring could become more accessible and perhaps even commonplace. “The analytical chemistry has gotten better, more logistically feasible, and cheaper, so more people are able to do it,” says Morello-Frosch. “But our ability to detect these chemicals precedes our ability to totally understand what it means for health impacts. That’s going to take a while. But the evidence that’s emerging suggests that we need to start reducing exposures right now.”

in their bodies when there’s no clear evidence of what the health implications of those levels will be,” says Varshavsky. “We continue to debate how much information is too much versus our right to know what is in our bodies. We believe there is a responsible way to report these results, but there are currently no clear best practices on how to do this.”

For guidance, Varshavsky has looked to the fields of medical imaging and genetic testing, which are experiencing similar dilemmas. These are areas where technology is also surpassing society’s ability to interpret results. She has found that while opinions differ on how much information should be shared, there is a consensus that more formal, standardized, and explicit methods need to be developed.

“Some people think more information is better and it will mobilize people to demand change,” she says. “Others say it will scare people too much or desensitize them to the situation. But everyone agrees that while no one has figured this out yet, we need to figure it out soon.”

Know thy enemy Avoid information overload Part of the challenge of presenting findings from biomonitoring to patients and the public is how to make the message clear without making people too scared, or conversely, too complacent about chemicals in their bodies and what they mean. “There’s a fine line between those two extremes,” says M.P.H. student Julia Varshavsky.

“It’s hard, not just for the media, but for researchers and everyone involved to come to a clear consensus.

There are always going to be questions, particularly around cumulative impacts.”

Before coming to the School, Varshavsky worked with the Collaborative on Health and the Environment, a large organizational network designed to raise public and professional dialogue around the issue of environmental contaminants and human health. She is currently working with Morello-Frosch, the Silent Spring Institute, and researchers from Brown University on the most effective ways to report biomonitoring results back to people.

“There are major ethical questions regarding people finding out they have high levels of certain chemicals

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Biomonitoring can tell us a lot about what chemicals are present and most pervasive in human bodies, but it takes more research to uncover the links between exposures and health risks. For that body of evidence, which is so crucial for policy reform, steadfast scientists like Eskenazi are indispensable. For more than 10 years, Eskenazi has been directing the Center for the Health Assessment of Mothers and Children of Salinas (CHAMACOS) cohort study, which follows a group of 536 children born to women in the agricultural community of the Salinas Valley. Bio-samples have been collected from the children at certain ages, and the children have been examined to assess their growth, neurodevelopment, respiratory disease rates, and general health.

“In this study, we’re primarily focused on environmental chemicals that occur in agriculture, but it’s not limited to those chemicals,” says Eskenazi. “For example, we also monitor flame retardants in addition to current use pesticides. Because of California’s unique flammability standards, the children in the CHAMACOS study—and likely California children in general—have some of the highest levels of exposure in the world to a class of chemicals that are well-known endocrine disruptors.”

Eskenazi’s group also monitors bisphenol A (BPA)—a high volume chemical found in baby bottles, sippy cups, the lining of food and beverage containers, and many other products—which has come under scrutiny because it leaches out of materials and is linked to certain cancers and a number of reproductive problems. They also track levels of dichloro diphenyl trichloroethane or DDT, even though this insecticide was banned in 1972 due to its toxic effects in ecosystems. The reason for this is twofold: Many Salinas Valley residents are immigrants from Mexico, where DDT was used to control malaria-bearing mosquitoes until 2000.

Consequently there are fairly high levels of DDT in the mothers’ bodies that gets passed on to the children in utero and through breast feeding. As well, almost everyone in the United States has measurable levels of DDE, a breakdown product of DDT, in their bodies due to the long half-life of the compound in the environment and in biological tissues. “DDT is a chemical that has even been picked up in Antarctica,” says Eskenazi.

“It’s everywhere, and the persistence is very long.”

of organophosphates in the mothers’ urine were linked to shorter lengths of gestation, potentially impacting the health of infants born too early. Eskenazi says, “We’ve shown an association with the mother’s exposure during pregnancy and the child’s mental development at age two, and we’ve shown associations with ADHD at age five.”

And the latest findings are perhaps the most compelling.

Now that the children in the study are age seven, neurodevelopment assessment is more reliable, and Eskenazi and her research team have found a consistent

We’ve shown an association with the mother’s exposure during pregnancy and the child’s mental development at age two, and we’ve

shown associations with ADHD at age five.

The variety of health impacts that Eskenazi’s study has linked to chemical exposures is astounding. “We have shown that some exposures are associated with infertility, thyroid hormone in the mother, development of the children, and we are studying whether they may be related to childhood obesity,” she says. “Because of the fact that many of these chemicals disrupt the endocrine system, there might be an obesogen that’s raising the rates of childhood obesity.”

Several organophosphates were banned from home use in 2001, but they are still widespread in commercial agriculture. The CHAMACOS study has shown that exposure to these chemicals is associated with fetal and child development. Higher levels of a metabolite

association between the mother’s exposure to organophosphates during pregnancy and the child’s IQ. Not only that, but in the same issue of Environmental Health Perspectives in which their findings were published in April 2011, there were two other studies—one from Columbia University and one from Mount Sinai Medical Center—showing a similar association.

“In epidemiology, when you see one paper that says something, you say ‘Hmm, that’s interesting,” says Eskenazi. “But when you see three that all come out and show associations with childhood IQ at age seven, you begin to feel that maybe this is real.”

Eskenazi believes there are decisions people can make and things they can do to protect themselves without compromising nutrition. “What I absolutely don’t want to happen as a result of our research is that women decide to stop eating fruits and vegetables because they’re concerned about pesticide residues on their food,” she says. “Always my last comment is, ‘Eat your fruits and vegetables—just wash them really well.’ From a public health standpoint, that’s really important.”

Agents of change Varshavsky sees progress on the horizon, in terms of creating a less toxic environment for people to be born continued on pg. 8

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Our Chemical Legacy, continued

into. “There’s a huge push to do two things in the field—one is to reform our chemicals policies and the other is to push for green chemistry initiatives,” she says.

Michael P. Wilson Ph.D. ’03, M.P.H. ’98, associate director of integrated sciences at the UC Berkeley Center for Green Chemistry (BCGC) and the incoming director of the School’s Labor Occupational Health Program, is an instrumental player in both of these key movements. He is working to transform chemistry curriculum in the country—beginning at UC Berkeley— so that the next generations of chemists will be trained in toxicology, ecotoxicology, exposure, policy, law, and ethics, and will have the insight—and motivation—to create chemicals that are “benign by design.”

“It’s so clear that it’s no longer possible for us to clean up chemical pollution and exposures at the ‘end of the pipe,’ in workplaces and in products and in hundreds of thousands of hazardous waste sites,” says Wilson.

“We have to design safer chemicals from the start.”

executive director of BCGC, who earned a doctoral degree in chemistry from UC Berkeley in 2009. “It just needs to be taken up by the entire industry in a transparent way that gives businesses and consumers the information they need to make choices.”

Wilson is also a driving force behind chemicals policy reform, especially in the state of California. He was the lead author of a 2006 chemicals policy report that inspired two new bills in California that were passed into law in 2008 by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger: AB 1879 (Feuer, D-LA), the nation’s first effort by a state to craft a comprehensive approach to identifying, prioritizing, and taking action on hazardous products; and SB 509 (Simitian, D-Palo Alto), which created the Toxics Information Clearinghouse to give consumers, businesses, and workers better information about the health and environmental effects of chemicals.

Senator Simitian said, “Well, all of this really got started with the report from UC Berkeley. What makes UC Berkeley’s role so critical is that this debate can quickly become all too political. What is the good science? What are the facts? Let’s start the conversation there.”

We have to design safer chemicals In February 2011, Wilson

from the start.

In Fall 2010, with funding from the State of California, green chemistry became an official part of UC Berkeley’s chemistry curriculum, with principles of sustainability, toxicity, and environmental impact being introduced to 1,350 students in Chemistry 1A labs. BCGC has received another grant from the California Department of Toxic Substances Control to design and add new labs for Chemistry 4A and 4B—introductory chemistry for science majors—and to develop several new graduate-level green chemistry courses.

“Green chemistry is already being taken up by some in the industry because it’s cheaper, you don’t have as much waste, you use less energy, and you’re making products that are safer,” said Marty Mulvihill,

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testified before two California legislative oversight hearings convened by the Assembly Committee on Environmental Safety and Toxic Materials and the Assembly Committee on Health. Calling attention to such problems as the proliferation of hazardous waste sites, the cost of cleanup, and the hazards children face from household cleaning products, Wilson concluded with an impassioned call for the Legislature to look towards the future.

“Mr. Chairman and members,” he said, “to be clear, these are not theoretical risks, and future generations will judge our actions accordingly. Much is at stake, and as the nation’s most populous and innovative state, and with global chemical production growing at a rate four times faster than global population, we have a responsibility, and now an opportunity, to do the very best we can.”

FEATURE

An Ounce of Prevention,

a Pound of Cure

By Michael S. Broder

On the eve of launching a national campaign against childhood obesity, First Lady Michelle Obama described the trend toward higher body mass index as a “threat to the future of this nation”—and with good reason. Since the 1970s, childhood obesity has increased by 300 percent in the United States. As a result, one in three of today’s children will develop diabetes in his or her lifetime. Heart disease factors, such as high blood pressure and lipids—previously rare in anyone but middle-aged to older adults—are now being identified in children as young as six years of age.

Adult obesity is also on the rise: In every state, over 15 percent of adults are obese, and in nine states, the figure is over 30 percent. With so many chronic diseases associated with obesity, the consequences for Americans’ health and for the entire U.S. health care system are staggering.

hat has changed over the past few decades that could account for this unprecedented surge in obesity rates? What are some of the barriers today that keep people from eating well and being physically active? Most importantly, what can we do to prevent the current health crisis from becoming a future health catastrophe?

Eating on the go “In the ‘old days,’ we had meals, we had desserts, and we even had full-fat milk—and children still weren’t heavy,” says Patricia Crawford Dr.P.H. ’94, R.D., director of the Dr. Robert C. and Veronica Atkins Center for Weight and

Health, a joint center of the School of Public Health and the College of Natural Resources at UC Berkeley.

But one thing we didn’t have, says Crawford, was the dizzying array of snacks and sugar-sweetened beverages that are available today. “The whole dietary pattern was different,” she says. “We haven’t increased the fat in our food supply that much, but we have switched from more meat and dairy fat to a type of fat that’s in all of the snack foods and the processed foods that kids are now eating.”

Snack food consumption is on the rise thanks in part to our fast-paced modern lives, which encourage us to eat on the go. “All you need to do is look at the types of things that are sold for children,” says Crawford. “If you look at continued on pg. 10

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FEATURE

Ounce of Prevention,

car seats and strollers now, they all have cup holders and snack trays, so we seem to have a culture now where we like to make it convenient to be able to offer foods to children when they’re in the riding position. It’s a whole different approach. Before, we ate in a meal-type setting in the home.”

Sodas and Snacks 101

continued

So where is the best place to begin to address children’s eating habits? It might seem logical to begin in the home, but Crawford believes that the schools are a more effective venue for intervention. That’s where the Center for Weight and Health concentrates many of its efforts.

“We don’t want to mandate parents to eat a certain way, or tell parents what to do,” says Crawford.

“We’d like to educate parents on the importance of good nutrition, and one of the ways to educate parents is to set a good example.” In fact, she says, in focus

the children’s food allowance. Even children who are not overweight or obese are consuming diets that don’t meet USDA’s Dietary Guidelines.

California has made great strides in limiting the high-fat, high-sugar snack foods—sodas, chips, and candy—sold on the school campuses. State legislation that limits sales of these snack foods from kindergarten through 12th grade was signed into law in 2005. The Center for Weight and Health played an instrumental role in providing the science-based evaluation data that facilitated passage of the bill. The center continues to evaluate a variety of school-based programs, analyze data, and provide information and recommendations to policymakers. More than half of U.S. states now have legislation similar to California’s, and federal policy, led

by California’s example, is also being developed.

Even though some unhealthy foods have been removed from schools, Crawford and her colleagues at the

If you haven’t been to a school cafeteria in a few decades, you’re in for a shock.

groups conducted by the center, young mothers in California often expressed that they looked to their children’s schools for nutritional guidance.

Schools offer an opportunity for a larger-scale impact; small changes can affect a large population of children. Kids spend half of their waking hours there, and it’s a place where nutritional improvements are very much needed. “If you haven’t been to a school cafeteria in a few decades, you’re in for a shock,” says Crawford. “You might think you were in a food court at the mall.” Not only have school foods been commercialized, but unhealthy snack foods and beverages—full of empty calories, with little to no nutritional value—compete with the school meals for

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Center for Weight and Health continue to look forward.

“There’s more we can be doing to promote healthy food options in schools,” she says, “such as removing the sports drinks, energy drinks, vitamin waters, and other sweetened beverages that are not sodas, but are nearly as high in sugar as sodas…and the baked chips and snack foods that barely meet the current guidelines for school foods. They’re healthier than some snack foods—but they don’t meet the spirit of the law, which is to really provide foods that are helping children meet nutritional guidelines.”

Crawford would also like to expand nutrition interventions to other venues where children gather.

“We also need to be thinking about preschool, childcare, and afterschool settings. All of these are places where children can learn healthy eating habits.

Children still do not have adequate diets. So this is the beginning, not the end, in making improvements in child health through healthful eating.”

Trix are for kids Another radical change in the food environment over the years has been the way that food companies have ramped up marketing efforts directed at children.

“Companies really, really want to be in the children’s market,” says Marion Nestle Ph.D., M.P.H. ’86, a professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health at New York University. And she knows a thing or two about the food industry: Nestle, a 2011 UC Berkeley Public Health Hero and the School’s 2004 Alumna of the Year, is the author of numerous acclaimed books on the subject, including the landmark Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health.

Let’s get physical Diet is one part of maintaining a healthy weight; physical activity is the other. We all know we should exercise, but what keeps some people from being physically active? Are the reasons different depending on a person’s race or socioeconomic status? These are questions that intrigue Rashawn Ray, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Maryland and currently a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy Research at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health.

To find answers, one might first look to the physical environment. Says Ray, “If you live in a neighborhood where you don’t have proper lighting, where you don’t have sidewalks to walk on, where you don’t have continued on pg. 12

These companies, says Nestle, want children to recognize and be loyal to particular brands as early in life as possible. They want kids to pester their parents to buy the product. (The industry actually calls it the “pester factor.”) Their methods are not limited to advertisements, but also include things like games, prizes, and logos on school supplies.

And they want to promote the idea that kids should eat special kid foods.

“They aren’t supposed to eat that icky, boring food that parents eat,” Nestle says. “They’re supposed to eat unidentified food objects in funny colors with cartoons on the package. What this does is transfer responsibility and authority for what kids are eating away from the parents and to the kids themselves.”

Nestle firmly believes that the marketing of food to children must be regulated. “Let’s hold the food industry accountable,” she says.

“Parents can’t fight the food industry on their own. Without regulation, we’re not going to make any progress at all. But it will take time. Think how long it took to regulate cigarettes.”

Rashawn Ray

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this population in part because African American women have the highest rates of obesity in the United States: 51 percent of African American women are obese, and another 29.5 percent are overweight.

What he found was that trainers’ speculations focused largely on cultural assumptions—that minority women don’t want to mess up their hair or lose their shape, for example. But the women reported different barriers: They said they couldn’t find time when they were working and taking care of children. They were too tired. Or there wasn’t a gym nearby. Ray concluded that hair is an overrated explanation for physical inactivity in comparison to income, environment, time, convenience, lack of energy, and motivation. He next plans to survey middle-class respondents, both African American and white, about their barriers to physical activity and compare their responses.

“The next part of this is figuring out what the incentives are,” says Ray. “How do we motivate people to be physically active?” Economists are looking at financial incentives offered by employers, such as bonuses and additional time off. Some large employers have on-site fitness facilities. “Companies are doing this for two main reasons,” he says. “One, they found out that they can lower health care costs if their employees are physically active. The second thing is, their employees are more likely to be productive when they’re healthier.”

There’s an app for that

But there are social factors in play as well. Noting that rates of obesity are much higher among minority populations, Ray explains his goal: “I want to find out, what are the most important barriers—and who are they important for?” He began his investigation by interviewing a racially diverse sample of fitness trainers, asking for their thoughts on why people might not come to the gym.

While Ray looks at barriers and incentives, Edmund Seto Ph.D. ’00, associate adjunct professor at the School of Public Health, is acquiring data on physical activity using a device that most people already own and use every day. Working with a team of Berkeley undergraduates and Ruzena Bajcsy, UC Berkeley professor of electrical engineering and computer science, Seto has helped develop a smartphone app that can tell us quite a bit about a person’s movement.

The Android app, called CalFit, makes use of the smartphone’s built-in accelerometer—the same mechanism that makes it possible to rotate the phone display from portrait to landscape—to get objective measures of energy expenditure. It also employs the phone’s GPS capabilities to tell where physical activities are occurring.

He also conducted two focus groups of middle- and working-class African American women—one in an urban environment, and the other rural—and asked them what kept them from going to the gym. He chose

Seto and colleagues have given the app to research subjects in order to track their behaviors and analyze their activity patterns. In Barcelona—“a wonderful city that has lots of opportunities for active living,

Edmund Seto

Ounce of Prevention, continued

12

safe places to ride your bike or walk your dog, and if you’re less conveniently located to a park or a gym, then you’re less likely to be physically active.”

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and even a city-funded bicycle-share program,” says Seto—40 people are now using the app.

“This understanding of where and when physical activities occur can be very useful in terms of designing intervention programs that might help people have better access to environments that are conducive to physical activities,” says Seto. “Smartphones are wonderful devices for tracking people. There are a ton of other health-related applications that we’re also exploring with CalFit.” Once the app has been fully tested and research results are in, Seto and colleagues are planning to release it to the general public so people can use it to track their progress toward their exercise goals. They’re also looking at ways to increase its appeal for young people, by adding a gaming component, for example.

Nestle and many others are encouraged by the leadership shown by Michelle Obama. “We have, for the first time, a First Lady who has taken on a public health issue as her primary area of interest. Here is a national figure speaking about childhood obesity in a way that’s never been done before,” she says. The First Lady has no policymaking authority, Nestle points out, but she does have power of persuasion.

Crawford shares Nestle’s optimism. She points to positive developments like worksite wellness programs where parents can learn about healthy lifestyles; communities that are building trails and installing bicycle racks; and the inclusion of calorie information on

“We have this awareness now that if you can intervene on obesity at a young age, it prevents the progression into health effects later in life. So we’re trying to create games that entice children to have more physical activity,” says Seto.

Taking the next steps With an environment that discourages physical activity and healthy eating in so many ways, what will it take to turn back obesity rates?

“We need to alter people’s perceptions about physical activity,” Ray offers. “A lot of people think they need to go to a gym, which they might find intimidating, or wear certain clothes—but they don’t.

They can take the steps at work, walk during their lunch breaks, and park at the back of the parking lot when they go to the grocery store—incorporate it into their daily lives.”

We need to alter people’s perceptions about physical activity.

Nestle has another idea: “Teach kids to cook!” she says. “You’ve got to start with the new generation. Then they know what food is, they learn where food comes from, and they learn a completely different kind of taste sensibility.” She would also like to see more people grow their own food. “I think anybody who’s growing their own food has opted out of the food system. And lots of people are growing their own food. So that makes me hopeful.”

restaurant menus. “When you put all of these things together, there is a much greater likelihood that we’re actually going to see the body mass index shift,” she says.

“We know the answers,” says Crawford. “We know the ways in which we can modify children’s behaviors in the direction for health. But we need the societal will, and the time, and the leaders in the effort to do it.”

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The Future of

Big Pharma

By Linda Anderberg

Artificial intelligence, smart pills, stem cell research, gene therapy, telemedicine, robotics, low-cost genomic sequencing, and phone apps—there’s brightness on the horizon when it comes to medical technology. The crystal ball gets cloudy, however, when it comes to the future of the pharmaceutical industry in the United States and Europe. A March article on the front page of The New York Times had the ominous title: “Drug Firms Face Billions in Losses in ’11 as Patents End.” he crux of the concern is that more than 10 blockbuster drugs—generating annual sales close to $50 billion—will see their patents expire this year, resulting in cheaper generic drugs flooding the market and undercutting companies’ profits.

Currently 75 percent of all U.S. prescriptions are for generic drugs, which are low price and low profit for the industry.

“When a brand-name drug goes off patent, its generic counterpart sells for 80 percent less. So it’s a significant hit on the market. That’s what Pfizer is going to be seeing when Lipitor goes off patent this year, for example,” says Deirdre Parsons, a third-year master’s student in public health and public policy. Parsons works with the Berkeley Center for Health Technology (BCHT) at the School of Public Health.

In addition to the patent issue, many drug companies have struggled with failed drug trials, there are not as many drugs in the research pipelines, and fewer drugs are being approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

More than 150,000 positions have been cut in the industry in the past three years, including jobs in research and development.

Does the shaky future of profitability in the pharmaceutical industry mean bad news for the public’s health? James C. Robinson Ph.D., M.P.H. ‘81, the School’s Leonard D. Schaeffer Professor of Health Economics and director of BCHT, has concerns. “In public health, some think profits are suspect,” Robinson says. “Everyone wants to lower the cost of health care and the cost of drugs in particular. But the reality is there is no free lunch. There are so many diseases out there that don’t currently have much in the way of treatment options: breast cancer, 14

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HIV, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s, to name several.

And the drugs of the future are developed from research investments that are financed by profits today.”

Government gets in the game As profit margins continue to shrink, so does the industry investment into research and development. And yet there is increased demand, not only for drugs that treat currently hard-to-treat diseases, but also for more effective antibiotics to combat antibiotic-resistant bacteria and less expensive antivirals to treat flu outbreaks. But if the pharmaceutical companies stop funding research—or only fund development of drugs with the most profit potential—who will fill the gap?

The U.S. government is concerned enough about the slowing pace of drug development that the National Institute of Health (NIH) is planning to get into R&D funding and launch a new center for drug development, to be up and running by October 2011. For the fiscal year 2011, President Obama also proposed boosted funding for NIH for biomedical research, with a special emphasis on “bold and innovative” cancer research.

The money would facilitate 30 new drug trials and double the number of therapies and vaccines in clinical trials by 2016.

Will this government-run drug research be effective? “I’m not sure the government has what it takes for successful drug development,” says Robinson. “Can you imagine a government agency that has a project that fails nine times, and comes looking for money for a tenth time? It’s not going to happen. And yet the drug companies do this all the time; they call it diversifying their investments.”

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“I wonder if they’ll be able to set the research priorities correctly,” adds Parsons. “Will it be politically motivated, based on a senator’s son having XYZ disease? On the other hand, the current model of being driven by market forces isn’t necessarily any less arbitrary.”

Curious about costs Insurance companies, the U.S. and European governments, and consumers all put pressure on the pharmaceutical companies to lower drug prices. “I think payers and providers are putting much more scrutiny on the treatments that they will cover,” says Erika Heaton M.B.A., M.P.H. ‘11. “I think Big Pharma really needs to rethink their model in general—their portfolios, their culture, how they structure their sales teams. It’s gotten to the point where it needs to evolve to be successful in the future.”

Heaton spent a summer working for Genentech in its Avastin brand marketing group, where she looked at the value proposition of biopharmaceuticals to customers.

Prior to coming to Berkeley, Heaton worked in health policy and strategy consulting in Washington, D.C., most recently for the advisory firm Avalere Health. “I think it’s interesting that even with a field like oncology, you see biotech and pharmaceutical companies really thinking more about the value of their products,” she says. “What are the criteria that different customers consider when they’re making a decision about value?”

Parsons thinks a lot about drug pricing and cost sharing as well. After earning her master’s degree in molecular genetics and microbiology at Duke University, she was a policy management consultant with the Pharmaceutical Research and Development practice at Accenture. This experience prompted her to ask larger questions about the industry as a whole when she came to Berkeley.

“The biggest question I had when helping out these pharmaceutical companies was, ‘Okay, you make drugs that cost ten to fifteen thousand dollars a year. Who is paying for that and how is that even being supported?’” she explains. “And is that really the driver of health care cost? That’s the easiest finger to point, at the pharmaceutical companies, so I came to Berkeley to find out, ‘Is that true or not?’”

She joined Robinson in his work at BCHT because the center looks at the balance between innovation and access. At BCHT, she is currently looking at rheumatoid arthritis as a test case to understand the effect of insurance benefit design on utilization of high-cost specialty drugs.

“Is there any indication that increase in patient cost sharing affects utilization? And does that affect health outcomes?” Parsons asks. “There hasn’t been conclusive research done on these high-cost drugs that are targeting sicker patients. It could be that because the alternative to continued on pg. 16

Deirdre Parsons, Erika Heaton, and James Robinson

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Big Pharma, continued

taking the drugs is often either severe pain or death, the patients will be more tolerant of increased cost sharing.”

Preliminary results from the BCHT project on cost sharing for rheumatoid arthritis, a collaboration with the California Public Employee Retirement System, indicates that cost sharing does very substantially affect which biotech drugs physicians prescribe and patients use.

Behemoths and biotechs Parsons sees the current trend of pharmaceutical giants merging with leaner biotechnology companies as a possible alternative that can help ramp up the development of treatment options. As a summer intern in the Managed Care and Customer Operations unit at Genentech at a time when the Bay Area-based biopharmaceutical company had just undergone a merger with Roche, she had an inside look into this phenomenon.

“Genentech prides itself on its R&D and its creativity around developing drugs. That’s their bread and butter,” says Parsons. “For the pharmaceutical companies, they see their bread and butter as marketing. When you have these two industries merging with two different points of view, it makes you wonder where things are going. Are they still trying to target those patients that really need these drugs? Are they looking for new drugs? Or are they just trying to find drugs that will have the greatest number of sales?”

Still, she thinks the behemoth drug companies can learn from the more streamlined biotech companies. “The pharmaceutical companies are going through a complete transformation, an identity crisis,” she says. “I think they need to look more like the biotechs, which are a little leaner and sharper and thinking two steps ahead. They are working more closely with the academic institutions and the patient populations.”

Another big trend in Big Pharma is the increasing focus on specialty or boutique drugs that target small populations with specific rare diseases, like many cancers.

Advances in genetics and genomics have resulted in the development of biologics—targeted therapeutics that hone in on a disease without affecting healthy cells and tissues. “One example would be Herceptin, which is a targeted therapy for a certain type of breast cancer with a certain type of gene mutation,” says Heaton. She believes the increased focus on personalized medicine is a positive development for the pharmaceutical industry.

“I think there are benefits to the model of personalized or targeted therapies, understanding in R&D what are the patient targets and the right subpopulations where

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the drugs are most effective,” she says. “There are costs savings there because you’re not treating a wide population, and you have a better chance of FDA approval because of the stronger efficacy in trial stage.”

The problem of side effects Savings are good, because an estimate of the cost to develop a marketable product is $1 billion or more.

But even after Phase III drug trials, where the drugs are tested on humans, and FDA approval, companies are still not assured of profits. Professor Nick Jewell, a biostatistician with more than 30 years of experience analyzing the results of drug trials, has served as an expert witness in personal injury and securities litigation against major drug companies.

“When you get a pharmaceutical company where something starts to go wrong in the sense that an adverse effect appears, often it’s not apparent in drug development work, because drug development trials are usually fairly small,” says Jewell. “Even the large trials for efficacy, which may contain hundreds or thousands of patients, will not have enough information to detect a rare adverse effect, like myocardial infarction or a rare cancer.”

Jewell was involved in personal injury litigation for the drug, Vioxx, which was being developed by Merck as a pain reliever that—the manufacturer hoped—would not have the same gastrointestinal side effects as aspirin and other widely used anti-inflammatory medications.

The drug was approved by the FDA in 1999, but was withdrawn from the market over concerns about increased risk of heart attack and stroke associated with long-term, high-dosage use.

“These effects don’t tend to show up until after the drug gets on the market, when a lot of people start taking the drug, data starts to come in, and statisticians get involved,” says Jewell. “I was involved in trying to assess the evidence for the negative impact of Vioxx and, to some extent, when could the company reasonably have known there was a problem.”

When looking at documents that have come out of the industry in particular cases that have resulted in lawsuits, Jewell has seen some problems with marketing departments driving the interpretation of pharmaceutical company-sponsored clinical studies, too often misleading patients and doctors. “I am a terrific supporter of the pharmaceutical industry in general,” Jewell says. “If you need a drug to help you with a medical problem, you want somebody to develop that drug. But I would say

that the evidence that I’m seeing indicates that postmarketing there’s been a big push in drug companies to increase profits. And that has led, in my view, to compromises in the public safety.”

This compromise is in part because an increased focus on marketing can lead drug companies to try to increase a consumer population beyond the bounds of their studies.

“Instead of accepting that maybe the drug can only be used with a real confidence in a subgroup of a population, which runs against profits,” says Jewell, “you want to expand demand for the drug to people who aren’t as sick or who are suffering from a different condition. You want to not only capture all the market in a certain segment of the population; you want to increase the market itself. You want to sell it to other countries. You say, ‘Maybe this drug isn’t just a pain killer; maybe it also treats colon cancer.’ That’s what happened with Vioxx.”

Pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies employ a large number of biostatisticians to design trials and analyze clinical trial and post-marketing data. For example, Amgen, a biotech company in Southern California, employs more than 100 Ph.D. level biostatisticians. But, says Jewell, there is a critical shortage of trained biostatisticians for the drug industry to employ.

Pharmaceutical companies are going

through a complete

transformation, an identity crisis.

Jewell believes carefully limiting a drug with known rare side effects to only a population whose risk for those side effects is relatively low, the drug companies might avoid potential harm to patients and also lawsuits. “The science and the public good should drive the ship,” he says.

“And there’s nothing wrong with producing reasonable profits—that’s been the history of the pharmaceutical industry. But in the last twenty or thirty years, maybe we’ve gone too far. Good science requires transparency— even when the studies are sponsored by drug makers.”

A shortage of science Many companies do focus on good science and the needs of the populations they seek to treat. “Working for Genentech over the summer, I found that they really focus on patients and the public health side,” says Heaton. “You can’t think of these companies as corporations that aren’t focused on public health, even though they are for profit.” But it can still be a challenge for them to discover when new drugs are causing harm.

“Good statistical methods for assessing drug safety issues quickly are important, but they’re difficult,” Jewell says. “Post-marketing, you’re not doing trials so much anymore; you’re just collecting data on people that are taking the drugs. They’re sick; they sometimes suffer heart attacks or some other adverse event. Trying to sift through that mass of data and see that there’s a signal here that the drug is actually increasing the risk—it’s a challenge for statisticians to do that effectively.”

In California, there are only two major biostatistics programs, at UC Berkeley and UCLA, which together graduate only 12 to 20 students a year.

“You can tell there’s a problem,” says Jewell. “With the genomics revolution, there’s just a huge demand for our students and we aren’t able to produce them because we don’t have the resources. I think we’re headed for a world where more and more of the work is going to be done by people not trained to do it.”

How big of a problem is it? “If I said to you, ‘More and more brain surgeries are going to be done by people who are not trained,’ you’d think, ‘Oh my gosh!’” Jewell says. “That’s what’s happening in biostatistics, and it’s a nationwide problem.”

Although the many challenges facing the pharmaceutical industry and the patient population it serves seem daunting, there remains opportunity for change and growth moving forward. “There are a lot of innovative and interesting thinking happening across the industry right now,” says Heaton. “Not just in R&D; I think they are doing interesting work to support patients’ initiatives as well.”

Heaton sees value in social media, blogs, and e-marketing as ways of opening communication between drug companies, physicians, and patients. Parsons is very intrigued by emerging nonprofit pharmaceutical companies attempting to meet currently unmet healthcare needs, such as Medicine360 in San Francisco. The outcome of all these changes and trends remains to be seen, but there’s no doubt that there are interesting times ahead for the industry and for public health.

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Toward a Sustainable Planet

By Christopher E. Bush

Today’s popular media and scientific journals are filled with dire predictions about the year 2050 and beyond. Increasing CO2 emissions may raise the planet’s temperature by 2 degrees Celsius or more. The world population could stand at as high as 10 billion people in 40 years, putting a huge strain on dwindling resources.

hese two factors—climate change and rapid population growth—are interrelated, and combined they pose a major threat to global health. If unchecked, they’ll lead to drought, starvation, disease, and dislocation that will affect millions across the globe. And although people will suffer everywhere, the poorest nations and individuals will be particularly vulnerable.

Not just bad weather

These effects will have the greatest impact on populations that are already vulnerable to disease, particularly poor children in developing parts of the world. “Climate change doesn’t invent any new diseases,” says Smith. “It works to exacerbate existing diseases, especially for those parts of the world that already have a high background rate. To put it bluntly, if you doubled child deaths from diarrhea in Berkeley, you’d probably have to wait five years to find one extra death. If you doubled child deaths from diarrhea in Zimbabwe, you’d get 50,000 the first year.”

According to Kirk R. Smith Ph.D. ’77, M.P.H. ’72, professor of global environmental health, the health impacts of climate change can be divided into three categories. First, there are the direct impacts: As global warming triggers heat waves and stronger storms, populations in affected areas will suffer the consequences.

Deaths and health problems caused by heatstroke and storm-related injuries, damage, and property loss will rise.

Climate change’s third level of impact involves effects that operate through human agency, such as food price increases. The environment affects how societies produce and distribute food, as well as human migration patterns.

For example, global warming causes water shortages and sea level increases in some areas, which in turn creates refugee populations and camps that spread disease more rapidly.

But these catastrophic outcomes aren’t inevitable.

There is still a lot of low-hanging fruit—simple measures that can have a positive impact in reducing climate change, slowing population growth, and improving health outcomes today and in the future.

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Next, there’s a second level of effects brought on by changes in the natural environment. For example, a warming planet and shifting precipitation patterns can allow diseases like malaria to spread further and faster.

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But the largest threat Smith sees is malnutrition.

“Changes in agricultural production and their effects on food prices will mean fewer people can afford the food they need,” he says. “Both the World Health Organization and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have estimated that malnutrition will be the biggest health impact from climate change.”

Hunger’s effect, however, isn’t easy to quantify.

“Predicting the malnutrition impacts of climate change is tricky,” says Smith. “You have to project not only the effects on agricultural production, but also how society responds. But society hasn’t shown much ability to deal with the current misdistribution of food worldwide, so there’s no reason particularly to think it’s going to do better in the future.”

Guaranteed benefits Despite the prospect of climate change impacting their people’s health, nations have been slow to respond to it. Smith believes there are two main reasons for this.

First, although global warming will seriously impact them in the long run, governments—especially those of developing countries—often face more pressing issues.

They need to improve economic output, increase the number of jobs, and tackle existing health problems, for example. Second, because climate change and its effects are so complex, some people still doubt a direct connection between human activities, such as burning fossil fuels, and environmental problems like regional droughts.

To help overcome resistance to tackling environmental change, Smith has spent much of his career examining the issue of co-benefits. “One way to frame this is just because climate change has come along doesn’t mean that the old problems have gone away,” he says.

“But there are ways that you can move toward both the goal of solving those traditional issues and reducing environmental impact at the same time.”

“We used to call this a ‘no-regrets’ strategy,” he adds.

“When we encourage policies that give a short-term health benefit in the context of a longer-term potential benefit for climate, there are no regrets. Even if the climate benefit turns out to be not so important, still you’ve gotten the short-term benefit.”

One example of a co-benefits program Smith points to is his work to reduce the negative health consequences of household combustion. Home cookfires and wood- and charcoal-burning stoves are a leading cause of respiratory issues in many parts of the world.

Because they produce substantial particulate pollution and CO2, often in poorly ventilated rooms, these stoves and cookfires are a double threat. Women and children who spend a lot of time indoors and breathe the particulate matter are susceptible to breathing problems, and greenhouse gas emissions increase global warming.

To combat these effects, Smith and colleagues have focused on developing and providing low-emissions stoves to families in developing parts of the world.

“You can increase combustion efficiency in two ways, either by using better stoves or better fuels,” says Smith.

“You not only get a health benefit of a substantial size, but also an environmental benefit, a reduction in the risk of climate change.”

Working with a group of private companies and Sri Ramachandra University in Chennai, India, Smith and a team at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health recently developed wireless monitors to transmit stove usage data that help researchers assess effectiveness of the stoves and the programs to disseminate them. The project, which won the first-place $300,000 prize in the 2010 Vodaphone Americas Foundation Wireless Innovation Project, is part of Smith’s efforts to provide a co-benefits program that can positively impact both public health and the environment in many parts of the world.

Changes in agricultural production and their effects on food prices will mean fewer people can afford the food they need.

Another example of a “no-regrets” strategy Smith points to is giving women access to contraceptives. “When that happens, there’s an immediate health benefit because the two groups that most want to control their fertility are young, unmarried women and older women,” he says. “These are also the two groups that have the highest rates of infant and maternal mortality.” Longer spacing between births also has a direct health benefit to children.

The co-benefit, he says, is the longer-term help for the climate. Fewer people mean fewer greenhouse gasses.

A recent study published by the National Academy of Sciences found that holding population growth to 7.4 billion by 2050 could reduce output of carbon dioxide by up to 30 percent. “That’s a significant difference,” continued on pg. 20 Berkeley Health Fall 2011

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Sustainable Planet, continued

says Smith. “It shows that there are both health benefits and climate benefits from just giving women the right to choose how many children they have.”

The population divide The relationship between reproductive rights and population growth is central for researchers at the School of Public Health’s Bixby Center for Population, Health, and Sustainability. Professor Malcolm Potts, the Bixby Center’s director, says that rapid population growth can be slowed and that making voluntary family planning universally available is the key to keeping the world sustainable during the next 40 years.

“The world is now very divided demographically,” he says. “There are a lot of countries, particularly in East Asia and the developed world, where women are having two children or fewer. But in a few countries, there is exceptionally rapid population growth. Almost 95 percent of population growth between now and 2050 will be in the least-developed nations, and most of it will be from unintended pregnancies.”

Potts believes that this division between the parts of the world that have moved toward a low growth rate and those where population is exploding—primarily in

Ndola Prata

areas such as sub-Saharan Africa, Afghanistan, and Pakistan—is creating an unsustainable situation. “This division is very bad for the world,” he says. “It’s bad for the environment, and it’s bad for individual human beings, who are suffering a lot.”

The good news, however, is that it’s a problem with solutions. The Bixby Center has embarked on a number of research projects and initiatives to improve education about—and access to—sexual and reproductive health options. “The two billion people living on $2 a day or less are the ones who do not have access to the family planning services and information that they need, and they are having the unintended pregnancies,” notes Potts.

Bixby Students in Action As students, Henrissa Bassey M.P.H. ‘11 and Naomi Beyeler M.C.P., M.P.H. ‘11 spent time in Nigeria helping launch projects for the Bixby Center for Population, Health, and Sustainability. assey spent a summer piloting an evaluation of the Girl-Child Education Program, a project geared toward delaying the age of childbearing among Nigerian girls. “Research shows that girls who get married early tend to have children early and are at higher risk for negative health consequences,” Bassey says. “If girls remain in school longer and have increased educational opportunities, they delay childbearing.”

Much of Bassey’s time was spent visiting schools and collecting data about girls’ enrollment. She

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also interviewed community members and the girls themselves to gauge their feelings about the program and family issues. “I would ask the girls what the ideal age to get married was, because a lot of them marry around age 14,” she recalls.

“They would say, ‘Do you want to know what I think, or what my parents think?’”

Bassey, whose family is from Sierra Leone, is working with her mother to launch a center there for maternal and child health. She also plans to eventually go to law school so that she can integrate her public health skills with legal training and ultimately write policies geared

toward underserved youth’s empowerment.

She is currently working at the Oakland organization WestEd. Beyeler was engaged in a different Bixby Center project in Nigeria, this one focused on mothers’ groups and maternal care. “We started with a model of group prenatal care where a health care provider will see a group of women all at one time and teach them how to do a lot of their own care,” she says. In addition to improving maternal health, the program also is designed to help empower and build social support for the women.

In Ethiopia, as in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, a number of trends are exacerbating high population growth, poverty, and poor health outcomes. Growing urbanization, increasing incidence of premarital intercourse, and biases on the part of existing sexual health care service providers have combined to increase the number of unintended pregnancies and related morbidities and mortalities.

Karen Weidert M.P.H. ’10, an associate specialist at the Bixby Center, is contributing to a survey of Ethiopian youth about their preferences for receiving sexual and reproductive health care services. The survey is aimed at discovering how to combat these trends and find the best ways to bring services to the people who need them most. “There’s a lot of effort and money going into different kinds of youth-friendly services,” Weidert says. “But there’s not a lot of evidence about what’s working. We see that some of these programs are developed without asking the youth what they want.”

Also in Ethiopia, Associate Professor in Residence Ndola Prata, the Bixby Center’s scientific director, is leading research on the efficacy of making injectable contraceptives more widely available. By training community members—rather than just doctors and

nurses—to provide these contraceptives, women can have much greater access and are more comfortable about receiving them.

Almost 95 percent of population growth between now and 2050 will be in the least-developed nations, and most of it will be from unintended pregnancies.

The Bixby Center is engaged in numerous other projects across sub-Saharan Africa as well—in Tanzania, Zanzibar, Ethiopia, and Nigeria—all aimed at improving reproductive health and access to family planning resources.

A choice for change Potts believes that being empowered with regard to when and if to have children is a fundamental right. For Bixby Center members, this belief helps steer their work in reproductive health issues. “That’s a basic framework in which we work,” says Potts. “To respect people and continued on pg. 22

Henrissa Bassey and Naomi Beyeler

Since her initial visit to Nigeria, Beyeler has been back three times. She’s been collaborating with traditional birth attendants to implement a community-based surveillance system to track health outcomes among women and infants.

Beyeler appreciates the opportunity the Bixby Center has provided to help launch a new program in Nigeria. “With a project like that, it’s not only research,” she says. “It’s an intervention.

Being part of the planning and getting a project started is an amazing experience.”

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Sustainable Planet, continued

let them make their own decision. If somebody wants to have six children, that’s fantastic. What we’re interested in is the woman who doesn’t want to have six children, but can’t exercise her right to have fewer children because she can’t get hold of the information and services.”

Weidert agrees. “We’re quite focused on women having a choice,” she says. “It’s their right to have a choice when and if they have children and how to space them.”

All the evidence shows that when women are offered ways to limit their childbearing, family

Despite the progress that’s being made, both Potts and Weidert stress that there’s a huge, unmet need for family planning that must be solved if global population is to be maintained at a sustainable level. They believe it is one of the top public health challenges today.

Thirty years ago, Potts was among the first researchers to sound the alarm about the potential devastation AIDS would cause in sub-Saharan Africa. He believes we are at a similar moment with regard to population control. “In the Sahel on the border of the Sahara there’s exceptionally rapid population growth—people are having six and seven children. You’ve got abject poverty and global warming is going to destroy what food production they have in an ecologically vulnerable region.

I think in thirty years time there’s going to be as much suffering in that area from population pressure and climate change as there has been in the last thirty years from AIDS.”

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Both Potts and Weidert stress the importance and urgency of giving priority to family planning. “All the evidence shows that when women are offered ways to limit their childbearing, family size falls,” says Weidert.

“That’s the only way to reach sustainable population

size falls.

levels. We just have to continue increasing access to all forms of family planning, and give women the education and choices they need.”

Potts asserts that the Bixby Center and the School of Public Health can play an important role in helping the planet achieve a sustainable population and healthier future generations. “What a university can do is to get in there early, look at the numbers, and project what is going to happen,” he says. “We can design scientifically valid studies and then work with somebody to get those implemented. And then those people will take those studies to senior decision makers and try and change the policies.

“Sometimes it’s frustrating. You have to keep on knocking on the same door. But that’s how change is brought about. We’ve made it work in the past, and we’ll keep on working it in the future.”

FROM PUBLICATION TO PUBLIC ACTION — by Linda Neuhauser

Raising the Next Generation: A “How-to” Manual Nobel Laureate economist James Heckman made a striking discovery when he examined the results of many kinds of health programs.

He found that interventions to support children in their early years showed the most positive long-term health outcomes and were the best financial investments. In fact, the most successful program—a preschool for disadvantaged kids—showed that for every $1 spent, the program saved $17 in future costs to society. The three-year-olds who attended the school were twice as likely to graduate high school and college, have stable jobs, and be healthy than children without this opportunity. ecause “parents are their children’s best teachers,” it is especially important to support parents of young children.

However, research shows that many parents in California and nationwide have said that it is hard to know how to give their children the best start in life. In 2000, under the leadership of movie director and children’s advocate Rob Reiner, California enacted a tobacco tax to fund programs for children 0-5 years old and their parents. One of the most innovative activities of this First 5 California initiative has been the development of the Kit for New Parents. These “operating instructions” help parents of young children learn about pregnancy, child safety, early learning, and healthy eating, and exercise.

The School of Public Health’s Health Research for Action (HRA) center helped First 5 develop and test the kit. We developed the UC Berkeley Parents Guide with input from culturally diverse parents, experts, and health care providers, and we advised on the development of other resources. The resulting kit—available in five languages—is a colorful briefcase that includes easy-to-use DVDs, printed resources, and a book to read to babies. The kits are now distributed for free to about 500,000 new parent families each year in California through county prenatal programs, maternity hospitals, childcare, preschools, and many other organizations.

At HRA, we led a three-year research study to evaluate the effectiveness of the kits and found remarkable results. Over 88 percent of parents reported using their kits within six weeks after receiving it. Parents who got a kit showed greater learning and adopted healthier practices—like reading to babies, taking steps to childproof their homes, and using better child feeding practices—than parents who did not get a kit.

Parents commented that they liked having a home resource that they could use over time and share with other family members and friends.

Another important finding was that low-income and immigrant parents were especially likely to appreciate and benefit from the kit.

The kit model has now been extended to four other states: Alabama, Arizona, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania. In each of these states, HRA has worked with stakeholders, such as legislators, health departments, foundations, communities, and private industry, to customize a new kit initiative. In particular, we have supported our colleagues in other states to adopt user-centered design strategies in which diverse parents and stakeholders help create the new kit. The UC Berkeley Parents Guide has been a key feature of each of these kits. Each state partner has adapted the kit model and developed innovative distribution strategies.

In this economic environment, choosing successful health programs is critical. The positive outcomes and modest cost of the kits (about $17 per family in California) shows they are a wise investment in our children’s future.

— Linda Neuhauser Dr.P.H. ‘88, M.P.H. ‘77 is co-principal investigator of Health Research for Action.

In Arizona, a new mother keeps a parent kit on hand.

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SPOTLIGHT: GEORGIA GREEN — By Abby Cohn

Effects of Exported E-waste Recycle your old PC, mobile phone or DVD player and it could wind up in a poor country’s garbage dump.

-waste”— the popular term for our discarded electronic equipment and gadgets—litters rapidly growing disposal sites in China, India, and other developing nations. Though out of sight to much of the Western world, these digital landfills are hellish spots.

Georgia Green M.S. ‘11 ought to know. In summer 2010 as a student, she traveled to Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) in West Africa to study a bustling, unregulated e-waste industry in the principal city of Abidjan. “It’s a big mess,” she says of the makeshift dumps strewn with piles of dismantled and sometimes burned digital components, cathode ray tubes, plastic parts, and insulation.

Beyond the obvious eyesore they have created, the West’s cast-off electronics pose significant health and environmental hazards. “E-waste is not benign,” says Green. Often dismantled for copper, gold, and other valuable materials, electronic devices contain a slew of such hazardous substances as lead, cadmium, mercury, brominated flame retardants, and PCBs that pose hazards to workers who do the dismantling or burn the remaining waste. Studies of the notorious e-waste dismantling hub of Guiyu, China, have turned up contaminated dust, elevated lead and cadmium levels in children’s blood, and elevated measurements of toxics in the air, soil, aquatic organisms, and food.

Abidjan is a lesser-known destination for the controversial and often illegal export of e-waste.

During her six-week stay, Green found vast quantities of discarded electronics and a thriving sector of informal workers who eke out a living fixing gadgets or destroying them for parts. “It looks like Africa is on the receiving end of the next wave of e-waste and its

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associated hazards,” says Megan Schwarzman M.D., M.P.H. ’07. Schwarzman is a research scientist at the Center for Occupational and Environmental Health (COEH) and was Green’s academic adviser.

Green’s research is believed to be the first academic study of e-waste work and its cumulative health effects in the region. Her goal is to document the potential health risks to workers from occupational exposures during unsafe repair and salvage operations.

“Workers are physically breaking the non-working products apart to get to the usable components and precious metals inside.” And, says Green, much of the dismantling work is being performed by children.

To conduct her study, Green recruited local medical students to survey 139 adult and

teenage e-waste repairmen, dismantlers, and “scrappers” working in tiny repair shops or disposal sites around the city. A wide-ranging questionnaire gathered demographic information and details on health issues (such as illnesses and injuries), workplace exposures, use of protective equipment, and other qualitative data, such as why the workers had chosen their line of work.

Green expects to publish her findings soon in a scientific journal. With this cross-sectional snapshot of the population, she hopes her work will spur more research and ultimately lead to interventions that protect the health and livelihood of e-waste workers. “Looking at who the population is and what their exposures are is the first step to making sensible policies that would reduce the harm from their exposures,” says Green, a New Jersey native with a longstanding

interest in environmental contamination. She holds a 2007 bachelor’s degree from Berkeley in conservation and resource studies.

Finding a solution to the disposal of electronic trash should be everyone’s concern, she maintains. “It’s relevant to everybody,” she says.

Due to a combination of rapidly developing technology and planned obsolescence, “there are just going to be more cell phones and laptops in the world.”

In fact, e-waste is the fastest-growing component of the world’s garbage stream. The United Nations has estimated that as a planet we generate 40 million tons of e-waste annually.

In 2006 alone, Americans tossed out an estimated 330 million electronic devices.

Currently, there is no system that tracks the origin or amount of e-waste flowing into developing countries. Though international exports of hazardous wastes from wealthy to poor nations are banned under provisions of the Basel Convention and a subsequent Basel Ban, the United States has not signed the agreements.

Even in countries that have banned e-waste exports, illegal shipments persist.

In the United States, an estimated 80 percent of all e-waste winds up in municipal solid waste sites domestically. Of the remaining 20 percent that is recycled, some 50 to 80 percent is shipped abroad to places like Abidjan. A 2008 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that “current U.S. regulatory controls do little to stem the export of potentially hazardous used electronics.”

Green’s study was clearly no ordinary summer research project. Along with its global implications, her work called for synthesizing many facets of a “complicated cultural, political and economic issue,” says Michael P. Wilson Ph.D. ’03, M.P.H. ’98, a COEH research scientist who also advised Green. “She got out into the field and spent a long time understanding the dynamics of what’s happening there.”

Even children dismantle electronic equipment.

One of her immediate priorities was gaining the trust of workers who might be understandably uncomfortable sharing information with an American outsider. Collaborating with Dr. Mathias Kouassi, an occupational health professor at Abidjan’s University of Cocody and former Fulbright fellow at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, Green was introduced to a union of electronics technicians. “The union was instrumental in giving me access to the workforce,” says Green. “It was really a linchpin of the project.”

Though her study protocol prevented her from interviewing children, Green observed plenty of them performing e-waste work. One day, she saw a group of youngsters sitting around a fire while perched on upturned computer screens near the banks of a lagoon. The children were burning plastic-coated wires to extract the precious copper underneath. One teenager had a gaping wound on his foot from an accidental burn. “Openly burning plastics is never a good thing,” says Green, referring to the potential for carcinogenic exposure.

Green rarely witnessed safety precautions or the use of protective gear. Repairmen soldered circuit boards on their laps and many laborers worked barefoot or in flip-flops.

While aware of a humanitarian debate swirling around the issue of e-waste exports, Green is not prepared to join in calls for a complete halt to their international trade.

So far, she says, such attempts have proved ineffective and don’t take into account the

Printed circuit boards litter the ground at an e-waste disposal site.

jobs that e-waste disposal has created for poor people in impoverished lands. “It might be better to focus on solutions to the resulting health and environmental problems in developing countries,” she notes.

Reducing toxics in electronics manufacturing or designing equipment that is more easily upgraded and repaired are potential strategies.

Additionally, Green supports the development of modernized e-waste processing plants that could provide safer work environments and job benefits. Such investments could be sound business opportunities that improve social and health conditions, she says. “There are lots of solutions that haven’t been tried yet in Africa,” she says. “There are interventions that make sense both economically and environmentally.”

Green graduated in May with a degree in global health and environment. She credits grants from the Center for Global Public Health and the Center for Occupational and Environmental Health, along with Sigma Xi, for making her project possible. While Schwarzman and Wilson plan follow-up studies building on Green’s work, political unrest in the city of Abidjan is putting those plans on hold for now.

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SPOTLIGHT: FÁTIMA M. RODRÍGUEZ — By Michael S. Broder

Speaking Your Language If you’ve ever had a colonoscopy, you know there are steps you need to take for one to three days before the procedure, such as adhering to a liquid diet. But what if you don’t understand the instructions because your medical provider doesn’t speak your language? You might show up for your appointment unprepared.

And if the procedure goes forward, you could potentially suffer complications, as well as incur a costly expense for the hospital.

his is the type of situation that Fátima M. Rodríguez Dr.P.H. ’11, a senior project manager within Kaiser Permanente’s National Diversity Office, is trying to prevent. Her work centers on issues of language and culture, and how they affect care. “When we talk about language access, it’s really about quality of care, patient safety, and health equity—and for many organizations it’s about reducing risk and medical errors,” she says. “Also there are cost savings if you’re able to prevent any kind of negative outcomes by ensuring that people have the kind of information that they need in their language, either verbal or written.”

Rodríguez has worked for Kaiser Permanente— a not-for-profit health plan serving 8.7 million members in nine states and the District of Columbia—for nearly six years, during which time she has also been pursuing her doctorate in public health at UC Berkeley. National Diversity, her department at Kaiser Permanente, provides guidance to the organization on a range of issues related to its culturally and linguistically diverse patients, members, and workforce. “We develop and implement strategies that are people- and systems-focused,” she explains.

Kaiser Permanente has a very diverse membership that speaks more than 130 languages, according to Rodríguez. “We are collecting data on race, granular ethnicity, and language preference in our electronic medical record system because all of these pieces of information help Kaiser Permanente

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provide more patient-centered, personalized care, which is critical,” she says. “For example, it is very difficult to develop and deliver effective and culturally responsive interventions if you only know that your patients are Latino. What if they’re Latinos from Mexico, or Chile, or Peru?

There are a lot of nuances.”

Not only is the make-up of the U.S. population rapidly becoming more diverse, but as a consequence of health care reform, health care systems may be soon be caring for populations they haven’t previously served. “We’re in a unique time in our history,” Rodríguez says.

“Issues of diversity are and will continue to be important, and we need to be prepared.”

Rodríguez’s interest in diversity and health care has its roots in her own background. Both of her parents immigrated to the United States from Mexico, and her brother had Hodgkin’s disease at a young age.

“Issues of culture and language have always been very much a part of our lives,” she says.

“I’ve had many experiences based on my family’s interaction with the health care system that created this interest in looking at how to improve services, especially those that are provided to individuals who don’t speak English. Many people can relate to having to interpret for parents who are non-English-speaking, and I’ve had to do that for numerous family members.

This is not the best way of ensuring transparent and accurate information between patients and providers.”

Her professional work at Kaiser Permanente and her academic work at Berkeley are closely linked. “My dissertation looks at how not only managed care, which is where I work, but also public health departments are addressing the needs of their non-English-speaking patients,” says Rodríguez. “And I think one of the most exciting parts of my research is that, as part of my Dr.P.H. program, I’m in both worlds. I have one foot in academia, and I also have a foot right in an organization that is really progressive and is in the forefront of innovation.”

Rodríguez, who will complete her doctorate in December 2011, received her bachelor’s degree from Stanford and her master’s degree from UCLA. “What I wanted to do when I got to Berkeley was to figure out how I could not only influence the field, but also influence how public health looked at issues of diversity and cultural and linguistic competency,” she says. “I knew I wanted to have the research skills, but I also knew I wanted to have leadership skills. That was one of the selling points of the Dr.P.H. program.”

She is proud of what she has been able to accomplish so far at Kaiser Permanente: “When I go to my mom’s doctor appointments, and I see the electronic medical record, and they’re asking questions that take into consideration her entire being, inclusive of her language and culture, I know that the work I’m doing at the national level is having an impact.”

FRESH PERSPECTIVE — By Steve Francis

Blinded by Novelty: The Student’s Dilemma It is easy to see. Every day, I do it, you do it. We all have an attraction to the latest and greatest: the new iPhone, a pair of shoes… or for this crowd, the latest Illumina array or hyperdimensional causal model. We feel immediate wonder when introduced to a new technology or technique. That wonder can drive us to create, but if we are not careful, it can blind us to our goal. In public health we have but one goal, that is to increase the health and wellness of all people. That goal is not to do science; it is to use science to combat disease.

find this important because as a young student of epidemiology I find myself attracted by novelty. I “oooh” and “ahhh” at complex analyses, and yawn at simple studies; yet novelty should have no bearing, as our work is for the greater good. I am by no means a Luddite—quite the opposite—but therein lies the temptation.

New tools are sexy. They get the most press, are more likely to be published in Science, and, no one can deny that doing something “new” is almost always more exciting. But we cannot let ourselves fall into the trap of allowing technology or method to dictate our questions.

That is, we cannot allow our hypothesis to be driven by the tool; our hypothesis must be guided by our goal. In public health research, that goal can seem a bit abstract, but the principle is directed by the thoughtful plodding that is hypothesis testing.

We have heard it all before, but there is wisdom in the scientific method that transcends your study and mine. We are all (or should be) hypothesis testing. That is, formulating a sound hypothesis and systematically collecting and examining data using any tools necessary in order to confirm or deny. Yet fundamentally

we first have to pose a question, and this can be the most difficult and important part of the entire process.

Over the last two years I have had the privilege of working closely with Dr. Warren Winkelstein Jr. During our studies into the history of epidemiology, an interesting yet obvious pattern has emerged. Many of the great advances in public health were not the result of a technology finding a question; they were the result of a hypothesis finding a tool.

“Rubbish,” you say, but there is evidence: • In the 1760s George Baker did not find a disease to apply a test to. He used possibly the first public health laboratory to test for lead to answer his hypothesis on the Devonshire Colic.

• During the 1850s John Snow did little more than count, but in the process of systematically testing his hypothesis on cholera, he founded epidemiology.

• In 1912 Janet Elizabeth Lane-Claypon did not look for two groups on which to use a t-test; she needed a way to compare groups of women to complete her seminal paper on breast cancer.

It might sound silly to think of searching for a question on which to use a t-test, but imagine what researchers in the future will think of our tools. When viewed in the long term, the wisdom of hypothesis testing shines. You may know your tool well; but if that tool is a hammer, you look for nails, and you will never see the house.

As researchers we must keep an open mind.

We must place our effort into posing important questions and then find the tools needed to test our hypotheses.

The elegant study that describes what others have failed to see is the way we advance in science, yet it is our responsibility to ensure that public health research attains a deliberate and careful equilibrium. How do we effectively balance the use of dazzling, novel tools with hypothesis testing that maximizes public health impact? This is the student’s dilemma.

Steve Francis M.S. ‘11 is currently a doctoral student at the School of Public Health. He is a graduate student researcher for the Northern California Childhood Leukemia Study.

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DEAN’S CIRCLE

The School of Public Health Dean’s Circle is a community of committed individual benefactors who share in and support the dean’s vision for the School’s future by making annual leadership gifts.

The following list reflects gifts received from July 1, 2010, to June 30, 2011

$100,000 & Above Ken & Marjorie Kaiser Kathy Kwan & Alan Eustace H.C. Torng & B.F. Lee

$25,000 to $99,999 Gertrude & William Buehring Richard & Susan Levy

$10,000 to $24,999

Paul Klingenstein & Kathleen Bole Catherine and James Koshland Meredith Minkler & Jerry Peters Naheed & Dayton Misfeldt Robert & Joan Montgomery Lisa & John Pritzker Steven & Sally Schroeder Michelle Schwartz Allan & Meera Smith

$5,000 to $9,999

Carl Blumstein & Janet Perlman A. Arlena Kasa Carolyn Klebanoff & Fred Cohen Edward & Camille Penhoet Steven Presser Rosalind Singer

$1,000 to $4,999

Marcelle Abell-Rosen & Andrew Rosen Jaymie Ang & Orion Henry Stacey Baba & James Vokac Grace Bardine Amy Bassell-Crowe & Jeffrey Crowe Raymond Baxter & Aida Alvarez Jeffrey & Cathleen Brown Washington & Paula Burns Allyn & Mark Callahan Teresa & John Carlson George & Eleanor Cernada Alice Chetkovich Chia-Chia & David Chien 28

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Eunice Childs Jerome & Moonhie Chin Nilda Chong Linda & James Clever Margaret Deane & Brian Washington Susan & Michael Eckhardt Thomas Elwood Susan & James Foerster Donald & Diana Francis Dava & Donald Freed Carol & Robert Friis Jonathan Frisch Jane Garcia & Chris Kiteas Wallace Gee Marshall Goldberg L. Martin & Joyce Griffin David Harrington & Denise Abrams Sara Hartley David & Katharine Hopkins The Hosel Family Jay & Kip Hudson Benjamin, Won, and Sophia Hur David & June Jeppson Jeffrey Kang & Brenda Lee-Kang Nancy Karp Julia Klees Joan Lam Carl Lester Yvette Leung & Liwen Mah Franklin & Virginia Lew Judy Li & David Roland Sa & Qiuyuan Liu Nancy Lusk & Michael Smith Merle Lustig & Ronald Glass Kevin Mack & Naoki Nitta Arthur McIntyre Robert Meenan Arnold Milstein & Nancy Adler William & Kathleen Moeller Mary & Raymond Murakami Marion Nestle

Roberta O’Grady Nanette & John Orman Lisa & Roger Ota Artist Parker Leland & Kristine Peterson Mary Pittman & David Lindeman Robert Porter Darwin & Donna Poulos Brian & Tacy Quinn Arthur Reingold & Gail Bolan Lois Rifkin Jan Schilling Thomas Schwartz Sandra Shewry Stephen & Susan Shortell Shannon & John Siegfried Kirk Smith & Joan Diamond Shoshanna Sofaer & Lawrence Bergner Maury Spanier Robert & Patricia Spear Richard Stephens & Sherrill Cook Sheila Stewart & Charles Wilson L. James Strand David Strouss John & Gail Swartzberg Andrea & Paul Swenson Patricia & Kenneth Taylor Kenneth Taymor & Beth Parker Nancy Thomson Judith Tuller Eric Vittinghoff Eileen & James Vohs Joan Wheelwright Stephen Wold Susan & Chris Woodward John & Roxana Yau Stacy Yee Cecilia Zapata Arnie Zeiderman & Peggy Scott-Zeiderman

The CAMPAIGN for the SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Health care leader endows new chair Leonard D. Schaeffer, the WellPoint CEO who brought Blue Cross of California back from the brink of bankruptcy in the 1980s, continues to shape the future of health care in the state through the establishment of an endowed chair at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. The Leonard D. Schaeffer Endowed Chair in Health Economics and Policy supports an eminent faculty member’s work in health economics and policy at the School. Professor James Robinson Ph.D., M.P.H. ’81, director of the Berkeley Center for Health Technology, was selected as the inaugural chair holder.

The gift of $1 million was 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.

and intellectual energy will help us expand the Berkeley Center for Health Technology, which is focused on researching better ways to evaluate and purchase innovative drugs and devices.”

As founding chairman and CEO of the nation’s largest health insurance company, Schaeffer was selected by Businessweek as one of the “Top 25 Managers of the Year” and by Worth as one of the “50 Best CEOs in America.” In 1986, Schaeffer was recruited as CEO of WellPoint’s predecessor company, Blue Cross of California. He managed the financial turnaround of Blue Cross, founded WellPoint, and later completed 17 corporate acquisitions. When converting Blue Cross to WellPoint, Schaeffer established the California Endowment and the California HealthCare Foundation, two philanthropic organizations that expand access to affordable, quality health care for underserved individuals and communities, and promote fundamental improvements in the health status of all Californians.

In 1994, when Schaeffer was with Blue Cross, the company established the Blue Cross of California Distinguished Professorship in Health Policy and Management, which is currently held by Dean Stephen Shortell. Schaeffer also serves as a special adviser to the dean for The Campaign for the School of Public Health.

Leonard Schaeffer and Dean Stephen Shortell “It is an honor and a pleasure to inaugurate the Leonard D. Schaeffer chair,” says Robinson. “I have been connecting with Leonard, Blue Cross, and WellPoint now going on 15 years. His financial support

“Leonard Schaeffer’s generous support and the matching funds from the Hewlett Foundation will enable us to significantly expand our impact on health policy in this country,” says Dean Shortell.

“Jamie Robinson’s ‘ground level’ research on physician payment, insurance coverage, and health technology has already influenced policy and will be further enhanced by this support. He is a perfect fit for the chair.”

HONOR ROLL The School of Public Health gratefully acknowledges the following individuals and organizations for their generous contributions from July 1, 2010, to June 30, 2011.

INDIVIDUALS Partners ($500 to $999) Anonymous Pamela & Rodrick Alston Ramona Anderson Arun Banskota Terry Bayer Kenneth & Patricia Behring Lan-Anh Bui Elizabeth Calfee Gretchen & Charles Carlson

Po-Shen Chang & Julie Craig-Chang Alice & Guo-Long Chu Wendy & Norman Constantine Orville & Helen Deniston Brenda Eskenazi & Eric Lipsitt Gerald & Lorraine Factor Mary Field Michael & Sandra Fischman Michael Gallivan & Douglas Rice Edward Gastaldo Patricia & Richard Gibbs

Robin Gillies Frederick Grose Narendra & Mira Gurung Joseph Guydish James & Patricia Harrison Amanda Hawes Joshua Kaufman James & Sarah Kimmey Laurence Kolonel Denise Koo Steve Lipton Wendy & David Louie

Christopher Madeksho J. Michael Mahoney Anthony Marfin & Amy Bode Stuart & Judith Marylander Malcolm McGinnis & Irene Searles Norma McKinzie Mary & Craig Noke Karen Oppenheimer Catherine & Roderic Park Craig & Caroline Peterson Stephen & Patricia Rappaport David Rempel & Gail Bateson Nancy & Robert Shurtleff Nicole Smith Stephen Taplin Constantine & Nancy Tempelis Barbara & Alfredo Terrazas Beth & Robert Thurlow John & Gail Uilkema Rajesh Vedanthan & Sujatha Srinivasan

Margaret Wang & Michael Nguyen Emily Warton & Steve Benting Kathleen Wesner & Daniel Sullivan John Williams Annie Worth Myoung You Friends ($250 to $499) Anonymous Carolyn Anderberg & Gabriel Baze Richard & Carlene Anderson John Balmes & Sherry Katz Michael Bates Robert Beatty Chhaganbhai & Sarojben Bhakta Julie Brown Patricia & Richard Buffler Merrill Buice continued on pg. 30

The CAMPAIGN for the SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

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The CAMPAIGN for the SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Organizational Change Specialist Joins Advisory Council As one of the newest members of the School of Public Health Policy Advisory Council, Mary Jo Potter will contribute her considerable business acumen to benefit the School’s mission in education, research, and service. Potter’s career has included positions at four consulting firms working across industries in organizational development and change practices, the latest being Bay Area-based Highperlink, a company she founded in 2004 and of which she is managing partner. The firm focuses on assisting organizations going through transformations resulting from mergers, acquisitions, change of leadership or direction, or scaling up through growth phases.

HONOR ROLL, continued Margaret Cary Carol & Robert Clazie Janet Coffman Jonathan Cohn Elena Conis & Justin Remais Douglas & Jacqueline Corley Michael & Nan Criqui Laurel & Stuart Davis Patricia & Walter Denn Louise Detwiler Jacquolyn Duerr & Alberto Balingit John & Marlene Eastman Enid Emerson Jacqueline Erbe & Andrew Talbot Tamar & Joe Fendel Kari Fisher Deborah Freund & Thomas Kneisner Daniel Gentry Robert & Patricia Gerdsen Carol Giblin Richard Glaser & Ann Stevens Bruce & Jana Good Nina & Richard Green Sadja Greenwood & Alan Margolis Karen & Richard Gunderson Wenting Guo Sidhartha Gurung William Hagbom John & Leta Hillman Genevieve Ho Nina Holland Timothy & Barbara Husby Robina & Timothy Rich Douglas Jutte Mariah Lafleur

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Andrew Lan Carrie & John Lee Ququan Liu & Yi Zhou Geoffrey Lomax Robert Lowe & Michelle Berlin Lowe Robert & Sharlene Lund Nora Madrigal & Olivier Le Blanc Harry & Claire Manji Thomas & Virginia McKone Vincent Meehan Ralph & Jane Myhre Mary O’Connor & Emil Brown Mary O’Leary Perkins & Arthur Perkins Rena Pasick Alissa Perrucci Valerie Randolph & Donald Fenbert Sidney & Sally Saltzstein Sarah Samuels & Joel Simon Julie Schmittdiel Gregg Schnepple Stephen Silberstein Robert Simon Carrie Sims James Slaggert Usha & Bharat Srinivasan Judith Stewart Esther Tahrir & Axel Dubon Susan Tanner Timothy Taylor Lisa Thompson Robert Tufel & Michael Sasso Michael Weiss David & Kathryn Werdegar Patricia & Phillip West Katherine & Robert Westpheling

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Potter loves the process of helping people and organizations change and evolve—a passion that she will no doubt apply to her work with the School. She is no stranger to the advisory role, having more than 60 person-years of board experience, with significant time spent in the health care sector. She has served 11 years on the board at Catholic Healthcare West (the last two as chair). In addition, she is on the boards of Catholic Health Initiatives, Compli, the National Association of Corporate Directors-Bay Area Chapter, and Hope Unlimited, and chairs the board at Hanna Center.

She received her master’s degree from Northwestern University, and her bachelor’s from Siena Heights in Michigan. She has also attended the Stanford Executive Program in India.

Brian Wong & Cindy Gok Helen Xu Susan Yeazel & Richard Seegers Katherine Yu & David Su Supporters ($150 to $249) Stephen Adeyinka Georgette Adjorlolo-Johnson Ellen & Paul Alkon Nancy Altemus Victor & Karen Alterescu Nancy Aossey Ann-Marie Askew Margaret Bradford Aumann Carol Badran

Katherine Baer Anna Bagniewska Dean Baker Marina Baroff Cheryl Barth & Tom McCurdie Lucinda & Ronald Bazile John Beare James Bellows & Linda Rudolph Stephanie Bender-Kitz & Kevin Kitz Joan & Howard Bloom Caroline Bowker & Charles Bliss Donald Brecker & Ann Darling Claire & Ralph Brindis Barbara Campbell

Raymond & Grace Chan Fu-Kuo Chang & Irene Li Sophia Chang & Anson Lowe Patricia & Scott Charles Chin Long & Fu Chen Chiang Elisa & Peter Chiu Joyce Chung & Kevin Yang Dolores & Samuel Clement Simon & Janet Cohn Carol & S. Bruce Copeland Myrna Cozen Robert & Susan Crane Hana & Meir Dan-Cohen Dale Danley James & Dorothy Devitt

Barbara Terrazas M.P.H. ‘76, Alfredo Terrazas, and Jane Garcia M.P.H. ‘80 enjoy brunch at Jazzing It Up with Alumni and Friends, a silent auction organized by the Public Health Alumni Association.

The CAMPAIGN for the SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Michael & Sharon Dillon Leonard Doberne & Cheryl Tau Martha Dominguez Glumaz Leland & Marta Ehling Don & Karen Eisenberg Miriam Eisenhardt & Edward Murphy Joseph Engelman Marsha Epstein Rosa Fernandez & James Roybal Julie Fishman & Terry Pechacek Carol & James Floyd Sara Frank Edward Gallagher Erika Garcia Judith & Jose Garcia Liliane Geisseler Diane & Vincent Gonzalez Yevgeniy Goryakin Laurel & Michael Gothelf Cordelia Grimm & Darren McGregor Surbhi Gurung Rona & Robert Henry Glenn & Jan Hildebrand Carolyn Hoke-Van Orden & Frank Van Orden Karen Holbrook Estie & Mark Hudes Susan Ivey Nancy & Kurt Jackson Jeffrey Jacobs & Ann Rojas Brennan & Fitzgerald James Kathleen Kahler & Brian Stack Mark Kaplan Rosalia Kersch Rajendra Khadka Kenneth Kizer Heather Kuiper & Loren Rauch Mark Kutnink Janet Leader Anita Lee Kelvin & Brenda Lee Lynn Levin & Stanley Oshinsky Adam Levine Michael Lipelt Marilyn Lippman Kate Lorig Frank & Waneka MacKison David Mark Karen Martz Rajesh Maskey Brigid McCaw Kevin McGirr Alan & Margaret McKay Elizabeth Minkler Michael Musante Frank Mycroft & Sue Tsang Victoria Nelson Beata & Harlen Ng Mark Nicas & Jennifer McNary Luna Okada & Wynn Sheade Dean & Anne Ornish Richard & Carolyn Palmer Valentine Paredes Richard & Martha Pastcan Lesley & Jayson Pereira Robert Prath

Richard & Julia Quint Dan Rathbun Alice Ring-Diefenbach & Robert Diefenbach Anna Lisa Robbert Silvestre & Victor Silvestre Marilyn Robbie Jossens & Lawrence Jossens Gordon & Whit Robbins Corinne Rocca Beth Roemer Florence Rose Judith Rosen & Paul Menkes Nicholas Ross Narda Roushdi Thomas Rundall & Jane Tiemann Gopal & Andrea Sankaran Mary & George Scharffenberger Michael Schump Jessica Siegel & Stephen Tsoneff Phoenix Sinclair Jonathan Singer Esmond Smith Lorraine Smookler Zelda & Nathan Sokal Corwin Strong Dale Tipton John Troidl Feng Tsai Sandra Tye Barry & Susan Wainscott Nina Wallerstein Marilyn Winkleby & Michael Fischetti Barbara Wismer Otis & Teresa Wong Donna & Philip Wright Kara Wright & T. James Lawrence Xiaopeng Xu Zheng Yin Su Yu Victoria & Steven Zatkin Contributors ($1 to $149) Anonymous Joana Abitan Simone Adams Anita Addison Dorothy Aeschliman Jennifer Ahern & Yohance Edwards M. Bridget Ahrens & Jean Szilva Donald Allari Laura Allen Linda Amano & Carter Lee Adele Amodeo Ahyoung An Gary & Maria Anderson Henry & Virginia Anderson Patricia Anderson Shirley & Allan Anderson Allison Apana Karina Arambula & Andy Capdarest Yumchindorj Argo Carl Ashizawa & Rebecca Honma-Ashizawa

Alice & Eric Au Melissa Austin Aaron Babian Howard & Anita Backer Richard Bailey Jongke Bair & Fang-Ba Lin

Heather Blume Aaron Bochner Catherine & Erick Bohn Jane Borg Lynda Bradford Joan Bradus & Dale Friedman

Victoria Montoya bids on a silent auction item at Jazzing It Up with Alumni and Friends.

Marilyn & Wallace Bair Agnes Balla Keith & Gail Bandel Lona & Darel Barham John Barker & Fan Cheng Arthur & Mary Barnes Kevin Barnett & Alison Neurin Elaine Base Henrissa Bassey Suzanne Battaglia Kevin & Lori Beagan Gerald & Pamela Beck Suzanne Bell Catherine Bender Mary Ann & Ed Benik Lester & Evelyn Bennett David Berke Esperanza Bernal Muriel Beroza Daniel Bertheau Linda Besant Harvey & Bonnie Bichkoff Glenn & Jeri Bissell Rebecca Blankenburg & Steven Lieske Babette & Sydney Bloch

Russell Braun Joseph Brazie Lauren Brener Letitia Brewster & David Walton Claude Brown Elizabeth Brown Garrett Brown & Myrna Santiago Willard Brown & Judith Ginsburg Nora Brusuelas Katherine Bryon Pamela & David Bullen Bishant Burathoki Sanjay Burathoki Linda Burden Daniel & Thelma Burke Michael Butler Patricia & Maximiliano Camarillo Gisele Camozzi Martha Campbell & Malcolm Potts William Campbell Fe Cardona James Carpenter Ronald Carter Diego Castaneda Arthur Castillo Edward & Joann Cavenaugh

Zoe Chafe Carrie Chan Ruth Chan Shawn Chandler Albert & Yvonne Chang Christine Chang Doris Chang Rokhsareh & Michael Charney Helen Chase Melody & Richard Chasen Lisa Chen Sheena Chen Yvonne Cheng Ka Yan Cheung Nancy Cheung Mary Chisholm Thupten Cholang & Cathy Taylor Raj Chongbang Eric Chow Isabella Chu Kenny Chung Heather Clague & Frederic Theunissen Michael & Jan Clar Ashley & Kenneth Coates Jennifer Cockrill Seymour Cohen Leonard & Roberta Cohn Jacqueline Colby Nancy Collins & Francesco Adinolfi James Cone Paul & Susan Conforti Emily & Christopher Contois Alexis Cooke Kitty Corbett & Craig Janes Sergio Covarrubias Martin & Diane Covitz Lawrence & Constance Cowper Joshua Cronemeyer & Emily Hippert David Crouch James & Evelyn Crouch Patrick & Barbara Cullinane Virginia Cumberbatch Lara Cushing Peter & Gwen Dailey Brian Daly Helena & James Daly Richard Daniels & Arlene Kaplan Daniels Rena David & Walter Meyers Harry & Laurie Davis Robert & Merle Davis Stephen Davis & Christine Laszcz-Davis Robert Day & C.J. Taylor Barbara & Alain de Janvry Julianna Deardorff Patricia & David DeFehr Sonali Desai Debra DeZarn Ronald Dieckmann & Patricia Gates LeContĂŠ Dill Maureen Dion-Perry & Edward Perry continued on pg. 32

The CAMPAIGN for the SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Fall 2011

31

The CAMPAIGN for the SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

HONOR ROLL, continued Stephen Dippe & Gerri Ferrara Doris & Carl Disbrow Deborah Dobin & Scott Robinson Harlean & Charles Donaldson David & Reade Dornan William Dow Hellan & Bradley Dowden William & Joan Drum Erin Dugan & Brian Purcell Gordon Dugan Zhanna Duiseneyeva Kent & Irene Dunlap Adrian Durbin Cecilia Echeverria Evelyn & Leslie Edens Jose Eguia Richard Emmons & Barbara Voorhees-Emmons Robert Enzinger Frederick & Jean Erdtman Christina Eskridge Yvonne Esler

Denise & David Evans Garold & Joyce Faber Denise Fair Norma Faris Judith Feinson Kevin & Barbara Fennelly Lia Fernald & Guy Haskin Sara Fernandes-Taylor Flora Fernandez Sammy Feuerlicht & Susanne Simpson Jared & Janet Fine Robin & Mark Fine Gerald & Linda Finer Kathleen Fitzgerald Camille Fitzpatrick Ronald Folkerth & Lyric Rillera Stewart & Lillian Fong Orcilia Forbes Nancy Frank Constance Fraser Robin & Peter Frazier

The CAMPAIGN for the SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH Progress as of December 31, 2010 GOAL:

$95 million

$9 million needed to reach goal

$86

Jul. 1–Dec. 31, 2010

$76

FY 09-10

$57

FY 08-09

$35 $29

FY 07-08

$15

FY 05-06

FY 06-07

in millions

32

Healthier Lives in a Safer World

Fall 2011

Daniel Freitas Jillian Friedman Philip & Mindy Friess Katharine & Daniel Frohardt-Lane Brie Gainer Marianne Gallo Artin Galoosian David Gan Brad & Pauline Garber Analilia Garcia Terhilda Garrido Tebeb Gebretsadik Jack & Karen Geissert Alison Gemmill Charles Gemora Robyn Gerdes Sahar Ghafari Gamal Ghaly Nancy Gilien Giovanna Giuliani Marilyn & Amos Goldhaber Sandra Goldstein & Kenneth Wilkinson Tina Goloborodko David Gonzales Mindy Goodman Ramya & Ramesh Gopalan Marea & John Grant Howard Graves & Julie Baller Marian & Roger Gray Susan & Lowell Greathouse Georgia Green Linda Greenberg & Hiroshi Motomura William & Lynda Gross Nori Grossmann Susan Gruber & Daniel Rose Valerie Gruber Sylvia & Simon Guendelman Mukhiya Gurung & Vijayata Burathoki Pammy Gurung Smriti Gurung Anne Gwiazdowski & William Andersen Evan Haigler Corazon Halasan Marian Haley Mary & Paul Hamer Karen Hammonds-Blanks Joshua Hanson Santhi Hariprasad Kim Harley Lynne Haroun Joan Harris Terry Hartig Wendy Hartogensis Lorinda Hartwell Constance & Gregory Haslett Alvia & Yvonne Hearne Julia Heinzerling Kathleen Hellum & W. Roy Alexander Eric & Patt Herfindal Daniel Hernandez Robert & Elaine Hikido Nancy & Allan Hikoyeda Marisa Hildebrand

Jeannette Hilgert Lynette Hill Valerie & Bruce Hironaka Richard Hirsh & Cathy Neto Rosemary Hoban Marie Hochstrasser Carl Hoffman Arlen & Helen Hoh Audrey Holm Ernest & Noreen Hook Sumi Hoshiko & Stuart Ozer David Hoskinson John Hough Sally Howlett Mae Hsu Teh-wei & Tien-Hwa Hu Gregory & Mary Huigens Joseph Hummel Phillip & Marcella Hurley Laurel Imhoff & German Ascani Deborah & Martin Inouye Robert & Beverly Isman Kiersten Israel-Ballard James E. & Meryl Jackson Richard Jackson & Joan Guilford Loisann Jacovitz Susan Jacquet Gay Jagels Susan Jamerson Patricia James Marie Jenkins Thanjira Jiranantakan Steven Joffe & Elizabeth Haas Bethelen Johnson Carol & Thomas Johnson Yeva Johnson & Michael Potter Deborah Johnson Hayes & Terry Hayes Frank & Linda Jones Gary Jones Ngon Jue Alma & Ian Kagimoto Justin, Michael, and Kimberly Kappel Leanne & Richard Kaslow Jeffrey Kasowitz & Adina Allen Irene & Kiyoshi Katsumoto Dorothy Kay Harvey & Susan Kayman Mary Keenan William Keene Jo-Anne & Juan Kelly Lani Kent Eric Kessell Kuljit & Balvir Khunkhun Shobna Khunkhun Ruthann Kibler John Kim Megan Kinsey Nancy & Kenneth Klostermeyer Cheryl Knight Jill Korte Bruce Kosanovic Kathryn Kotula Dorcas Kowalski Janina Kucko Tendesayi Kufa Devina Kuo

Deniz Kursunoglu Marilyn Kwan Clement & Donna Kwong Darwin & Merrily Labarthe Harsha Lakshmanan & Udaya Rajbhandari Usha Lama Laura Lamb Susan Lambert Claudia Landau Bruce Lane Sandra Lane Odessa Larkin Sierra Larson Abiose Lasaki Joyce Lashof Melinda Lassman Rita & James Laughon Audrey Lawrence Phuoc Le Linda Leahy Frances & Ronald Ledford Linda Lee Mary & Michael Lee Michelle Lee Henry & Helga Leighton Danielle Lerer Lillian & Dan Levy Markell Lewis Tanya Libby Joan Lichterman William Light & Robin Vernay-Light Jennifer Lin Michael Lin Samuel Lind David Lindquist Robert Lipton Donna Lohmann & Christopher Barker Lois & Donald Lollich Peggy Loper & Michael McShane Yang Lor Amy Lowry Timmy Lu James & Maureen Lubben Betty Lucas & Gordon Jackins Anne & Charles Ludvik Jessica Lum Claudia & Robert Lutz Raymond Ly Megan Lynch Constance Machutes Shirley Main Tatiana Mamantov Corina Mantke Gordon Mar Claire Margerison-Zilko & Stephen Zilko Elise Mariner John Mateczun & Elizabeth Holmes Marlon Maus Marjorie & Robert McCarthy Robert & Darlene McCarthy Gary McCauley Michael & Michele McCulloch Janet McDonald Marian McDonald

The CAMPAIGN for the SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Janet McNamara Rosa Medina Raymond Meister & Mary Miller Maya Melczer Christina & Randall Mellin Mark Mendell Caitlin Merlo Leslie Mikkelsen Andrew Miller Jenesse Miller Michele & Geoffrey Miller Robert & Faith Miller Suellen Miller Ray Minjares & Ryan Greene-Roesel I.D. Mitchell Marla Miyashiro Janet Mohle-Boetani & Mark Monasse Leone Mohney Susan Moldaw Matthew Moore Lee Moore-Robert & Olivier Robert Mary Moorhead & Gary Oto Florence Morrison Clark Hallie Morrow Heather Mui Mark & Nancy Munekata Melissa Murphy Ruth Nagano Amalia & Carl Neidhardt

Bianca Nepales Lisa Nerenberg Richard Neumaier Heather Newett Keith Ng & Patricia Hui-Ng Dawn Ngo Russell Nickels Karen Nikolai Joanne Nititham Kellie Nolan James & Audrey Nora Charlotte Noyes & Clark Watkins Ann & John Nutt Michelle Odden Marcellina Ogbu Afolabi & Mojirola Oguntoyinbo Peter Oh Christina O’Halloran Roberta O’Hara Ruby & Donald Okazaki Victor Olano Ann & Thomas Oldervoll McKenzie Oliver Adam Olivieri & Jean Follette Cynthia & Brian O’Malley David & Mary O’Neill Melissa Ongpin Fernando & Diana Oronos Kathryn Orsini Charles & Barbara Osicka Voltaire Paje Amit Pande

Amrit Pant Sarah Papermaster Padmini Parthasarathy Marina Pascali Eileen & Mark Pearl Curtis Petran Mary Philp Cheri Pies Therese Pipe Tommie Pippins Jennifer & Matthew Plunkett Adam Polis Katherine Pollard Pin Poon Susan & Tomi Poutanen Sabina Pradhan Susan & John Proctor Harenda, Charu, and Nisha Punatar Savitri Purshottam Nancy Puttkammer & David Saxen Stanley Quan Patricia Ramsay & Shawn O’Leary Florence & Paul Raskin Stephen Rauch Reimert & Betty Ravenholt Kenneth & Ethel Read George Redman Stephen & Nancy Redmond Helen Reed Irene Reed

Public Health Alumni Association Vice President Rob Tufel M.S.W., M.P.H. ‘90 greets association board member Michael Fischman M.D., M.P.H. ‘83 and his daughter at Jazzing It Up with Alumni and Friends.

Danielle Rees Lester Reichek Kyndaron Reinier & David Henehan Annie Rein-Weston Larry & Carol Retchin Liza Reynolds & Jason Landis Barbara Rhine Nancy Rhine

Michael Richards Paul & Linda Ricks Karen Riesett Jean & Francis Riley Diane Rittenhouse & Charles Sakai Sarah Roberts Lolita Roibal Lionel & Louethel Rose continued on pg. 34

Decade Club Recognizing individuals who have given for the past 10 years consecutively Pamela & Rodrick Alston Adele Amodeo Ramona Anderson Richard & Carlene Anderson Howard & Anita Backer Richard Bailey Dean Baker John Barker & Fan Cheng Marina Baroff John Beare Carl Blumstein & Janet Perlman Joan Bradus & Dale Friedman Claire & Ralph Brindis Claude Brown Jeffrey & Cathleen Brown Patricia & Richard Buffler Elizabeth Calfee Barbara Campbell Gretchen & Charles Carlson Raymond & Grace Chan Po-Shen Chang & Julie Craig-Chang Alice Chetkovich Chin Long & Fu Chen Chiang Eunice Childs Carol & Robert Clazie

Dolores & Samuel Clement Linda & James Clever Ashley & Kenneth Coates Seymour Cohen Carol & S. Bruce Copeland Martin & Diane Covitz Lawrence & Constance Cowper Dale Danley Margaret Deane & Brian Washington John & Marlene Eastman Susan & Michael Eckhardt Leland & Marta Ehling Gerald & Lorraine Factor Robin & Mark Fine Gerald & Linda Finer Michael & Sandra Fischman Carol & James Floyd Constance Fraser Dava & Donald Freed Katharine & Daniel Frohardt-Lane Wallace Gee Liliane Geisseler Daniel Gentry Carol Giblin Marian & Roger Gray

James & Patricia Harrison Glenn & Jan Hildebrand Marisa Hildebrand David & Katharine Hopkins Patricia and Harold Hosel David Hoskinson Estie & Mark Hudes Deborah & Martin Inouye Alma & Ian Kagimoto A. Arlena Kasa Leanne & Richard Kaslow James & Sarah Kimmey Julia Klees Laurence Kolonel James and Catherine Koshland Mark Kutnink Clement & Donna Kwong Joan Lam Andrew Lan Joyce Lashof Frances & Ronald Ledford Kelvin & Brenda Lee Carl Lester Lynn Levin & Stanley Oshinsky William Light & Robin Vernay-Light Nancy Lusk & Michael Smith J. Michael Mahoney Shirley Main David Mark Karen Martz Rosa Medina

Robert Meenan Raymond Meister & Mary Miller Mark Mendell Meredith Minkler & Jerry Peters Ralph & Jane Myhre Linda Neuhauser Beata & Harlen Ng Mary & Craig Noke Alan Oppenheim & Alice Salvatore Artist Parker Edward & Camille Penhoet Darwin & Donna Poulos Savitri Purshottam Lois Rifkin Gordon & Whit Robbins Thomas Rundall & Jane Tiemann Lisa Sadleir-Hart & Thomas Hart Sidney & Sally Saltzstein Gopal & Andrea Sankaran Leigh Sawyer & Gerald Quinnan Jan Schilling Takeo Shirasawa Stephen & Susan Shortell Nancy & Robert Shurtleff Robert Simon Rosalind Singer Allan & Meera Smith Esmond Smith Kirk Smith & Joan Diamond Lorraine Smookler

Shoshanna Sofaer & Lawrence Bergner Robert & Patricia Spear Usha & Bharat Srinivasan Susan Standfast & Theodore Wright Edith & Guy Sternberg Marilyn & William Stocker John & Gail Swartzberg Laurence & Ann Sykes Kenneth Taymor & Beth Parker Marilyn Teplow Ronald Thiele Mary Haven & Richard Thompson Pamela Thompson Claudine Torfs John Troidl Laura Trupin Sandra Tye Eileen & James Vohs Harvey & Rhona Weinstein Michael Weiss Katherine & Robert Westpheling John Williams Michael Williams Terry & Teri Winter Barbara Wismer Channing Wong Kara Wright & T. James Lawrence Suzanne & John Young Katherine Yu & David Su

The CAMPAIGN for the SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Fall 2011

33

The CAMPAIGN for the SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

HONOR ROLL, continued Allan Rosenberg Shelley Ross-Larson Elizabeth Rottger Genevieve Roy Alice Royal Karen Rusiniak Sheryl Ruzek & James Griesemer Sarah Ryan Hussein Sabbagh & Salwa Jaffal Jeffrey Sacks & Sue Binder Lisa Sadleir-Hart & Thomas Hart Khae Saetern Gail St. John Kelly Sandin Martha Sandy & Qi Dang Urmimala Sarkar & Theodore Omachi Clea Sarnquist & Tom Arnold Leigh Sawyer & Gerald Quinnan Katherine Saxton Catherine Schaefer Harry Schermer Robert Schlegel & Janet Fogel Sandra Schwarcz Steven Schwartzberg Victoria & Dell Schweitzer Courtney Scott

Charles Scronce Betty Seabolt Kristin & Paul Seeman Nancy Seldin Steve & Nancy Selvin Edmund Seto Shira Shafir & Ted Kroeber Mridula Shankar Saroj Sharma Takeo Shirasawa Ronna & Richard Shpall Dara Shulman June & Aaron Shwayder Tedi Siminowsky Phyllis Simone Shirley Singh Nicole Sirivansanti Janey Skinner Grace & Carl Smith Karen Smith Lester & Pauline Smith Margot Smith Terrill Smith Kristie Snider Lonnie Snowden Susan & David Snyder James & Muriel So

Krikor & Caline Soghikian Constance & Jason Som Marcia & Robert Somers Lucia & Peter Sommers Gail Sondermeyer Helen & Malcolm Sowers Jeanette Spangle & Alan Walfield Sidney Spies Andrea Spillmann Helen Springer Joan Sprinson Andrea & William Spurgeon Kathryn Stambaugh & Thomas Mazzotta Susan Standfast & Theodore Wright Mark Stanley Mary Stapleton & Morry Langer Tara Starr-Keddle Helen Stein Alan Steinbach Paul Stepak Edith & Guy Sternberg Wayne Steward Michelle Stewart & Jeffrey Stockstad Marilyn & William Stocker Stephanie Stramotas Margaret Straub

Karl Stucki Carol Suguitan Roberta Sung Somjit Supannatas Ann & Ted Suyeyasu Christine Swanson Laurence & Ann Sykes S. Leonard Syme Makoto & Ritsuko Taketani Katelyn Tambellini Mari Taruc Cathy Tashiro & Carl Anderson Jianhua & Jocelyn Tau Yingmei Tcheou & John Cunningham Marilyn Teplow Patricia Terry & Douglas Olson June Tester & Amin Azzam Nyunt Thane Shradha & Sujit Thapa Ronald Thiele Gregory & Bonita Thomas Geoffrey Thompson Mary Haven & Richard Thompson Pamela Thompson Colleen & Brian Thornton Diane Tokugawa & Alan Gould Alex Tom Boris Tong

Claudine Torfs Mary & Hoa Tran Robert Traxler Roky Truong Laura Trupin Robert & Allene Tumelty Michael & Barbara Turell Warren Turner Jan Vaage Ludenia & Steven Varga Gaye Varnay Adam Visconti Karin Wallestad & David Madland Wendy Wayne Harvey & Rhona Weinstein Morris & Audree Weiss Sanford & Carolyn Werner Amelia Wesselink James Wesson Earl White Sabrina Wickremasinghe Jan & Ramsay Wiesenfeld John & Elizabeth Anne Wikle Bruce Williams & Holly Brown-Williams Christianna Williams David Williams Michael Williams Terry & Teri Winter

Invest in a healthy future— for you and the world.

Are you currently retired or planning for retirement?

You can create a legacy by investing in UC Berkeley School of Public Health students while providing income for yourself with a retirement charitable gift annuity. A gift annuity provides fixed payments for the rest of your life and a sizable tax deduction now. Fixed payments are backed by the UC Berkeley Foundation and are not tied to the volatility of the stock market.

A portion of your income is tax-free.

Your retirement charitable gift annuity will provide future vital resources for scholarships, fellowships, faculty research, and other programs to help the UC Berkeley School of Public Health continue to solve the world’s most pressing health problems. An annuity can be established with a gift of $10,000 or more.

Want to learn more? Contact the Office of Gift Planning at (800) 200-0570 or ogp@berkeley.edu, or visit givetocal.berkeley.edu/giftplanning.

34

Healthier Lives in a Safer World

Fall 2011

Healthier Lives in a Safer World The CAMPAIGN for the SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

The CAMPAIGN for the SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Sharon Witemeyer Lynne Wittenberg & James Feathers Amanda Wong Ashley Wong Channing Wong Lisa Wong Ryoko & Henry Wong Ron & Genevieve Wood Cheryl Woodie Monica Woolridge Paula Worby Elizabeth Wozniak William Wright Jane Yang Frank & Gaylian Yee Mary & Melvyn Yokan Christopher Yopp Miya Yoshitani Janet Young Suzanne & John Young Paul Yousefi Walter Zaks Marshall Zemon Xuexin Zhang Jennifer Zhao Li Zhu Lisa Zwerling & Ron Birnbaum

IN HONOR OF Rita Anderson

by Gary & Maria Anderson Ralph Catalano

by Samuel Lind Norman & Pansy Chan

by D aniel & Thelma Burke Nori Grossmann Karl Stucki Chin Long Chiang

by M argaret Deane & Brian Washington Dong Chung & Jenny Feng

by Susan Ivey Class of 1951-Sanitary Science

by Frank & Gaylian Yee Class of 2009

by Linda & James Clever Leonard Duhl

by John Hough Lily Friedman

by James Carpenter Natalie Friess

by Philip & Mindy Friess Sidhartha Gurung

by Mindy Goodman Teh-wei Hu

by H.C. Torng & B.F. Lee J. Michael Mahoney

by Roberta O’Grady Marion Nestle

by Adele Amodeo Malcolm Potts & Martha Campbell

by S adja Greenwood & Alan Margolis

Rona Press

by Simon & Janet Cohn Art Reingold

by Denise Koo Zak Sabry

by Martha Dominguez Glumaz Stephen Shortell

by Stuart & Judith Marylander Karen Sokal-Gutierrez

by Zelda & Nathan Sokal Robert Spear

by Elena Conis & Justin Remais Helen Wallace

by Claude Brown Zeya Xu

by Su Yu

IN MEMORY OF Marjorie Sue Abramovitz

by Marshall Goldberg Erma Anderson

by Ramona Anderson Angelo Bardine

by Grace Bardine Henrik Blum

by Richard Bailey Jared & Janet Fine Susan Jamerson Mary Pittman & David Lindeman Dan Rathbun Sandra Shewry Lavern Borg

by Jane Borg Lester Breslow

by Henry & Virginia Anderson William Bruvold

by Katharine & Daniel Frohardt-Lane John Hough Mr. & Mrs. Celestino Cardona

by Fe Cardona Donald & Gertrude Chandler

by Shawn Chandler Simon K.H. Chang

by Albert & Yvonne Chang Alfred Childs

by Eunice Childs C.M. Derryberry

by Thomas Elwood Henry Dunlap

by Gregory & Mary Huigens Cecilia Epstein

by Marsha Epstein Frances Freitas

by Daniel Freitas Donald Gentner

by Judith Stewart Colette Godsey

by John Barker & Fan Cheng William Griffiths

by Martin & Diane Covitz Thomas Elwood Robert & Faith Miller

Lucinda Bazile M.P.H. ‘94 (right), event cochair and president of the Public Health Alumni Association, welcomes guests at the association’s silent auction, Jazzing It Up with Alumni and Friends.

Harold Gustafson

by Thomas Elwood Marie Hatherell

by Alice Ring-Diefenbach & Robert Diefenbach Ruth Huenemann

by Simone Adams Heather Clague & Frederic Theunissen Doris & Carl Disbrow Susan & James Foerster Alma & Ian Kagimoto A. Arlena Kasa Kathryn Stambaugh & Thomas Mazzotta Luther & Victoria Johnson

by Deborah Johnson Hayes & Terry Hayes Laura Keranen-Gallagher

by William & Lynda Gross Connie Long

by Lynn Levin & Stanley Oshinsky John Troidl Walter Mangold

by Lawrence & Constance Cowper Orville & Helen Deniston Frank & Gaylian Yee Lillian & Clarence Mengshol

by Marilyn & Wallace Bair Marilyn Milby

by Linda Burden Donald Minkler

by William Hagbom Elizabeth Minkler Gopal & Andrea Sankaran Kim Nguyen

by Margaret Wang & Michael Nguyen

Mr. & Mrs. J.G. Okamoto

by Ruth Nagano Nicholas Parlette

by Therese Pipe Phoebe Prince

by Esperanza Bernal Brie Gainer J. Michael Mahoney Marla Miyashiro Roberta O’Grady Roberta O’Hara George Redman Charles Scronce Mary Stapleton & Morry Langer

Jeanne Raisler

by Jonathan Cohn Svein Rasmussen

by Liliane Geisseler Evelyn Rillera

by Ronald Folkerth & Lyric Rillera Shirley Roach

by Carl Hoffman Beryl Roberts

by Thomas Elwood David & Elizabeth Schump

by Michael Schump continued on pg. 36

Benjamin Ide Wheeler Society Recognizing donors who have expressed their intention to include the School of Public Health in their estate plans Simone Adams Paul Boumbulian Doris Brusasco Patricia & Richard Buffler Nilda Chong Paul & Susan Conforti Viola Egli Robert Frangenberg & Ingrid Lamivault Marcia & Sergio Gerin Kenneth & Marjorie Kaiser A. Arlene Kasa Jogi & Tejbir Khanna

Joan Lam Carol Langhauser Edward McClendon Roberta O’Grady Pamela Peeke Therese Pipe Robert Porter Harper & Leonisa Puziss Ronald & Genevieve Roberto Stephen Schultz & Mary Pacey Rosalind Singer Barbara Whelan

Estates gifts received from July 1, 2010 to June 30, 2011 The Estate of Dudley Aldous The Estate of Eleanor Langpapp

The Estate of Jack Vermillion The Estate of Sanford Elberg

The CAMPAIGN for the SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Fall 2011

35

The CAMPAIGN for the SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

School of Public Health Policy Advisory Council 2011–2012 Kenneth S. Taymor J.D., Chair Executive Director Berkeley Center for Law, Business, and the Economy UC Berkeley School of Law

Peter F. Carpenter M.B.A. Founder Mission and Values Institute Margaret Cary M.D., M.B.A., M.P.H. Special Assistant to the Chief Technology Officer Department of Veterans Affairs

Raymond J. Baxter Ph.D. Senior Vice President, National Community Benefit Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc.

Linda Hawes Clever M.D., M.A.C.P. Chief, Occupational Health California Pacific Medical Center

Lucinda Bazile M.P.H. ’94 President Public Health Alumni Association Director, Policy and Special Projects LifeLong Medical Care

Founder, RENEW Deborah Freund Ph.D., M.P.H. President Claremont Graduate University

Teresa S. Carlson M.P.H. ’84 Health Care Management Consultant (retired)

HONOR ROLL, continued Duane Sewell

by G eorge & Eleanor Cernada Roderick & Cathy Park Leona Shapiro

by S usan & James Foerster Margot Smith Jeanette Spangle & Alan Walfield Folawiwo & Joseph Sholeye

by J ustin, Michael, and Kimberly Kappel Daniel Silvia

by Ronald Carter Charles E. Smith

by C arl Hoffman Robert & Faith Miller H.M. & P.T. Tcheou

by Yingmei Tcheou & John Cunningham Jean Todd

by Lynda Bradford Warren Winkelstein

by Joyce Chung & Kevin Yang Elaine Wolbroek

by Ron & Genevieve Wood Robert Worth

by Annie Worth Jesus Antonio Zapata

by Cecilia Zapata Sara-Mae Zemon

by Marshall Zemon

36

ORGANIZATIONS Executive Circle ($100,000 and above) Abbott Laboratories Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals Bristol-Myers Squibb US Pharmaceutical Group Consejo Nacional De Ciencia Techologia Consulado de Mexico The Doris Duke Foundation Genentech, Inc. George Washington University Gilead Sciences Institute for Health Technology Studies Johnson & Johnson Kaiser Permanente Marisla Foundation National Multiple Sclerosis Society The David & Lucile Packard Foundation Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Vodafone Americas Foundation Director’s Circle ($50,000 to $99,999) American Chemistry Council Atlantic Philanthropies

Healthier Lives in a Safer World

Fall 2011

Anthony B. Iton M.D., J.D., M.P.H. ’97 Senior Vice President, Healthy Communities The California Endowment Kenneth W. Kizer M.D., M.P.H. Director, Institute for Population Health Improvement UC Davis Health System Paul Klingenstein Managing Partner Aberdare Ventures Lauren LeRoy Ph.D. President and CEO Grantmakers in Health

William E. Moeller M.B.A. Operating Partner Linden, LLC

J. Leighton Read M.D. General Partner Alloy Ventures

Dennis J. Patterson Ed.D Chairman Collaborative Holding Co., LLC

Steven A. Schroeder M.D. Distinguished Professor of Health and Health Care UCSF Department of Medicine

Mary Pittman Dr.P.H. ’87 President & CEO Public Health Institute Mary Jo Potter M.B.A. Managing Partner Highperlink

Barbara Sandoval Terrazas M.P.H. ’76 Director, Planning, Development and Policy Tiburcio Vasquez Health Center, Inc.

Lisa Stone Pritzker Public Health Advocate for Children and Adolescents

Arnold Zeiderman M.D., M.P.H. ’75 Board-certified OB-GYN

Richard M. Levy Ph.D. Chairman of the Board Varian Medical Systems, Inc.

Children With Leukaemia Clean Air Task Force GlaxoSmithKline Merck & Company, Inc. National Institutes of Health The Safeway Foundation Schering-Plough Corporation Leaders ($25,000 to $49,999) Blue Shield of California British United Provident Association Limited The California Endowment Genentech, Inc. Hoffmann-La Roche, Inc. International Epidemiological Association Pfizer, Inc. Silicon Valley Community Foundation Switzer Foundation University of Minnesota Vertex Pharmaceuticals

DDL Diagnostic Laboratory EMD Serono, Inc. Fehr & Peers Associates, Inc. Global Health & Education Foundation Health Net Idenix Pharmaceuticals Intermune, Inc. The Jeffrey Group Jewish Community Foundation Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings The McKesson Foundation Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation Nanoviricides, Inc. Pediatric Dengue Vaccine Initiative Pharmasett, Inc. Roche Molecular Systems The San Francisco Foundation Tamir Biotechnology, Inc. Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program

Benefactors ($10,000 to $24,999) Abbott Diagnostics Alere, Inc. Anadys Pharmaceuticals BD Biosciences The California Wellness Foundation William J. Clinton Foundation

Patrons ($5,000 to $9,999) American Foundation for AIDS Research California HealthCare Foundation Consulate General of Columbia Global Healing HIV Medicine Association Nokia Research Center OraSure Technologies

Reiter Affiliated Company Sutter Health Care Advocates ($1,000 to $4,999) Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency Chevron Corporation Culture to Culture Foundation Dextra Baldwin McGonagle Foundation The Friendship Fund The Arnold P. Gold Foundation Idaho Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Los Palos Gastroenterology University of Minnesota Twin Cities Northwestern University NUCATS Institute Pacific Compensation Insurance Prescott-Joseph Center Schwab Fund for Charitable Giving Telecare Corporation Thornton & Naumes LLP UC Chinese Alumni Foundation Partners ($500 to $999) Google, Inc. Saintsbury Vineyards Friends ($250 to $499) Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco

The CAMPAIGN for the SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

F. Korbel Bros La Clínica de La Raza Nova Fisheries, Inc. The Oregon Community Foundation Prevention Institute Public Health Institute Samuels & Associates Tiburcio Vasquez Health Center United Way of the Bay Area Supporters ($150 to $249) Acme Bread Company California Association of Physician Groups Hafner Vineyards Andrea Menghetti Import & Export Unite Here!

Contributors ($1 to $149) Berkeley Symphony Orchestra Berkeley West Edge Opera Camino Restaurant HR Dowden & Associates Eastwind Books of Berkeley Ecology Center Fat Slice of Berkeley R. K. Handsand, Inc. Health & Community Services Home Instead Senior Care International House Jodie’s Restaurant & Bar-B-Que Legacy Film Series Mario’s La Fiesta Meals on Wheels of San Francisco Natural Grocery Company Rialto Cinemas Elmwood Rick & Ann’s Restaurant City of Salinas Semifreddi’s Handcrafted Bread & Pastries Senior Alternatives, Inc. Venezia

GIFTS IN KIND Acme Bread Company The Acqua Hotel Adagia Restaurant Albany Bowl Albatross Pub Backyard Food Gardens Bakesale Betty Robert Beatty Berkeley Art Museum Berkeley Playhouse Berkeley Repertory Theater Berkeley Symphony Orchestra Berkeley West Edge Opera Bette’s Oceanview Diner Harvey & Bonnie Bichkoff Camino Restaurant Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose The Claremont Hotel Cohen Cormier Health Care Eastwind Books of Berkeley

Ecology Center Fat Slice of Berkeley Fenton’s Creamery Flora Springs Winery Jonathan Frisch Funky Door Yoga Berkeley Grand Lake Theater Hafner Vineyards International House Jodie’s Restaurant & Bar-B-Que Juan’s Place Kaiser Permanente International F Korbel Bros La Mediterranee La Note Mariah Lafleur Lair of the Golden Bear Lawrence Hall of Science Leslie Louie Mario’s La Fiesta Andrea Menghetti Import & Export Natural Grocery Company New Century Chamber Orchestra Rialto Cinemas Elmwood Rick & Ann’s Restaurant Beth Roemer Rooster T. Feather’s Comedy Club Saintsbury Vineyards San Francisco Cruises San Francisco Museum of Modern Art V. Sattui Winery Erika Schwilk See’s Candies Semifreddi’s Handcrafted Bread & Pastries Shotgun Players Paula Silver-Manno Krikor & Caline Soghikian Venezia Whole Foods Market

MATCHING GIFTS Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Amgen Foundation, Inc. AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals LP Bank of America Foundation BASF Corporation The California Endowment California HealthCare Foundation Chevron Corporation CIGNA Foundation FMC Foundation Genentech, Inc. Goldman Sachs & Company Google, Inc. The James Irvine Foundation Robert Wood Johnson Foundation KPMG Foundation Lockheed Martin The McKesson Foundation The Medtronic Foundation Merck Company Foundation Pacific Gas & Electric Company Pfizer Foundation Wells Fargo Foundation

Class of ’11 Gives Back

Agnes Balla B.A. ‘11, cochair of the 2011 Class Gift Committee, presents a check to Dean Stephen Shortell representing $10,000 that the graduating class expects to raise in order to thank the School and enhance the educational experience for future students.

Class Gift Joana Abitan Jaymie Ang & Orion Henry Allison Apana Yumchindorj Argo Agnes Balla Henrissa Bassey Suzanne Bell David Berke Ronald Carter Diego Castaneda Zoe Chafe Carrie Chan Lisa Chen Sheena Chen Yvonne Cheng Nancy Cheung Isabella Chu Carol & Robert Clazie Alexis Cooke Sergio Covarrubias Lara Cushing LeConté Dill Jillian Friedman Artin Galoosian Analilia Garcia Erika Garcia Alison Gemmill

Georgia Green Susan Gruber & Daniel Rose Joshua Hanson Santhi Hariprasad Benjamin, Won, and Sophia Hur Thanjira Jiranantakan Janina Kucko Devina Kuo Deniz Kursunoglu Sierra Larson Michelle Lee Danielle Lerer Markell Lewis Tanya Libby Amy Lowry Claire Margerison-Zilko & Stephen Zilko Elise Mariner Marlon Maus Heather Mui Bianca Nepales Heather Newett Joanne Nititham Kellie Nolan Peter Oh Melissa Ongpin Nisha Punatar Stanley Quan Helen Reed Annie Rein-Weston

Hussein Sabbagh & Salwa Jaffal Sarah Sabbagh Khae Saetern Katherine Saxton Michael Schump Courtney Scott Mridula Shankar Nicole Sirivansanti Gail Sondermeyer Andrea Spillmann Michelle Stewart & Jeffrey Stockstad Stephanie Stramotas Hubert Sung Katelyn Tambellini Roky Truong Jan Vaage Adam Visconti Amelia Wesselink James Wesson Sabrina Wickremasinghe Amanda Wong Lisa Wong Jane Yang Myoung You Paul Yousefi Jennifer Zhao Li Zhu

Every effort has been made to provide a complete and accurate listing of individual donors and their gifts to the School of Public Health from July 1, 2010 to June 30, 2011. Should you discover a mistake or omission, please accept our apologies and contact us at (510) 642-2299 or trini@berkeley.edu so that we can correct our records.

The CAMPAIGN for the SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Fall 2011

37

AROUND THE SCHOOL

KUDOS

Minkler honored for community-based work In recognition of her work with communities, Professor of Health and Social Behavior Meredith Minkler Dr.P.H. ’75, M.P.H. ’70 received the John P. McGovern Award for Health Promotion from the University of Texas, School of Public Health at Houston. Minkler presented a lecture titled “Community-Engaged Research: What’s the Value Added for Health Promotion Research and Practice?” For 35 years, Minkler has undertaken health disparities research, community building and organizing, and community-based participatory research with underserved communities.

Eskenazi to speak on women in science Professor Brenda Eskenazi has been selected as a presenter in the 2010-2011 Li Ka Shing Foundation Women in Science Distinguished Speaker Series, funded by the Chau Hoi Shuen Foundation in honor of Hong Kong philanthropist Li Ka Shing. The program’s purpose is to support the advancement of women in science in China and to foster collaboration between scientists in China and the United States. Eskenazi will deliver two public lectures in China this fall: One will focus on her career and experiences as a woman scientist, and the other will focus on understanding and mitigating the impacts of chemicals on individual, community, and environmental health—an issue of great concern in China.

Sokal-Gutierrez receives award for civic engagement UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau presented Associate Clinical Professor Karen Sokal-Gutierrez M.D., M.P.H. ’88 with the Faculty Award for Civic Engagement at a public reception in May 2011. She was acknowledged for her volunteer work over the past decade in the area of global children’s health. On her own time and using her own money, she has led teams of students and health professionals to El Salvador, Ecuador, Nepal, and Vietnam. One of her projects focuses on reducing tooth decay among children in El Salvador—a serious and widespread problem affecting children’s nutrition and health. Sokal-Gutierrez and her team of volunteers have demonstrated the benefits and cost-effectiveness of intervention. She plans to expand this work to other developing countries.

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Martyn Smith recognized for work in children’s environmental health Martyn Smith, professor of toxicology at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, received a Child Health Advocate Award from the Children’s Environmental Health Network (CEHN). Smith was selected based on his support of CEHN in its formative years and for his research on children’s health, especially childhood leukemia. Nsedu Obot Witherspoon, CEHN’s executive director, presented the award to Smith at the 5th Annual Child Health Advocate Award Reception, held in Washington, D.C. Other award recipients included New Jersey Senator Frank R. Lautenburg and CNN chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta.

Pies named a champion in the field of maternal and child health Clinical Professor Cheri Pies Dr.P.H. ’93, M.P.H. ’85 was honored with a Champions in the Field of Maternal and Child Health award by the Health Resources and Services Administration, Maternal and Child Health Bureau. Pies, who has been a leader in women’s health for 30 years, received the award in recognition of her design and development of promising practices for addressing disparities in maternal and child health. In particular, she was praised for adapting the Life Course Perspective, which looks at health broadly over a lifespan, to the maternal and child health field.

Buffler named to two high-level epidemiology posts Patricia Buffler Ph.D. ’73, M.P.H. ’65, dean emerita and Kenneth Howard Kaiser & Marjorie Witherspoon Kaiser Endowed Chair, has been appointed to the Epidemiology of Cancer Study Section of the NIH Center for Scientific Review. The study section reviews epidemiologic studies in the area of cancer, including cancer of the breast, prostate, digestive system, reproductive system, head and neck, skin, bone, lungs, hematologic, and childhood cancers in human populations.

Buffler was also elected president of the International Epidemiological Association (IEA), a group with more than 1,000 members in more than 100 different countries. IEA facilitates communication among those engaged in research and teaching of epidemiology throughout the world and encourages the use of epidemiology in all fields of health. Buffler will serve as president-elect for the 2011-2014 term.

AROUND THE SCHOOL

NEW FACULTY

Introducing Seth Holmes Assistant Professor of Health and Social Behavior M.D., UC San Francisco Ph.D., UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco Internship and residency, University of Pennsylvania B.S., University of Washington

For physician and anthropologist Seth Holmes, a “light bulb moment” came during medical school at UCSF, when he learned that black children diagnosed with asthma and living in Hunter’s Point, a low-income area of San Francisco, were five times more likely to die than asthmatic children who lived in other areas of the city. “I began to think of possible reasons behind this tragic disparity,” he recalls. “Was it related to the waste incinerator or electricity plants near Hunter’s Point? What was the historical reason the plants were located there? And how might this relate to differences in political power of ethnic minority and poor communities?”

Holmes sought answers to these types of questions while pursuing a doctoral degree in medical anthropology at UC Berkeley and UCSF, and he continues to ponder the disparities puzzle in his public health career. “I’m particularly interested in how people come to perceive the illness and disease of certain categories of people as normal or justified in some way,” he says. “This belief that some people deserve their particular forms of suffering means there is often little desire to work for health equity or social equality.”

Seth Holmes engages in field research in the hometown of indigenous Triqui migrants in the mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico.

Putting his anthropology training to work, Holmes spent a revelatory year and a half migrating with indigenous Mexicans in the United States and Mexico—picking berries in Washington state, pruning vineyards in California, and harvesting corn in Oaxaca. An article on this trek was awarded the Rudolf Virchow Award from the Critical Anthropology of Global Health Caucus of the Society for Medical Anthropology, and he is close to finishing a book exploring immigrant health and the effect of social hierarchies in U.S. agriculture.

After completing medical and graduate school, Holmes gained experience in academia as a Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar at Columbia University, where he conducted multidisciplinary epidemiologic and ethnographic research. He also served as a teaching fellow at Harvard University’s Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, a writing fellow in University of Rochester’s Division of Medical Humanities, and as a physician scientist at the University of Pennsylvania.

Holmes joins the UC Berkeley School of Public Health faculty this fall. He will be exploring

new research focusing on HIV death disparities among immigrants and other marginalized groups in the Bay Area. “Research done at UCSF a few years ago showed that HIV-positive homeless people die of HIV at the same rate they did before the invention of HIV medicines, even though the death rate has gone down for every other population with HIV,” he says.

“This is true even in San Francisco, where HIV medicine and care is free for everyone.

It can’t be simplified into a one-dimensional understanding of health care access; there is something more going on, related to sociocultural and economic differences.”

With this project and others, Holmes hopes to collaborate with social science and public health experts across the Berkeley campus. His belief in the power of interdisciplinary work has him very excited to return to UC Berkeley as a professor.

“I feel extremely lucky,” says Holmes. “The Berkeley community excels at linking cuttingedge theory to real-world problems. There is a pursuit of high-level intellectual questions and an active passion for equality and commitment to social, economic, and cultural justice. There is nowhere I would rather be.”

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AROUND THE SCHOOL

RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS

Women who get dental care have lower risk of heart disease Women who get dental care reduce their risk of heart attacks, stroke, and other cardiovascular problems by at least one-third, according to an analysis that used data from nearly 7,000 people ages 44 to 88 enrolled in the Health and Retirement Study. Published online in Health Economics, the study compared people who went to the dentist during the previous two years with those who did not. The study adds to a growing body of research linking oral and cardiovascular health, and is the first to show that general dental care leads to fewer adverse cardiovascular outcomes in a causal way. The findings may also reflect differences in how men and women develop cardiovascular disease. Timothy Brown Ph.D. ‘99, assistant adjunct professor of health policy and management and associate director of research at the Nicholas C. Petris Center on Health Care Markets & Consumer Welfare, was the study’s lead author.

Low wages and poor conditions pose health risk for Chinatown food workers

Prenatal pesticide exposure tied to lower IQ in children

A study in San Francisco found that 50 percent of Chinatown restaurant workers receive less than minimum wage and 20 percent work more than 60 hours a week. The Chinese Progressive Association (CPA) and research partners released a groundbreaking report that examines health and working conditions in Chinatown restaurants and lays out a vision for improving working conditions for a healthy Chinatown. More than 400 workers were interviewed by 30 of their peers for the study, which was run by CPA and co-conducted with UC Berkeley, UCSF, and the San Francisco Department of Public Health, as well as close to 30 restaurant workers. Among other actions, the report recommends convening community stakeholder roundtables and strengthening enforcement of labor and health and safety laws. Meredith Minkler Dr.P.H. ‘75, M.P.H. ‘70, professor of health and social behavior, was the study’s principal investigator.

In a new study suggesting pesticides may be associated with the health and development of children, researchers have found that prenatal exposure to organophosphate pesticides—widely used on food crops—is related to lower intelligence scores at age seven. The researchers found that every tenfold increase in measures of organophosphates detected during a mother’s pregnancy corresponded to a 5.5 point drop in overall IQ scores in the seven-year-olds. Children in the study with the highest levels of prenatal pesticide exposure scored seven points lower on a standardized measure of intelligence compared with children who had the lowest levels of exposure. The UC Berkeley study is among a trio of papers showing an association between pesticide exposure and childhood IQ published online in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. The other two studies examined urban populations in New York City, while the UC Berkeley study focused on children living in rural Salinas, California. Professor Brenda Eskenazi was the study’s principal investigator; Maryse Bouchard, a postdoctoral researcher with Eskenazi at the time of the study, was the lead author.

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X-rays linked to increased childhood leukemia risk Diagnostic X-rays may increase the risk of developing childhood leukemia, according to a School of Public Health study.

Specifically, researchers found that children with acute lymphoid leukemia (ALL) had almost twice the chance of having been exposed to three or more X-rays compared with children who did not have leukemia. For B-cell ALL, even one X-ray was enough to moderately increase the risk. Study authors emphasized that health care providers are already cautious in their use of X-rays in children, and use them only when necessary to diagnose potential problems such as respiratory illnesses and broken bones. The findings, published in the International

Journal of Epidemiology, come from the Northern California Childhood Leukemia Study, a population-based case-control study that includes 35 counties in the northern and central regions of California. Patricia Buffler Ph.D. ‘73, M.P.H. ‘65, professor of epidemiology and dean emerita, is principal investigator of the study. Coauthors of the paper included Catherine Metayer, assistant adjunct professor, and Steve Selvin Ph.D. ’70, professor and head of the Division of Biostatistics. This research is supported by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

Salmonella bacteria transformed into antiviral treatment Researchers have reprogrammed Salmonella, the same foodborne pathogen that can cause diarrhea, fever, and abdominal cramps, into a safe transport vehicle for virus-stopping enzymes. Salmonella is very good at invading cells, so the researchers found a way to use the bacterium as a vector for the RNase P ribozyme that could stop the gene activity of cytomegalovirus, or CMV. Not only did this technique effectively treat mice infected with CMV, it worked as an oral solution that was swallowed instead of injected. This is the first time anyone has successfully engineered bacteria for the treatment of a viral infection. It’s also the first gene therapy treatment for viral infection that can be taken by mouth, which is far easier to administer than an injection. Professor Fenyong Liu teamed up with Associate Adjunct Professor Sangwei Lu to develop the innovative technique, and their findings were published online in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Institutes of Health helped support this research.

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AROUND THE SCHOOL

NEWS AND NOTES

Surgeon General visits UC Berkeley to discuss vision for a fit and healthy nation Vice Admiral Regina M. Benjamin M.D., M.B.A., the 18th Surgeon General of the United States, visited UC Berkeley on March 17, 2011, and presented a public lecture, “A Vision for a Healthy and Fit Nation.” She highlighted the alarming trend of overweight and obese 1 Americans and discussed ways to lead healthier lives.

Later that day she toured The Edible Schoolyard, an organic garden and kitchen classroom for students at Berkeley’s Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School. The Edible Schoolyard is a program of the Chez Panisse Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded by chef and author Alice Waters.

The Surgeon General put Berkeley on her public-speaking itinerary at the invitation of Cal alumna Pamela M. Peeke M.D., M.P.H. ’76. Her appearance was sponsored jointly by the School of Public Health and the College of Natural Resources.

1. Left to right: College of Natural Resources Dean J. Keith Gilless, School of Public Health Dean Stephen Shortell, Dr. Regina Benjamin, Mary Catherine Birgeneau, Dr. Pamela Peeke, UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau

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2. Seventh-grade students proudly present a quinoa salad to Alice Waters (fourth from left), Dr. Benjamin, Dean Gilless, and Dr. Peeke. The students prepared the salad using vegetables grown in the Edible Schoolyard garden, among other ingredients.

A look at Commencement UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall was filled to capacity on May 21, 2011, as 196 undergraduates and 221 graduate students crossed the stage to receive their diplomas at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health Commencement.

1. Graduates and their guests fill Zellerbach Hall.

2. Professor Emeritus S. Leonard Syme, winner of the Zak Sabry Mentorship Award, reunites with his former student Catherine Carpenter Ph.D., M.P.H. ’87, who nominated him for the honor.

3. Six-and-a-half-month-old twins Thomas and Camille share the spotlight as their mother, Mi-Suk Kang Dufour, receives her Ph.D. in epidemiology. Placing the doctoral hood over her head is Alan Hubbard, associate professor of biostatistics.

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

Four honored at 15th annual Public Health Heroes Awards Ceremony A wheelchair delivering philanthropist, a food policy expert, a community builder, and an organization that serves the homeless each received a Public Health Heroes Award from the UC Berkeley School of Public Health on March 30, 2011. The awards were presented at a ceremony at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. The honor is considered to be the only such prize given by a university to recognize individuals and organizations for their efforts to build healthier lives in a safer world.

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1. Award presenter Anthony Iton (left), senior vice president of Health Communities at The California Endowment, and Regional Public Health Hero Dr. Washington Burns (center), executive director of the Prescott-Joseph Center for Community Enhancement, join Dean Stephen Shortell.

2. Alice Waters (left), executive chef, founder, and owner of Chez Panisse and founder of The Edible Schoolyard, presents the National Public Health Hero award to Marion Nestle, Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University.

3. Sylvia Yee (left), vice president of programs for the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, presents the Organizational Public Health Hero Award to boona cheema, accepting on behalf of Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency (BOSS).

4. Kenneth E. Behring (left), founder of the Wheelchair Foundation and the WaterLeaders Foundation, accepts the International Public Health Hero award from Richard D. King, past president of Rotary International.

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4. World-renowned epidemiologist Dr. William H. Foege, Emeritus Presidential Distinguished Professor of International Health at Emory University, delivers the keynote address.

5. Interdisciplinary M.P.H Program graduates Kyle Nelson, Asiya Khan, Shyamala Mani, Eric Dinenberg, and Jan Vaage congregate before the Commencement ceremony.

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6. Associate Dean for Research and Professor of Epidemiology Arthur Reingold presents Vincent Yau Ph.D. ‘12, M.A. ‘11 with the Warren Winkelstein Award, which is given to the most outstanding student completing a Ph.D. in epidemiology.

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ALUMNI NOTES 1960s Lucy Johns M.P.H. ’67 led development of the California State Health Plan 1980—the first such plan for California. This plan was recently posted on the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development website. It used a social determinants planning framework years before its use became widespread in health policy. She has been active in her San Francisco consulting business, Health Care Planning and Policy, for several decades. Johns was the lead speaker in April 2011 before the Audits and Oversight Committee of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors at a hearing on the cost of health care.

1980s Barbara Staggers M.D., M.P.H. ’80 has been appointed vice chair of the board of directors of The California Wellness Foundation. Staggers is director of the Division of Adolescent Medicine at Children’s Hospital & Research Center Oakland, where she is also cofounder of FACES for the Future, a program that prepares Bay Area youth for careers in the health professions.

She has been a member of the foundation’s board since 2004.

1990s Jason Eberhart-Phillips M.D., M.P.H. ’90 was appointed health officer for Marin County, Calif., in April 2011. A former newspaper reporter, he has wide experience in a variety of top health and medical posts. He served as chief health officer for El Dorado County, Calif., from 2006 until his 2009 appointment as state health officer and director of health in Kansas.

He also served as senior medical lecturer at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand; as chronic disease director for the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services; and as an epidemic officer for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dominique Kerouedan M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H. ’91 has published Santé international: Les enjeux de santé au Sud (Les Presses de Sciences Po), the first book in French about health and aid effectiveness in developing countries. The book provides an overview of 44

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health issues in the Global South in four parts: the considerable contemporary issues of health in developing countries; the historical evolution of health systems built over the past 30 years in Africa in particular; the state of knowledge of effective policies, strategies and instruments for financing development aid; and the contributions of social science research in the service of soundly based, appropriate, and relevant decisions.

Somava Stout M.D., M.S. ’96 was named vice president for patient-centered medical home development at Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA), a Harvard-affiliated public health care system in Massachusetts. In this capacity, she will ensure the development and deployment of the patient-centered medical home model of care across CHA’s extensive network of ambulatory practices. She previously served as medical director at CHA’s Revere Family Health practice, where she was instrumental in creating a community health center that employed the patient-centered medical home model to improve care access and health outcomes for an underserved population.

2000s Margaret Handley Ph.D. ’00, M.P.H. ’90 received an award for Best Paper at UC Global Health Day on November 30, 2010. Her paper was titled “Navigating the Slipstream of Changing Food Environments—Binational Perspectives on Dietary Behaviors and Implications for Nutrition Counseling.” She is an assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at UCSF School of Medicine.

Daniel Gentry Ph.D. ’06 directs a CAHMEaccredited graduate program in health care administration at Rush University in Chicago.

Public Health Alumni Association Board of Directors 2011–2012 Lucinda Brannon Bazile M.P.H. ’94 (President) Rob Tufel M.S.W., M.P.H. ’90 (Vice President) Mariah Lafleur M.P.H. ’09 (Secretary-Treasurer) Beth Roemer M.P.H. ’76 (Past President) Mary Adèr M.P.P., M.P.H. ’98 Shahram Ahari M.P.H. ’05 Myrna Cozen M.P.H. ’89 Rosa Vivian Fernandez M.P.H. ’91 Michael Fischman M.D., M.P.H. ’82 Melinda Lassman M.A. ’75, M.S. ’77 Baljeet Sangha M.P.H. ’10 Erika Schwilk M.D., M.P.H. ’09 John J. Troidl Ph.D. ’01, M.B.A. R. Berna Atik Watson M.D., M.P.H. ’99 Evaon Wong-Kim Ph.D., M.S.W., M.P.H. ’90

The program recently jumped from 25th to 9th in the U.S. News and World Report rankings for 2011. This is the biggest jump in the history of the rankings. The previous program he directed at Saint Louis University, between 2003 and 2007, also climbed into the Top 10 for the first time on the most recent list.

Sylvia Chou Ph.D, M.P.H. ’08 “After a cancer prevention fellowship—part of which was spent at Berkeley’s M.P.H. program—I joined the federal government as a program director in the Health Communications and Informatics Research Branch of the Behavioral Research Program at the National Cancer Institute.”

Anthony Iton named Alumnus of the Year In recognition of his distinguished public health career, Anthony B. Iton M.D., J.D., M.P.H. ’97 received the 2011 Alumnus of the Year award from the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. Currently senior vice president for Healthy Communities at the California Endowment, Iton was selected for his dedication to improving the health of disadvantaged populations and for his understanding of the complex interplay of race, class, wealth, education, geography, and employment as they relate to health status. Iton received the award at the School of Public Health commencement ceremony.

Anthony Iton and Dean Stephen Shortell

IN MEMORIAM Tom Alexander died Dec. 27, 2010. A longtime staff member at the UC Berkeley Public Health Library, he started his library career in 1970 in the Agriculture Library before becoming head of the Public Health Library in 1979, from which he retired in 1997.

Henry Dunlap M.P.H. ’54 died Mar. 17, 2011, at age 91. One of the first graduates of the School’s master’s program in hospital administration, he served as administrator of Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles for more than 25 years. He retired from hospital administration in 1984 after serving at Verdugo Hills Hospital and Kaiser Foundation Hospital – Sunset. He then worked part-time for the Medic Alert Foundation. Dunlap served in the Navy during World War II. Eleanor N. Langpaap M.P.H. ’62, B.A. ’43 died Oct. 20, 2010, in Sacramento, Calif., at age 88. She had a long and distinguished career in public health, starting as an administrative intern and serving in increasingly responsible positions in California hospitals. In 1975 she became chief administrator of American River Hospital, the first woman to serve in this position in Sacramento. After her retirement, she served on numerous hospital boards.

Lela Morris M.P.H. ’79 died Feb. 1, 2011, at age 83. In 1945, she was the first African American to be admitted to the University of Washington School of Nursing, where she earned her nursing degree. Morris began her health care career as a public health nurse in the District of Columbia. Dismayed at the plight of workers exposed to hazards in the workplace, she devoted her career to occupational and environmental health issues.

She was the founding director of continuing education for the Northern California Occupational Health Center.

W. McFate (Mack) Smith M.D., RADM (Ret.) died at his home on Feb. 25, 2011. Born in 1926, McFate had a career in research and academic medicine that spanned more than 50 years. He retired from the U.S. Public Health Service in 1973 after becoming a Region 9 health director, rear admiral, and assistant surgeon general of the United States. He also retired from UCSF,

Sanford Samuel (Sandy) Elberg Ph.D. died Apr. 8, 2011, in Ukiah, Calif., at age 97. Elberg attended Lowell High School in San Francisco and received his undergraduate and doctoral degrees from UC Berkeley.

During World War II he served as an officer at Fort Detrick, Md. Elberg was a professor of immunology and medical microbiology in the School of Public Health from 1938 to 1940. After World War II, he taught in the Department of Bacteriology and served as its chairman from 1952 to 1957. He was appointed Dean of the Graduate Division at Berkeley in 1961, and served in that capacity until his retirement in 1978. Elberg was the recipient of the Berkeley Citation, the Clark Kerr Award, and the Sanford Elberg Lectureship in International Studies. Following retirement, he accepted a position as head of the University of California Overseas Program in Great Britain. Among his research accomplishments was the development of the Rev-1 Brucellosis vaccine. As a member of the World Health Organization, he traveled the world introducing the vaccine, which remains in wide use today. where he spent 20 years as professor of medicine, and director of the Preventive Medicine Residency Program at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. He was a leading expert in high blood pressure and other cardiovascular risk factor research.

Sujal Parikh B.A. ’06 died Oct. 12, 2010, from injuries suffered in a motorcycle taxi accident in Kampala, Uganda.

He was 25. Parikh was in Uganda conducting AIDS research as a Fogarty International Clinical Research Scholar. A fourth-year medical student at the University of Michigan, he received his undergraduate degree in public health from UC Berkeley. Parikh was a student leader involved in many groups addressing human rights and global health care disparities, and was the associate editor-in-chief and a writer for Global Pulse.

Peter L. “Pete” Petrakis Ph.D., M.P.H. ’71 died Feb. 28, 2011, in Everett, Wash., at age 82.

He served in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War at the military hospital in Rantoul, Ill. In addition to his M.P.H. from UC Berkeley, he had an M.S. in biochemistry from the University of Oklahoma and a Ph.D. in biochemistry from UCSF. He taught biochemistry at San Francisco State University. Petrakis was a writer-editor for many U.S. government agencies and an award-winning science writer for the National Institute of Health.

Hank Rubin M.P.H. ’51 died Feb. 24, 2011, at age 94. A fixture in the Bay Area’s wine and food scene, he was the longtime wine editor for Bon Appétit magazine, a wine columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, and the host of a KQED radio show. As a pre-med student at UCLA, he dropped out of school to join the all-volunteer Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. He finished his undergraduate degree before returning to the battlefront with the U.S. Army in 1942. He later worked for the Contra Costa Public Health Department.

Clay Norris Wells M.D., M.P.H ’70 died on Sept. 13, 2010, at W. F. Green VA Home in Alabama. He was an OB-GYN when he came to Berkeley for his M.P.H. He taught in medical schools at Tulane University, the Medical College of South Carolina, Brown University, and others. From 1973 to 1978, he was director of Maternal and Child Health in Alabama.

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. Mail it to the attention of Pat Hosel, Office of External Relations and Development, UC Berkeley School of Public Health, 417 University Hall #7360, Berkeley, CA 94720-7360.

You can also make your gift online at givetocal.berkeley.edu/publichealth.

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Vice Admiral Regina M. Benjamin, U.S. Surgeon General, visits the Edible Schoolyard at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School in Berkeley after delivering a lecture on campus.

For more photos, see p. 42.