Fall 2012 - Close the Health Gap - Berkeley Health

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University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health

Berkeley Health

FALL 2012

The Magazine for Alumni and Friends

Neighborhood Health Watch

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Life in the Margins

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America’s Health and the ACA

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Working together to build a better future

Thanks to

Mariah S. Lafleur M.P.H. ’09 has a message for her fellow alumni: “I urge you to support the School any way you can. Broad-based alumni giving sends a powerful message of support and gratitude.”

Berkeley. . .

Three years after graduating with a master of public health degree in nutrition, Lafleur already gives back to the School and its students. She makes annual gifts, serves as a member of the Public Health Alumni Association board of directors, and helps to host alumni events through the Center for Health Leadership. Why? Because she believes that Berkeley public health grads can help each other to build a healthier future. “The School is continuously training the next generation of leaders of our public health community,” she says. “I see evidence of this in my own career, in my colleagues and friends who are School alumni, and in the current students I now mentor.”

Our students are transforming the world into a healthier place. For example, she mentored Lizzie Velten M.P.H. ’12 when she worked with Lafleur as a summer intern at Samuels & Associates in Oakland. After graduating, Velten secured a position at the California Center for Public Health Advocacy, where she works to decrease consumption of of sugary beverages. She is grateful to With an estimated national shortage 250,000 public health alums like Lafleur, who have helped her along the way. professionals, the need for superior public health education, research,

and action has never been urgent. “Themore connection to alumni is a vital part of my education,” says Velten. “I didn’t walk in the door at Berkeley knowing exactly the whatbest I wanted to do.students Interacting Your support can help attract and retain Berkeley with alumni teaches you the pathways to a career in regardless of their financial means — students who are passionate public health.”

about protecting your health and the health of those you care about.

Nutrition expert Mariah S. Lafleur M.P.H. ’09 and recent grad Lizzie Velten M.P.H. ’12

Make your tax deductible contribution online at sph.berkeley.edu/giving or mail your giftyour usingtax the-deductible envelope in this magazine. online at It’s easy to support the School financially. Make contribution givetocal.berkeley.edu/publichealth or mail your gift using the envelope in this magazine. For additional information about making a gift to the School of Public Health, PatSchool Hosel, Assistant External Relations For additional information about making a gift tocall the of PublicDean, Health, call Pat Hosel, and Development, at (510) 642-9654. Assistant Dean, External Relations and Development, at (510) 642-9654.

HealthierLives Lives inina Safer WorldWorld Healthier a Safer The Campaign for the SChool of publiC health

universit y of california, berkeley


University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health

FALL 2012

Berkeley Health The Magazine for Alumni and Friends

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FEATURES 4

Neighborhood Health Watch UC Berkeley epidemiologists are passionate about making the places we live safer and healthier, and finding ways to reduce health disparities between neighborhoods.

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Life in the Margins Researchers in the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program aim to improve health care among members of stigmatized populations, such as homeless youth, injection drug users, and transgender women.

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America’s Health and the ACA Our health policy experts field questions on a complex and timely subject: the Affordable Care Act and health care reform in the United States.

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Food Equity and the Food Environment In this Q&A, Barbara Laraia, who heads the School’s Public Health Nutrition program, discusses the role that food and nutrition play in achieving health equity.

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Alumna Spotlight: Melanie Tervalon

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Teaching Physicians an Important Lesson Student Spotlight: Jonathan Malagon

24 Improving Communities to Improve Health Fresh Perspective: Occupy Public Health

26 Our Role in a Movement for Health Equity DEPARTMENTS 28 38 44 48

ON THE COVER: Members of the School community who are working to address health inequities include (left to right) lecturer Mark Horton, Assistant Professor Mahasin Mujahid, doctoral student Deb Karasek, researcher Joseph Griffin, and Assistant Professor Jennifer Ahern

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

Dean Stephen M. Shortell, Ph.D., M.P.H. Assistant Dean, External Relations and Development Patricia W. Hosel, M.P.A. Director of Communications and Public Relations Michael S. Broder Associate Director, Communications Linda Anderberg Director, Annual Fund and External Relations Programs Eileen Pearl Design Archer Design, Inc.

Contributors Linda Anderberg, Michael S. Broder, Abby Cohn, Solange Gould, Ryan Petteway, Katherine Schaff, Jessica Schaffer, Joseph Schuchter, Sarah Yang Photography Jim Block, cover, inside front cover, pp. 3, 5, 7–8, 11–12, 15–16, 18; Pantherstock, pp. 2, 4, 15, 20, 22, 37, 40, 41; istockphoto, pp. 9, 13; John A. Benson, p. 14; Peg Skorpinski, pp. 15, 22, 30, 32, 36, 38, 42–44, 49, back cover; Abby Cohn, p. 24; Alain McLaughlin, pp. 28, 43; Michael S. Broder, p. 39; Earl Dotter, p. 40; Reed Hutchinson, p. 45; Kelley Cox, GoldenBearSports.com, p.46

Communications Advisory Board Linda Anderberg, Michael S. Broder, William Dow, Patricia W. Hosel, Robin Mejia, Linda Neuhauser, Amani Nuru-Jeter, Steve Selvin, Stephen M. Shortell, Ann Stevens, Rob Tufel, David Tuller, Michael P. Wilson

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) 642-9572 © 2012, Regents of the University of California. Reproduction in whole or part requires written permission.

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FROM THE DEAN FROM THE DEAN

Building Health Equity One of the most intractable challenges of our time is to reduce the inequalities in health that exist in the United States and globally. It is also one of the greatest opportunities for improving health for everyone. In some of our past issues of Berkeley Health, we have focused on what the School is doing to reduce global health inequalities. This issue focuses on what we are doing in our own backyard. Consistent with our history of being thought and action leaders, we were among the first schools of public health in the United States to emphasize the broad-based underlying social and environmental determinants of health. In fact, it is widely recognized that the field of social epidemiology was invented at Berkeley under the leadership of Professor Leonard Syme. Among the luminaries contributing to this field are Berkeley alumni Sir Michael Marmot at University College, London; Lisa Berkman and Nancy Krieger, now at Harvard University; and many others. Sir Marmot’s

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path-breaking work on British civil servant workers demonstrating better health at every higher step of the civil service ladder regardless of other factors represents one of the most seminal contributions to the field. Professor Berkman is an internationally recognized social epidemiologist who has identified the important role that social networks play in predicting declines in physical and cognitive functioning. Professor Krieger is a leader in developing theoretical frameworks that guide our understanding of the social determinants of health.

As you will read on the pages that follow, a new cohort of Berkeley scholars, using sophisticated methods and refined theories, is producing the knowledge needed to reduce the health inequalities that exist by race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. They are building on the work of the pioneers. So much of our health is determined by where we live. Tell me your zip code—or the zip code of where you lived during most of your developing years—and I will tell you your current and likely future health status and life expectancy.

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For example, it is not by chance that there is a 10 year difference in life expectancy between the Hunters Point area of San Francisco and the more affluent neighborhoods of the city; between sections of Richmond and the rest of Contra Costa County; or between the flats and the hills of Oakland. We have third-world health statistics in nearby communities. At Berkeley, we have a tradition of speaking out when we think things are unfair or wrong. We view social justice as a cornerstone of public health. Our faculty, alumni, and students are passionate about “closing the health gap.” As I noted in my introductory remarks to our graduating class of 2012, “Addressing these inequalities will require bold new forms of leadership. Leaders that cross boundaries between traditional public health and the education, transportation, housing, and other sectors that are so vitally important to producing healthier communities in which individuals can flourish.” The pages that follow will give you some idea of the cross-boundary leadership

of our faculty, alumni, and students that is striking at the heart of eliminating health inequalities. Working together, we recover the notion of the “commons”— what belongs to and is shared by all of us and is not the property of any of us alone. Good health is the property of the commons to which everyone should have access because we all benefit collectively. It helps create what the

Commons Movement describes as “a world that works for everyone.” It is our responsibility to help lead the way.

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

At Berkeley, we have a tradition of speaking out when we think things are

= y t i u q E h t a He e c i t s u J ial unfair or wrong. We view social justice as a cornerstone of public health.

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FEATURE

Neighborhood Health Watch BY LINDA ANDERBERG

How do you know if someone is your neighbor? The friend in the apartment down the hall who waters your plants while you’re on vacation is definitely your neighbor. And unfortunately, so is the man next door with the dog that barks at three in the morning. But what about the family having that garage sale five blocks away? Or the woman in front of you in the pharmacy line at the drug store a half mile from your house?

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In South Berkeley, Associate Professor Amani Nuru-Jeter and members of her team conduct venue and neighborhood sampling for the African American Women’s Heart and Health Study. Left to right: Ashley Allston, a Berkeley undergraduate student majoring in African American Studies; Amani Nuru-Jeter; and Melisa Price M.P.H. ’09, currently a research associate at community research firm Harder and Company.

In San Francisco, residents of Hunters Point can expect to live, on average, 10 years less than their counterparts on Russian Hill. Perusing the San Francisco apartment ads on Craigslist (Ingleside, Sunset, Lower Nob Hill, Panhandle, Cow Hollow…), it’s evident that people care about defining their neighborhoods. But oftentimes even residents can’t agree on the size and shape of their own neighborhoods. When research subjects are asked “What do you think of as your neighborhood?” their answers vary from “my block” to “a 20-minute walk from my home,” with no single option receiving a majority vote. “The problem is there’s no one answer we all agree on,” says Assistant Professor of Epidemiology Jennifer Ahern Ph.D. ’07, M.P.H. ’00, who has been studying neighborhood level determinants of health since she was a graduate student at the School of Public Health. “In terms

of studies and interventions, we have to match what we’re doing to the best possible guess. We hope we’re getting it right.” In the early days of community research, people relied on zip codes as neighborhood markers. “No one was arguing it was optimal, but early on it was something,” says Ahern. Later, researchers preferred to use census units like blocks or tracts, because they are pre-defined, replicable, and come with secondary source socioeconomic and health data. In the past decade or so, defining neighborhoods in increasingly sophisticated ways—both for commercial and research purposes—has become a body of study in and of itself.

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But no matter how neighborhoods are defined, health researchers agree: Neighborhoods matter

for health. One study finds that disparities in neighborhood background account for 35 percent of the variation in health status among men in mid-life. Just as there are huge variations in living conditions in the United States, there are also shockingly large health disparities between—and even within—local communities. In San Francisco, residents of Hunters Point can expect to live, on average, 10 years less than their counterparts on Russian Hill. In Los Angeles County, 33 percent of children in the 10 poorest cities are obese, while in the 10 richest cities it’s only 6 percent. You might conclude from these statistics that neighborhood health follows the social gradient, i.e., the more wealth people have, the longer they are likely to live. But the neighborhood continued on page 6

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“People think they have more control over their environments than they actually do.”

effect on health extends beyond poverty and safety to cultural factors—family, lifestyle, diet— all of which can help or hinder someone’s ability to weather the hardships of life.

A legacy of inequality Much of the inequality of communities in America has a historical basis in events and factors that shaped the composition of our nation. One example is the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century, which led to both urbanization and the creation of wealth. Another is the transfer of many factory jobs overseas in the 1970s; this resulted in communities of workingclass families becoming isolated and devoid of economic opportunities beyond basic service industry jobs. “With the Industrial Revolution, all of a sudden people are living a lot closer together than they used to and some people have a lot more than others,” says Ahern. “There are real juxtapositions created by those conditions in our major cities.” Ahern recalls working in East Harlem, very close to the Upper East Side of Manhattan. “You walk out of public housing projects and a block later you’re in the middle of ladies with furs,” she says. “You think, ‘What is going on in this place?’ It plays out in a very dramatic way.” Segregation and racism also loom large in this country’s past and continue to play a role in the homogeneous nature of the majority of U.S. communities. Associate Professor Amani Nuru-Jeter, who has spent years looking at race and socioeconomic inequalities in health, explains: “Studies show that the history of racial discrimination, specifically with respect to real estate, socially and economically marginalizes blacks into racially segregated communities. Historically, banks systematically pulled out of those neighborhoods, did not lend to people in

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those neighborhoods, and, in fact, told whites in adjacent neighborhoods to move or they too would not receive loans because they were too close to the ‘black’ neighborhoods. As a result, those neighborhoods became dilapidated, businesses didn’t want to move there—so the result was and remains economic disinvestment in terms of jobs and other opportunities.” There is some freedom for residents to move away from bad neighborhoods, although this choice comes with its own set of problems and can prove elusive for many. “People think they have more control over their environments than they actually do,” says Nuru-Jeter. “It’s not always about, ‘I want to live in this community, in this environment, with these people, etc.’ People can be selected into neighborhoods because of much broader social and political factors.” Assistant Professor of Epidemiology Mahasin S. Mujahid points out that certain groups of people living together is not a bad thing in and of itself. “We’re finding that some communities that are predominately one race or ethnic group have a lot of benefits: shared resources, social support, and networks of information sharing,” she says. “The fact that people may want to have a kindred network of support, that’s a wonderful thing. But when it comes with poor schools and no grocery stores and limited infrastructure and these other things we know cluster with certain ethnic compositions, then that’s the problem.”

Curbing violence and changing norms When it comes to neighborhood environments, Ahern is especially interested in how they relate to mental health and health behaviors, including substance abuse, sexual risk behavior, and

violence. Growing up in Baltimore, she was exposed to the impact that crime can have on a community. “We got broken into several times. People were mugged outside my house all the time,” she recalls. “It wasn’t until I left that I was like, ‘Wow, that’s crazy!’ No wonder my mom was always saying we have to move.” Her childhood experience illustrates how certain characteristics of neighborhoods can quickly become normative, even if they are not desirable. As an epidemiologist, Ahern now studies social cohesion and social norms and how they can enforce or derail efforts to change communities. ”There’s a body of research that addresses the idea of social cohesion or social capital—how much members of a neighborhood trust and look out for each other and act on behalf of the collective good of the community. And there’s a move to build these things in communities,” she says. “I became interested in how there’s this focus on cohesiveness, but we’re not thinking as much about the normative environment.” It’s not just an academic consideration, because it means interventions to build community cohesion may not have the intended effect. To illustrate, Ahern points to the issue of adolescence and substance use, such as smoking. “If you have a cohesive neighborhood but norms are very permissive about smoking, if you increase the cohesiveness in the community you actually see more smoking,” says Ahern. “When you think about people being cohesive with their peers, it’s clear that whether or not that is good or bad depends on what those peers are doing. In terms of substance abuse, just being close with your group doesn’t necessarily lead to better health.” Ahern is increasingly interested in assessing the impact of large-scale policies and interventions


that may not be implemented for health reasons, but may have substantial health impacts. For example, violence interventions that follow what’s called the Ceasefire model have been carried out in major cities across the country (Chicago, New York, Boston, Baltimore, and Los Angeles) over the past decade. These interventions typically address some of the key elements that lead to violence: lack of economic opportunities, lack of social controls, and the development of norms that permit violence as a way of solving conflicts. “We know these kinds of interventions succeed in reducing the level of violence for some period of time,” says Ahern. “But does that affect health more broadly and, more importantly, does it help reduce health disparities?” Beyond the reduction of preventable death and injury, Ahern believes that curbing violence has great potential to start closing the gap on health disparities. A few recent studies suggest violence has an impact on birth outcomes (e.g., preterm deliveries), asthma, mental health, and health behaviors. With regard to disparities, she cites a biomarker study that found stronger effects of violence on stress biomarkers for African American women who are pregnant than for women of other ethnicities. “African American women throughout the country have twice the risk of having preterm babies, which is pretty dramatic,” says Ahern.“Violence is one thing that African American communities are disproportionally exposed to, and if at the same time they’re disproportionally affected by the exposure, that’s a doubling of the impact. It’s suggested by the literature, but we don’t really know.”

The health burden of racism Why might African American women be disproportionately impacted by neighborhood factors such as violence? Nuru-Jeter is looking to answer that question and more. “How is the social experience of being a black woman in America embodied psychologically and biologically?” she asks. “We’re looking at the experience of racial discrimination across the life course.” With the help of a team of students and alumni, Nuru-Jeter is canvassing Bay Area cities—

In the lab: Amani Nuru-Jeter supervises Nadia Safaeinili, a senior public health undergraduate student, in processing biological specimens for the African American Women’s Heart and Health Study.

Oakland, San Francisco, Berkeley, San Leandro, and Richmond—to recruit black women between 30 and 50 years of age to participate in the African American Women’s Heart and Health Study. The study has three components: a survey; anthropometric assessment including height, weight, waist and hip circumference, blood pressure, body fat percentage, and BMI; and blood samples to measure neuro-hormonal and other activity in the body. With this data, she hopes to examine the feasibility of associations between racial discrimination and both subclinical cardiovascular risk and overall physiologic aging, which Nuru-Jeter describes as the “weathering hypothesis,” a term coined by Arline Geronimus at the University of Michigan. “A lot of work on discrimination and health has focused on racial discrimination as a stressor,” says Nuru-Jeter. “If we believe that discrimination is a stressor and we want to model it as a stressor, then we should also be looking at two other key, but often neglected, components of the stress process, threat appraisal and coping style.” Her study uses validated measures of these processes, as well as original measures assessing what she terms “culture-specific threat appraisal and coping style.” She says, “In addition to the

environment itself, how people perceive and cope with these environments is also important.” Because the Heart and Health study is a pilot project with a small budget, Nuru-Jeter can’t afford to do probability sampling. She and her team have adopted a grassroots neighborhood strategy to capture as wide a range of subjects as possible, including socioeconomic diversity. They canvassed the streets in targeted neighborhoods, frequenting flea markets, farmer’s markets, and other community events. They posted flyers in soul food restaurants in Fruitvale and theaters in Temescal, downtown Oakland, and Berkeley. They visited churches, beauty shops, and nail shops—places where black women congregate across socioeconomic lines. They recruited from community organizations like sororities. Their goal is to reach a sample size of 200 women, more than enough to convince the NIH to fund a larger study in the fall. “Our recruitment motto is, ‘Don’t expect them to come to you. Go where the people are,’” says Nuru-Jeter. “Go to their safe places.” An epidemiologist at heart, Nuru-Jeter is drawn to the sheer amount of data. “We have health behaviors in the survey, we have substance abuse, physical activity, diet, mental health continued on page 8

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decision making. For example, you may think, ‘Oh I just prefer this kind of food,’ but actually, growing up that was all that was available at the corner store, and that’s what your parents and the families around you used. It became your own personal choice, but you didn’t realize that the environment shaped that choice.” Social norms may play a large role in what we choose to eat, but convenience of acquisition matters as well—hence the rise of the fast food industry. “There was a study that showed that for every new grocery store that was immersed into a low-income community of color, African Americans’ consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables increased by close to 30 percent,” cites Nuru-Jeter.

Melisa Price M.P.H. ’09 recruits participants for the African American Women’s Heart and Health Study at the Ashby Flea Market in Berkeley.

outcomes, depressive and anxiety symptomatology, and a scale of psychological distress,” she enthuses. “We have BMI, body fat, blood pressure, and numerous biological markers. There is going to be a ton to look at!” Nuru-Jeter believes the outcome of this study and others like it could have long term political and policy implications. “From a policy perspective, we’re able to say that it’s not necessarily people’s own doing in that they’re in the predicaments that they’re in,” she says. “The traditional interventions have been behavioral, urging people to eat the right food or stay active. But those may not be effective if there’s something about the larger social environment that affects our health beyond anything we have control over.” What kind of interventions would Nuru-Jeter like to see instead? She is full of ideas, from medical to space planning to social. “I don’t know how economically feasible it is, but I would recommend that some of these stress markers—cortisol, C-reactive protein, interleukin-6—become part of the normal clinical encounter, in terms of early risk identification,” she says. “When we go to the doctor, they can evaluate, for example, a glucose or lipid panel and tell us if we’re at risk for diabetes and/or cardiovascular disease. Why

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not also assess stress markers, which we know have long term health implications down the road?” She then sees a role for the health care delivery system in developing support programs. For instance, HMOs like Kaiser Permanente already offer classes on diabetes and hypertension management, and it might make sense for them to offer classes on coping with stress as well. “There are community-based organizations that could use this kind of evidence to get money to support program development for these types of interventions,” says Nuru-Jeter. “So I think there is a role for intervention across multiple levels.”

Finding the oasis in the food desert Whether you think of your neighborhood as your block or your side of town, social factors have affected your health. Possibly unbeknownst to you, your personal choices as an adult have been influenced by the neighborhood in which you grew up. Mujahid explains, “Research has found that there are certain aspects of where you live that affect your well-being without your awareness; there are social norms and cultural practices in areas that shape your own personal

Clearly, people want to eat their vegetables. Yet food deserts—defined as an area where a substantial number of residents have low access to a supermarket or large grocery store—persist in both low-income and middle-income neighborhoods. Even in the Bay Area, neighborhoods like West Oakland and South Berkeley have a very unbalanced proportion of liquor stores to grocery outlets, making it easier to buy beer than broccoli. Why can’t we just open more grocery stores? It’s not as simple as it sounds. “In terms of advocating for larger grocery stores which offer fresh produce and other healthy food options to come into all the areas that could use them, research suggests that there are unintended consequences,” says Mujahid. “Policy, redlining, zoning issues, community debate all influence the decision-making process. Sometimes it can take ten years for a large grocery store to move into an area.” Undaunted, Mujahid has partnered with Dr. Latetia Moore from the CDC, Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, Overweight and Obesity, to take a look at the untapped potential of smaller stores as a source of healthier fare. Together they are assessing the potential of smaller stores in tri-county Detroit as well as seven Bay Area counties. “California is a wonderful model for this, because we have bodegas and farmers markets and all these opportunities to provide healthy


“When we’re operating in a scarce resource model, we don’t invest evenly.”

options,” says Mujahid. “We don’t have to rely exclusively on larger stores.” Smaller stores may be more flexible and responsive to community needs than large grocery outlets, and supporting small business is also good for the neighborhood economies in general. The problem with smaller stores is that currently there is no reliable way to assess their food offerings. “Will it require going into these establishments and checking off ‘Does it have tomatoes?’ or ‘Does it have bananas?’” muses Mujahid. She and Moore are looking to find a surveillance system already in place that might provide a good proxy for in-person banana counting. One such program is the USDA’s Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program, which provides supplemental nutritious foods, health care referrals, and nutrition education to low-income, nutritionally at risk women who are pregnant, breast feeding, or have children under the age of five. WIC already certifies stores nationwide based on prices of foods, the business integrity of the store’s owner, and the variety and quantity of foods available in the store. WIC also established the Farmers Market Nutrition Program (FMNP) in 1992. Farmers, farmers markets, and roadside stands also must be authorized to accept FMNP coupons. In 2011, coupons redeemed through the FMNP resulted in over $16.4 million in revenue to farmers and increased access to locally grown produce to low-income women.

in communities and determine what kind of resources can support healthy food environments. Mujahid hopes to inform the larger initiative and help the CDC capitalize on the opportunity smaller stores can provide. “One of the nice things about working with the CDC is that this is their priority,” she explains. “If we can identify promising initiatives that help create local food resources for people in need, the CDC is committed to funding them.”

Invest in all people With wealth disparity increasing rapidly since the 1990s and communities continuing to remain largely segregated by ethnicity and income, neighborhood-based inequalities in health are unlikely to diminish in the United States without a concerted effort. Coming out of a nationwide recession with slow economic growth, deciding where to invest resources and how much to invest can be difficult, and can itself lead to disparities.

“When we’re operating in a scarce resource model, we don’t invest evenly,” Mujahid says. “We invest in the people who make the most noise, who have the most power—and they get a disproportionate share of limited goods, services, and other important resources. Ironically and unjustly those who are most vulnerable, those with the least power, usually don’t get any.” Mujahid believes that people need to come together and support each other in order for our communities to thrive. “We say it’s personal choice; we say we can’t help that people have bad behaviors. But that’s actually an inaccurate excuse,” she says. “We’re not investing in the well-being of all people. Ideally, we need to invest not just in the powerful and influential, but in all people—and all communities and neighborhoods.”

“Advocating for more WIC-certified stores, farmer’s markets, and produce stands might be a great way to increase incentives for small stores to provide healthier food choices— thus increasing additional purchasing options,” says Mujahid. The CDC is already launching a national surveillance system to monitor what’s available

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FEATURE

Health Researchers Learn from Society’s Outsiders

Life in the Margins BY MICHAEL S. BRODER

The consequences of social stigma can be physically harmful, and even deadly. People who are shunned by our society— due to homelessness, drug use, non-conforming gender identity, or other attributes—generally have much poorer health and higher death rates than those in the mainstream. They may be at increased risk of HIV infection, be more likely to have experienced violence, or suffer from severe mental health problems, for example. Colette (Coco) Auerswald M.D, M.S. ’89 is painfully aware of this fact. A faculty member at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health and UCSF, she has been conducting research among homeless youth for more than 15 years. Auerswald recalls that in one research project she led, two of the young people in the study died during the six-month follow-up period, out of fewer than 200 being followed. “That blew us away,” she says. “In a six-month period, you don’t expect anyone in that age group to die.” Compared to peers who have stable housing, homeless youths are far more likely to engage in high-risk behaviors. They’re more likely to have unprotected sex (including sex traded to meet survival needs), have sex with more partners, and use injection drugs. Not surprisingly,

they have higher rates of HIV, and homeless young women are almost five times more likely to become pregnant than others their age. Homeless youths are also at higher risk for mental health problems, such as major depression and post-traumatic stress. Suicide is the leading cause of death for this population.

Stages of street living Auerswald has studied numerous aspects of youth homelessness, including social networks, street culture, HIV risk, and disparities in the experiences of African American and white youths. One of the distinctive features of her research is her use of mixed methods, borrowing tools from both medical anthropology and social epidemiology.

first become homeless, says Auerswald, “they lose the social networks that they had in the housed world, be they functional or dysfunctional. They lose the status they have as members of a community, and become members of a very stigmatized community. And they also lose the social capital— the resources that they might have had as members of a community or a family.” According to the life cycle model, those who remain on the streets enter a stage in which they are initiated into the street culture and

In an early study, she developed a model called the “life cycle of youth homelessness,” which she has employed in subsequent research to examine issues such as youth social networks. When young people A mural created by a youth at Larkin Street Youth Services, an organization that provides housing, medical, social, and educational services to at-risk, homeless, and runaway youth

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Dr. Coco Auerswald (right) and her research coordinator, Jess Lin

are taught survival skills by more experienced street youths. These “peer mentors” introduce them to the street economy—a diverse array of legal and illegal activities that range from the innocuous, such as selling crafts, to the more dangerous, such as drug dealing or prostitution. They then progress to a “stasis” mode in which their outsider identity and loyalty to the street community are well established, and their ties to mainstream society diminish. In stasis, they experience frequent crises, such as being robbed or assaulted or becoming ill. Ultimately, these crises may lead the youths to question their commitment to street life, or bring them into contact with resources that reconnect them to the mainstream world. This propels them into the final stage of the life cycle model, in which some youths are successful in escaping the streets, often after repeated failed attempts. “Social networks of youths when they hit the street, and when they’re leaving the street, include more non-homeless individuals,” says Auerswald. During those transitional stages,

she explains, it is easier to reach them with interventions. “But when youths are in the entrenched stages, those young people tend to have very few, or far fewer, contacts who are actually housed. Everyone they know is homeless.”

Getting an accurate count Ethnographic research like Auerswald’s is critical for the design of effective interventions for this vulnerable population. But she would also like to find out something much more basic: How many homeless kids are out there? Accurate numbers would help make the case for expanded resources for homeless youth. “Guess how many young people HUD says there are on the street in Alameda County,” she quizzes. The answer: “Thirty-seven,” she laughs. “You can see that many in about twenty minutes walking down Telegraph Ave.!” HUD, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, is aware of the inaccuracy of its estimate, says Auerswald, and wants to

do something about it. But until now, there hasn’t been a way to arrive at a better number, and no city in the world has an accurate count of its homeless youth population. That’s why Auerswald is excited about a project called YouthCount!, which aims to adapt public health methods used in HIV surveillance—such as social networking and mathematical modeling—to survey and estimate the number of homeless and unstably housed youth in San Francisco. YouthCount! has wide support from government and non-government organizations that serve youth and is currently in the process of securing funding. Jess Lin M.P.H. ’10, Auerswald’s research coordinator, shares her enthusiasm. “One of the things I hope YouthCount! will do is to expand the definition of homeless youth, to show that there is a diverse set of youth in that population and that different resources are needed for them. It’s not just the grimy street kid in the Haight that everyone thinks of when they think of a homeless kid. And even your grimy street kid in the Haight has a lot of different reasons continued on page 12

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Lis Powelson and Leah Rorvig, students in the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program

for being there, and there are lots of different possibilities for providing services.”

of Research Triangle International, served as Powelson’s mentor for her master’s work.

A new generation of aid

Another JMP student drawn to a stigmatized population is Leah Rorvig M.S. ’12, who chose to work with transgender women. “I was very excited to work with Leah,” says Auerswald, “because transgender health is really an area where there’s very little research, and the disparities are completely out of control.” Rorvig was mentored by Stephen Eyre, an anthropologist and professor of pediatrics at UCSF and associate adjunct professor in the JMP; and Jae Sevelius, co-principal investigator of UCSF’s Center of Excellence for Transgender Health.

As director of research training for the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program (JMP), Auerswald leads the master’s program in health and medical sciences for 48 students on the Berkeley campus and oversees their mentoring. Students in the rigorous Joint Medical Program spend three years at Berkeley earning a master of science degree, followed by two years at UCSF, where they receive their medical degrees. Auerswald herself is a graduate of the program. Among the current JMP students is Lis Powelson M.S. ’12. “Lis and I kind of fell into each other’s arms when she first came in, because she’d been doing a lot of work with injection drug users, which, of course, is a population that totally overlaps with the population that I’m obsessed with—so we knew right away that we wanted to collaborate on some level,” says Auerswald. Alex Kral Ph.D. ’00, director of the Urban Health Program at the San Francisco Regional Office

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A focus on female meth-users Before entering the Joint Medical Program, Powelson worked in a methadone clinic at San Francisco General. Not everyone is cut out for that kind of work environment, but she loved the experience and found it deeply rewarding. “You know, things were always a little bit nuts, but that keeps life interesting—and it’s really satisfying when things work out and you’ve been able to help someone,” she says.

When injection drug users come to a clinic, they may have any of a wide assortment of medical problems, such as HIV, viral hepatitis, cellulitis, abscesses, and overdose. Dermatologic problems are common. One of the side effects of methamphetamine is a feeling that insects are crawling on the skin, which can lead a person to pick and scratch at the skin. Members of this population frequently delay seeking medical attention because of mental health problems, difficulty keeping appointments while under the influence of drugs, discrimination in the health care setting, or other factors. For her master’s thesis, Powelson chose to examine unmet non-emergency health care needs among women in San Francisco who use the highly addictive drug methamphetamine. Most research on methamphetamine users has focused on men; few studies have focused specifically on access to health care services for women meth-users. Powelson’s study included 298 women, all of whom were 18 years or older, had at least one male sexual partner in the past six months, and reported using methamphetamine in the past 30 days. Almost half were African American


“What really mattered to people is feeling like they had someone to go to.”

and one-third were white. Most were unemployed, and more than half were homeless. HIVpositive women were not included in this study because their health care needs are so different from other women’s. Face-to-face interviews with the women revealed sobering statistics about their unmet health care needs. Sixty-nine percent reported needing care for a chronic condition; for nearly a third of them, their need was unmet. In terms of dermatologic care, 35 percent of the women reported a need; of those women, two-thirds said that need was unmet. And when it came to women’s preventive care, 92 percent reported a need, with nearly half of them reporting the need as unmet. A key finding of Powelson’s research was that women who reported having a health care provider or caseworker had lower odds of having an unmet need for care. This suggests that regular contact with a health professional could motivate these women to seek care and could help expand their access to health care. “What really mattered to people is feeling like they had someone to go to. For a med student and a doctor, that’s really important. It makes you realize how meaningful your relationship with your patient is. If they don’t ever come in, you can’t help them,” says Powelson.

Trans women face discrimination, intolerance Rorvig had long been interested in women’s and gender studies, but it was her experience volunteering for Maitri, an HIV/AIDS respite and hospice facility in San Francisco, that sealed her commitment to working with transgender women. She was especially influenced by a friendship she developed there.

“I had a patient named Rosa who was a trans woman, and we became very close,” Rorvig recalls. “We would go for walks; we would go to the mall; and I helped her move a lot of stuff from her SRO into Maitri once it became clear that it was in fact the end of her life and she was not going to be recovering. “I got to meet a lot of her friends, many of whom were also trans women, and I was just very inspired by her story. She was kind of a trans rights activist herself, and she educated me about a lot of trans issues and about a lot of intimate partner violence and discrimination that she had been through. Rosa had AIDS— and AIDS is unfortunately extremely prevalent among people who are trans.” A transgender woman is someone who was born male, but who self-identifies and lives as a woman, regardless of whether she has had surgery or taken hormones. Discrimination against trans women is intense: For example, 90 percent of trans women report discrimination, harassment, or stigma in the workplace. In terms of health, transgender women are disproportionately likely to be HIV positive, and approximately one-third have attempted suicide. Nearly one-fifth have been refused health care due to their gender status. And 28 percent have delayed or postponed needed medical care out of fear of harassment or discrimination. For her master’s research, Rorvig focused on the question: What are the negative health care experiences of transgender women in San Francisco, and how have they responded to these experiences? She recruited study participants primarily at transgender-focused clinics in San Francisco. The 25 interview subjects ranged in age from 29 to 66; 48

percent of them were white and 36 percent were African American. The rest were another race or mixed race. Many reported histories of alcohol or drug abuse, homelessness, sex work, and/or a positive HIV status. “The single most common complaint I heard about health care was that receptionists, nurses, and physicians refused to use the name or pronouns that a particular transgender person requested,” wrote Rorvig in a blog about her research. “Many of the transgender women I interviewed told me that they would verbally correct health care professionals who used the wrong name or pronoun—but that the health care provider still wouldn’t necessarily honor the patient’s request.” Participants described these incidents, which often occurred in front of other patients, as deeply humiliating. Some of the experiences the women reported were being unable to obtain surgical referrals or find psychiatric services, being denied hormone therapy, and being forced to use a men’s restroom. They responded to these negative experiences by avoiding certain facilities, providers, or health care in general; and/or not disclosing their gender identity. More proactive responses included discussing their concerns with the individual or with a third party; continued on page 14

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health care can improve heath outcomes for people outside the mainstream. They’re heartened by successes they’ve witnessed and courageous individuals they’ve encountered while doing this work.

UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical program students Evie Kalmar and Leah Rorvig at the San Francisco Trans March

pursuing formal complaints; and/or seeking out transgender-focused clinics. “Unfortunately, many of the women had a very low expectation of health care,” says Rorvig. “They had experienced so much discrimination already in their lives that when they went to the health care setting, they went there essentially already expecting that they were going to be discriminated against and have a hard time. As someone who is a young aspiring physician, it is very sad to hear that a patient is already coming to you with low hopes of what you can do for them, and even the level of respect you are going to treat them with.” Rorvig recommends that everyone who works in the health care setting, no matter their role, participate in gender sensitivity training. In addition, she believes health care facilities should implement formal processes for transgender patients to report negative experiences, and follow up on those reports.

“During the course of conducting the interviews, many interviews made me sad, upset, or angry,” reflected Rorvig in a blog post. “I heard countless stories of hardship, including stories of sex work, prison, childhood abuse, intimate partner violence, and suicide. However, there are also many stories of healing, personal transformation, evolving self-love, and truly caring partners, physicians, nurses, and therapists.”

Auerswald tells the story of Isadora, a homeless young woman she met through her work with the San Francisco nonprofit organization Larkin Street Youth Services. Isadora had left a violent home where her safety was in jeopardy and had landed on the streets. “She’d taken it upon herself to help other young people who were also homeless,” Auerswald remembers. “She had a sort of emergency kit she would always carry around, and she was like a one-person outreach program helping other kids, even though she herself was homeless.” When a community advisory board was formed for a national network to study HIV/AIDS risk

in youth, Isadora was approached to be an advocate for her homeless peers. Auerswald asked Isadora to put together a short CV for her application to serve on the advisory board. “I said, ‘It doesn’t have to be a big deal, just whatever you can put together,’ knowing that that was kind of crazy to even ask a homeless kid for that. “And she came in—this was the coolest thing—she came in, and she said, ‘This is a CV of where I’m going to be in a year.’ So instead of a CV telling me what she’d done, she was giving me what she was going to do and what her CV was going to look like in a year. And it was really, really impressive.” Isadora’s goals focused on earning certifications and gaining tools that would allow her to continue to help her community. “She joined the community advisory board,” says Auerswald, “and then she actually did all those things.” Isadora eventually got off the streets. She relocated to another region of California and is now a pastry chef and a mother. Last Auerswald heard, Isadora was thriving. Auerswald is convinced that the support Isadora received from Larkin Street Youth Services played a critical role in enabling this young woman, who had experienced family violence and homelessness, to grow into a healthy adult. “I think we really focus on the kids who trip and fall,” says Auerswald, “but Larkin has hundreds of stories of kids who leave the street successfully, and I think we don’t hear those stories enough. So to me, Isadora is a really inspiring story—and she’s not the only one.”

Understanding, courage, hope Despite the grim realities and serious health inequities that exist for stigmatized populations, researchers like Rorvig, Powelson, and Auerswald are optimistic that further research, tailored interventions, and compassionate Just a few of the 3,100 clients served by Larkin Street Youth Services each year 14

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FEATURE

Our experts look at the road ahead

America’s Health and the ACA

On March 23, 2010, President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). The law put in place comprehensive health insurance reforms that will roll out over four years and beyond, with most changes taking place by 2014. On March 26-28, 2012, the Supreme Court heard six hours of oral argument in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius. On June 28, in a 5-4 ruling, the Court upheld the constitutionality of most of the law, including the individual mandate requiring most Americans to have health insurance by 2014—declaring it a constitutional exercise of Congress’s taxing power. So the ACA will play a role in shaping the future of health care in the United States. What might that future look like? To find out, Berkeley Health convened a roundtable of experts to address questions from the big picture down to the brass tacks.

Meet our experts: We’re fortunate to have at our fingertips one of the nation’s preeminent health care scholars in the School’s dean, Stephen M. Shortell Ph.D., M.B.A., M.P.H. Achieving high-quality, cost-efficient health care in our nation has been his passion for more than 40 years. Now an established expert on organized health delivery systems in the United States, Shortell’s extensive research has helped establish determinants of health outcomes and quality of care for health care organizations.

For a health economics perspective, we invited William Dow Ph.D., professor and head of the School’s Health Policy and Management Division. Dow has broad international experience in health policy and has contributed his expertise domestically as well, both in California and at a national level. In 2005-06 he served as senior economist for health at the White House Council of Economic Advisors.

Finally, we were privileged to have Mark B. Horton M.D., M.S.P.H., at the table, a health policy expert who has had a distinguished career in public health service in addition to 18 years of clinical practice as a pediatrician. Dr. Horton is the former director of the California Department of Public Health and State Public Health Officer. He is currently a lecturer at the School of Public Health. continued on page 16

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Dr. Mark B. Horton

Professor William Dow

Dean Stephen M. Shortell

n i t s e v In h t l a e H s ’ a c i r e Am Is expanded care affordable for our country? What will be the effect on national spending—do you think it will lead to increased or reduced deficits? Stephen Shortell: I think a big issue in all the health reform debates over the last couple of years has been the increased access to care and coverage of the uninsured: Can we afford it in the long run? Is it going to be sustainable? I think many people feel that it won’t be sustainable with our current delivery system, that it just doesn’t have the capacity to deal with some of the problems we have. So a major challenge for health care reform in the United States is going to be the ability of the delivery system to make significant changes in order to provide the care that’s needed for the increased coverage.

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Mark Horton: One thing that occurred to me in response to the question, is, ‘Do we have an affordable health care system now?’ And I’m not sure our current system as it exists is affordable. We are adding additional burden to the system, but I think overall we’ve got to address affordability irrespective of how many people are included in the system. Will Dow: I think that’s right. It’s going to be quite a while before we can change the system substantially. We’re doing a lot in the short run to try to alter the system, but it could be a good decade or more before any of the reforms are really kicking in and bending that cost curve. For political reasons, Congress attempted to structure the bill so it would be scored as essentially budget neutral. There are lots of political questions about whether the cuts to Medicare spending that

will be necessary to finance the expansions and subsidies for low-income populations are actually politically feasible. This is where a lot of folks politically are arguing that this is actually going to be very expensive to the country in terms of budget expenditures. Horton: What does it mean to be affordable in the wealthiest nation in the world? It’s a rhetorical question, but the point is, ‘Are we getting the value for the money that we’re putting into the system?’ Shortell: [We’re putting in] nearly 18 percent of GDP now, far more than any other country. And, by most of the health statistics that we know about, we’re not getting the value of other countries. I think many people would like to think that if we could transfer some of that in the long run into other


determinants of health—our educational system, housing, transportation, and so forth—that would reduce the burden of illness on the health system. But that’s going to take a long time to do. Dow: The ACA as structured wasn’t intended to bend the trend, frankly. There’s a lot of political discussion about wanting to bend the trend, but the main goal of the ACA was to expand insurance coverage, with the acknowledgement that this is going to cost a lot of money and it will take us a while to figure out how to cut the costs out. But the big win of the ACA is that if this goes through and is implemented as it was passed, we should reduce uninsurance by tens of millions of people, and that’s huge. Shortell: Right. Horton: A social justice issue, really. Dow: Very much so. Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has said that, if elected, he will try to repeal “Obamacare.” What will happen if either the individual mandate or the entire law is repealed? Shortell: One immediate consequence if the individual mandate is eliminated is the issue of selection; there’s going to be a higher-risk pool if these people don’t have coverage. If the entire legislation somehow is revoked, that could have even wider spread repercussions. My own view is that even if both of those were to occur, it doesn’t fundamentally change the challenge we face as a country. The activities that are already out there—particularly in the private sector, among insurers and medical groups—have so much energy behind them even in this past year, that if the law is revoked there are still going to be some fundamental changes you’re going to see occurring around accountable care organizations and patient-center medical homes. The basic issue is moving away as fast as we can from fee-for-service payment. We’ve got to create an entirely different set of economic incentives in this country for more cost-effective care and rewarding providers based on the results that they achieve and keeping people healthy. Dow: I agree that on the delivery side, I see in the private sector this huge amount of

energy. In fact some of the accountable care organization efforts are moving much faster in the private sector than they are in the public sector. The problem is that if this [the ACA] does get reversed, then we’re not going to have the subsidies in place to address some of the uninsurance issues. Horton: There’s so much momentum. What’s happening with the concept of an insurance exchange, I think that will be a valuable contribution to how affordable and purchasable insurance will be. The other area is all the particular aspects of insurance reform: My guess if the bill is repealed there will be a major rush to establish various components of the insurance reform. Kids staying on their parents’ insurance until 25? No pre-existing conditions? Those kinds of things, people are going to have a taste of that and are going to insist those be reestablished if it’s repealed. I’m confident that there’s going to be several major chunks of the ACA that I think the states will take on and lock into place, irrespective of what happens at the national level.

“What does it mean to be affordable in the wealthiest nation in the world?” —Mark Horton Shortell: And I know here in California, the people I talk to at least, they’re going to go full-bore ahead with the California exchange and other reforms we have to do in this state. Dow: There’s a lot of will to do so. I’m worried about where the rubber meets the road, and that is going to be in the financing. So if the ACA gets repealed and there is not the federal financing coming into the state of California, then what that would imply is that there would not be funding for lower-income people either to get expanded Medicaid

coverage or to get subsidies to buy insurance in an exchange. Without those subsidies you can’t have an individual mandate. You take away the individual mandate and then, the insurers are arguing, it’s going to be very difficult to have community rating, essentially allowing people to pay the same insurance premium regardless of their pre-existing conditions. If you take away that community rating, then we’re back into the same world that we’ve been in in California. It’s a huge lift what the State is trying to do even with all of the federal dollars. Without those federal dollars, I’m not as optimistic. So if we want to see the uninsurance rates coming down, I think we have to put our eggs in the federal reform sticking. Horton: And states would not be able to afford Medicaid expansion, no question. Dow: Not in this current environment. In 2008, we got very close in California, and you know we failed on the financing. That is where it stuck. And that was pre-recession. Shortell: It’s going to depend on the future economy, and right now, that doesn’t look very optimistic. In what ways could individuals see their health coverage change by 2014? Will they bear greater or less personal costs? Dow: We certainly know that cost sharing is going up and up and up. There’s a long-term trend towards more cost sharing in plans. Part of that is intentional in trying to use the demand side to bend the cost curve. When the ACA goes through in 2014, we’re going to see a huge reduction in cost sharing by currently uninsured individuals, and better access to care. And for those individuals who are going to get subsidies that will allow them to buy into plans with lower cost sharing or who are newly eligible for Medicaid. The vast majority of the population I think is not going to see any immediate effect in their cost sharing, and those are the people with employer-based insurance and that’s a huge portion of the country. There will be some people that will see increased costs and that is going to be particularly those people who are healthy and buying insurance on the continued on page 18

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Dow: There’s so much uncertainty about how that would actually play out in the U.S. that it makes it even more difficult politically to even try it. A lot of economists I talk to worry about the role of money in politics being so strong in the United States. If you think of Medicare essentially as government price setting, frankly Medicare hasn’t been terribly good at reigning in costs. And there are lots of reasons why there all sorts of pressures on the costs. So whether or not a single-payer system, even if it were politically feasible, would actually substantially reduce costs in the U.S., I think that is a huge unknown.

individual market right now who are benefitting by not cross-subsidizing the sick people in the population. The way that we are going to change our premiums, they’re going to have to pay more. Horton: I think that people will see changes and are already beginning to see some changes in the scope of services that are provided. I’m referring specifically to the clinical preventive services that will be provided without cost by both public and private insurance programs. I think people are already beginning to notice that. Do you see the need for further health care reform in the United States at the federal level? Would you take a different approach than the ACA? Horton: Yes. I see some opportunities. I’m still one who gives some thought to the single-payer concept. I think that we’ve got much, even with ACA, that’s going to need to be done both in terms of cost and efficiency. We’ve got a lot of waste that needs to be eliminated, a lot of inappropriate care and adverse events that are occurring. I think as we move forward we need to see, can ACA do as much as a single-payer system could over time? If not, are there further adjustments that need to be made to move in that direction? Shortell: There’s something to be said for that, because most of the international

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world—Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and so forth—have lower GDP spent on health care and better outcomes than we have in this country. They do it one of two ways or both: they have global budgets and/or they

“What we have to realize is we’re like 50 different countries in many respects.” ­­—Stephen Shortell

negotiate very strictly with the physician community. And many of the global budgets resemble single payer. In this country what we’re trying to do that makes it a huge, huge challenge is we’re trying to achieve those kinds of outcomes through the pluralistic kinds of values that we have in this country. We’re trying to thread the needle through fifty states, insurance exchanges, private market, private/public, and so on. It’s very complex because we’re not willing to bite the bullet to say we’re going to have a global cap of sorts. We’re simply not there yet politically, so we’re trying to do it through all these other kind of approaches.

Shortell: It would have to be accompanied though, Will, I think with some type of global budget. A state saying, in effect, here’s the money up front and we’re not going to increase, for example, more than the rate of increase in the GDP. So in California, we’re not going to spend more than our growth in GDP and that’s it. And whether or not we have six insurers in the state or one, all payer rates are the same. I agree it’s not just single payer. You’ve got to have a mechanism that says, in effect, ‘This is the limit.’ Dow: But do you allow balance billing? You don’t allow people to pay beyond that? Then, now, that gets pretty tough if you allow them to pay beyond those costs— Shortell: No, people can choose health plans that are richer, that they pay themselves, they can do that. Dow: But once you allow that, then you get into this discussion that we’re having at the national level about Medicare. So if we set some fixed amount that the government is going to pay, well as long as the providers have lots of market power and they can balance bill above that, then that government contribution is going to go less and less far toward covering the costs of care. So the details of how this would work are kind of hard to think about. Shortell: They are, yes. What we have to realize is we’re like 50 different countries in many respects. So when you are the UK, right, you can get your arms around it and it’s much easier to do in that kind of setting. Dow: Certainly if there was more ability for states to experiment, I think that would be

H


t h g i R n a m u H a s i h t l a e H a huge lift. And there’s lots of talk of that, but there are many federal restrictions on actual state experimentation today. As much as states want to experiment, it’s been very difficult for them to do so. Do you think the ACA will have an effect on reducing health inequities in the United States? Shortell: It will be great that finally a lot of people are going to get insurance coverage. People will have greater access to health care services financially. But that has to do with access to health and medical care services. In terms of the underlying reasons as to why we have differences in health status along so many socioeconomic dimensions, this in itself is barely touching that problem in my view. It’s great that we have $10 billion presumably allocated for disease prevention and health promotion. But until we understand it’s the underlying social and physical determinants of health—education and what happens where people live, the housing and transportation and so forth—we’re not going to do much about dealing with health inequalities. Having greater insurance coverage can certainly can help at the margin. Horton: I think it’s fairly well accepted that health care access is only responsible for about 10 percent of the overall individual health and the health of the population. So there will be a marginal impact, likely, on health inequities across the population. But I don’t think we can expect that this is going to have a major influence on whether the percentage of different subgroups of the population have diabetes or obesity or suffer from various diseases that are now so unacceptably different from population to population. Dow: I agree. It’s sort of a heresy sitting in the health care field to say so, but in some ways I think that the biggest impact that health care reform can have on health for the U.S. population is if we can bend that cost curve and free up more dollars to invest in things like education. If you look at the way that California’s been disinvesting in education, K through 16 and even pre-K, it has very predictable long-term consequences for worsening the health of the state. That

I think in the long run is going to be swamping whatever health benefits accrue from health care reform. What role does prevention and health promotion play in health care reform? What impact can those efforts have? Horton: The fact is that health care is just outrageously expensive and it’s going to continue to get more unaffordable and more expensive both for individuals and for systems. We have to work toward making our population healthier and having less people enter the system in the first place. So I think that’s why it was so important that a critical part of the Affordable Care Act be investment in various public health endeavors to try to improve the general health of the population so that they don’t come into the system. I really think that, unless that’s a critical component of all of our reform efforts going forward, we are never going to be able to achieve an affordable system.

“I agree that the preventive health care is a challenge, but I think that’s something we can overcome.” —William Dow Shortell: I absolutely agree with that, Mark. And we know the political pressures—the proposal has been in Congress that in order to reinstate student loans, they’re going to take money away from the prevention fund. And that’s just not the thing to be done. I think we’re going to have to fight to maintain a lot of that. Also, the challenge of prevention is that it is long run. They’ll argue no one sees the immediate benefits. We’ve got to change the incentives somehow, and the exchange can help in this, by thinking creatively about how do you give incentives for insurers where they won’t get harmed as a result of making sure people get their vaccinations and immunizations and other kinds of behaviors,

even if that patient leaves that insurer for another. And I think there are ways of doing that and drawing on behavioral economics for some incentives on that. But we do have to figure out a way and it gets back to issues of education. And when children are born, right then we begin to start on a path that’s going to lead into healthy lives and reduce illness along the way. I sometimes think simplistically one of the best things we could do in this country, or maybe two things, one is to put a school health nurse in every school in the country. And secondly, make sure every child can simply read by the age of six or seven. Because once you get that capacity for selfefficacy your whole world opens up for you in so many different ways. But we all realize it’s much more complicated than that. Dow: I agree that the preventive health care is a challenge, but I think that’s something we can overcome. There are ways of sort of tweaking the health insurance or the reimbursement system; it’s not easy, but we can do that. What we don’t know how to do, frankly, is on the upstream prevention side. Take obesity, a major public health crisis. We have lots of ideas, but we don’t really know whether any of those are working. We critically need the public health research to understand what is actually going to work at the end of the day and where we should be spending that money. And this is where, as a School, we have a huge mission in front of us, well beyond everything in the ACA and health care reform, to understand what’s actually going to work. Horton: But let’s not lose sight of the huge successes there have already been that have proven the value. When I was a resident, every hospital had kids with meningitis in it. Today, individuals go through an entire training program without seeing a kid with meningitis. Look what we’ve done here in California with anti-tobacco. We’re not only seeing less smokers now, we’re actually seeing the incidence of lung cancer coming down much faster. We have to be convinced that this can work. But you’re right; we’ve got some major challenges in making sure our interventions are sciencebased and effective. Dow: We know we’ve done it in the past and we have a huge agenda in front of us.

Watch video of this roundtable at Berkeley Health Online at sph-publications.berkeley.edu Berkeley Health Fall 2012

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FEATURE

Food Equity and the Food Environment Q&A WITH BARBARA LARAIA

Berkeley Health asked Barbara Laraia, head of the School of Public Health’s program in public health nutrition, to explain how food and nutrition factor into the health equity equation. What role does food play in the health inequities that we see within the United States? Food, and access to food, has a large role in the inequity we see in dietary intake. From consumption patterns that the USDA Department of Agriculture looks at, we know, for example, that lower-income households consume a lot more foods that are high in fat and have added sugar— more sodas and more processed foods. And the high fat and high sugar content of these foods really influences chronic

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disease processes. There is a large differential by household income, and we do see that households with low incomes are heavier, they have higher BMIs, and that obesity prevalence is higher among lowerincome households, as is obesity-related chronic disease, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Nutrition plays a direct role in the development of those diseases and in the maintenance of those diseases. Middle-and low-income households are more likely to experience food insecurity.

This means that several times during the year, they have a shortage of food, they tend to skip meals and skip whole days of food intake. Among these households, women who are pregnant are more likely to have gestational diabetes, and adults in the household are more likely to have diabetes and have a more difficult time maintaining their diabetes. These households experiencing food insecurity have higher BMIs and higher levels of hemoglobin a1c, which is an indicator of poorer blood sugar control.


Over 50 percent of kids, U.S. children, will be on food stamps at some time in their life. Barbara Laraia

What does “food environment” mean?

manage daycare and transportation issues. So they have very limited time.

Researchers look at the access and distance to food venues that offer healthy foods versus poorer foods, or they look at a density measure, such as, how densely populated is your neighborhood with food venues that have healthy food offerings versus unhealthy food offerings. Conventional wisdom describes a poor food environment as a lack of food venues that can offer fresh and healthy food such as fruits and vegetables, lean meats, and low-fat dairy products, and an abundance of food venues that offer high-fat, highsugar, and processed foods. Convenience stores, for example, are venues that have a lot of food offerings that are processed and high in fat.

And education is really important— education about what to eat and how to prepare those foods, and how to prepare them within a time-limited day to eat a consistent healthy diet day in and day out.

What are some of the most challenging aspects of the food environment? I think what we’re learning is that with more than 24,000 new food products in the market every year, it’s very challenging to navigate one’s supermarket, or their neighborhood environment, to make healthy food choices. Because we are making choices every day, and three times a day, about what to eat, so there’s a lot of room for error. There’s a lot of room to give yourself permission to purchase a candy bar or get something on the run. This is challenging for the average individual, and it’s more challenging for lower-income households. Because of their income and what they have access to, they can’t possibly purchase all of the foods that are available for a healthy diet. They also lead hectic lives. They might be working two different jobs and trying to

What are some of the ways in which food policy needs to change? A lot of the research is suggesting that if individuals live in a lower-income neighborhood that has poor access to food, that they might have a higher BMI, and they might have a poorer dietary intake. But if you follow those households over time, it’s really challenging in our statistical model and in our studies to see the direct effect of living in a poor food environment and the effect that has on their weight and their dietary intake. So the answer isn’t an easy one as far as policy and programs. I think that for the large part, researchers are concluding that it’s not that if you build a supermarket, they’ll come. It’s not a onesize-fits-all silver bullet. So policy makers and program officials need to look at working with the communities to create solutions. It might be that there needs to be better access to fruits and vegetables, for example, but it’s not necessarily in the form of a supermarket. Or if it is in the form of a supermarket, the efforts need to be community-based, so that the community is working alongside policy makers and the supermarket in making sure that that endeavor is successful, that possibly people in the community are hired to work, and that the community has access to foods. This means they assess the price points of those foods, they make sure that

the foods are appealing to the community, and that there’s transportation to be able to access food.

What are some of the implications later in life for children who don’t have nutritious diets growing up? I think there are two. Without learning about food, and having that lived experience of preparing and eating food, and with limited exposure to foods, you’re less likely to eat new foods later in life. You might rely on those same comfort foods. So it’s about experience and access and exposure. And the other thing is, there’s a lot of research that looks at stress and stressrelated eating, and there’s this pretty strong literature that shows that eating under stress actually promotes the accumulation of central body fat, which is the unhealthy body fat. And we do see that more in low-income households that are more likely, as I mentioned earlier, to be heavier or be obese. And if it’s true that they’re accumulating central body fat, then they’re much more likely to have a chronic disease later in life, not because they’re heavier, but because of where they gained weight.

What else should people know? Right now, more than 34 million people are on food stamps, and half of those are children. And over 50 percent of kids, U.S. children, will be on food stamps at some time in their life. So the issue of being low-income and having that influence your diet really affects a lot more people than the average American realizes. It really is a big issue.

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ALUMNA SPOTLIGHT: MELANIE TERVALON M.D., M.P.H. ’84

Teaching Physicians an Important Lesson By Abby Cohn

Dr. Melanie Tervalon is outspoken about being humble. The Oakland pediatrician and community activist wants doctors to loosen the reins of power, become more self-reflective, and do a better job of listening. Too often, even the most wellintended physician overlooks the wisdom of true experts in the health care setting—the patients themselves. “The story of the person across from you is the story you need to pay attention to,” counsels Tervalon.

Known as “cultural humility,” Tervalon’s approach aims to ensure that increasingly diverse populations of patients get the high-quality and respectful care they deserve. It was introduced 20 years ago at Children’s Hospital and Research Center Oakland as part of Tervalon’s pioneering Multicultural Curriculum Program for doctors-in-training at the innercity institution. “It was time to turn on its head who was the teacher and who was the student,” says Tervalon, who has long championed health equity and other social justice causes. As a consultant and Children’s Hospital professor, she gives talks and training on cultural humility and a number of multicultural health issues. Cultural humility encourages physicians to politely ask about the needs and practices of those seeking treatment— and to avoid assumptions or snap judgments based on gender, ethnicity, economic status, or other aspects of a patient’s identity. Doctors are coached to commit to ongoing learning and self-critiques. Not surprisingly, the concept runs into occasional resistance from a target audience not known for its meekness.

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“Often I find that physicians recoil a bit from the term humility,” Tervalon says. “We use the term to remind us to not be so arrogant or prideful or really think that we have to be all-knowing and all-knowledgeable…which of course we can’t be.” The curriculum program at Children’s ran for a decade. Parents, community members, and historians were invited to attend and lead informational forums about various cultural groups. The project gained national recognition and was reproduced in other medical centers and workplaces. “To our knowledge, there wasn’t anything like it in the country,” says Tervalon. Advocating for change, often loudly, is a familiar role for her. Over the course of her career, she’s donned the hats of clinician, health strategist, educator, and adviser to grapple with such thorny problems as racial and ethnic health disparities, childhood obesity, and HIV/AIDS prevention and education. “I was not raised to be quiet,” says Tervalon. Indeed: Tapped as a commencement speaker at her graduation from the UCSF School of Medicine, Tervalon unleashed a blistering attack on the racism, classism, and sexism she’d witnessed during training. Her May 1980 address became known as “The Speech.” She related how a second-year resident had used a racial epithet to describe an African American patient and cited how another


SPOTLIGHT

resident presented a dying white alcoholic, jaundiced and bloated by failing organs, as “the yellow pumpkin.” “We have often felt dehumanized, ashamed, and unable to call our teammates colleagues,” she told the audience. Reflecting on that experience, Tervalon says, “I had no idea what medical school would be like. When I got there, I was horrified.” Dr. Vicki Alexander, who has known Tervalon for 40 years, praises her friend’s courage to speak out against injustice. “Melanie would stand up and call it what it was,” says Alexander, the retired director of the City of Berkeley’s maternal child and adolescent health program. Tervalon gives credit to her strongly identified African American family in Philadelphia. Her mother was a school teacher, and her father a policeman. “My mother taught me to read when I was three and was going to make sure all the doors were open to me,” she says. Heavily recruited by Ivy League colleges, Tervalon accepted Radcliffe’s offer in 1969. She immersed herself in a thicket of demonstrations demanding the establishment of a campus center honoring W.E.B. Du Bois, Harvard’s first African American doctoral recipient. When her freshman-year activism earned her a suspension, she headed west and didn’t return. Landing in the Bay Area, she threw herself into progressive political activities. Tervalon joined a Cuba solidarity brigade, managed the Oakland office of Black Panther leader Angela Davis’s defense committee, and at one point shared housing with Davis. Davis asked her what she wanted to do with her life, which spurred Tervalon to return to school. After getting a bachelor’s degree in genetics at Berkeley, she made a beeline to UCSF for her medical degree. By becoming an M.D., Tervalon

wanted to serve the black community and gain a solid platform for her activism. An interest in public health led her back to Berkeley after residency. She studied maternal and child health at the School of Public Health from 1983 to 1984, and completed a health policy fellowship at UCSF in 1989. Two years later, a horrific incident—the beating of black motorist Rodney King in Los Angeles— sparked the cultural humility project. Tervalon was working as an attending physician at Children’s when King’s beating caused simmering racial tensions among the ethnically mixed staff to boil over. Many nonwhite workers felt patronized by white physicians and were troubled by the treatment of patients of color. A hospital executive asked her and other staff members to sort out the turmoil. With the administration’s blessing, Tervalon and others organized the educational sessions, which attracted enthusiastic crowds of staff and local residents. At gatherings highlighting the backgrounds of African Americans, Latinos, Asians, whites, and other groups, speakers shared historical facts,

discovering the origin of the marks: They were lingering reminders of the major surgery the child had undergone as a fragile premature baby. By this time, the mother felt mistrusted and mistrustful. For Tervalon, the visit clearly illustrated the need for cultural humility. “We have to check ourselves, check our biases,” she says. Practitioners should be “respectfully curious” of patients and their families, and take time to “listen in ways we haven’t before.” Cultural humility also calls for doctors to become community advocates and for hospitals to provide institutional support. The program had a powerful impact at Children’s, she says. Communications improved. The hospital introduced language and translation services for non-English speaking patients. And many interns and residents who embraced the principles of cultural humility are “scattered around the country now,” she says. Jann Murray-Garcia M.D., M.P.H. ’94, a fellow pediatrician who helped develop the concept, says cultural humility offered an alternative to the prevailing emphasis that doctors acquire cultural “competence” in their patient interactions. Learning

“We use the term to remind us to not be so arrogant or prideful or really think that we have to be all-knowing and all-knowledgeable…which of course we can’t be.” health practices, poetry, and their past hospital experiences. Many stories emerged. Among them was a cautionary tale related by a distraught African American mother. She had brought her son to Children’s one night for an asthma attack and left feeling as if she was under a cloud of suspicion. The white medical student examining her son had mistaken scars on his body for evidence of past abuse. He began questioning the boy until

to care for patients from different backgrounds should be an ongoing process, she says, rather than the mastery of a set of facts. “This was not about ten things you do with a Cambodian patient,” says Murray-Garcia, who calls Tervalon “one of the most talented, self-sacrificing and powerful people” she knows. Fittingly, Tervalon is more humble: “I feel as though I have made a small, important contribution to the work of making change.”

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STUDENT SPOTLIGHT: JONATHAN MALAGON

Improving Communities to Improve Health By Abby Cohn

As a young teacher in Watts, Jonathan Malagon learned to lock down his classroom in case of trouble. There was plenty of it. Malagon sealed the doors when violence erupted on the grounds of Jordan High School or threatened to spill onto campus from neighboring streets.

were killed in off-campus incidents. “I don’t think anyone who didn’t grow up in the community could understand what happened in that school.”

he pursues concurrent master’s degrees from the School of Public Health and the Department of City and Regional Planning.

“So many things happened,” says Malagon, who taught history and English as a second language. In his first year on the job, two of his ninth-graders

Nearly a decade later, Malagon has left teaching and his Southern California roots. But those at-risk students are never very far from his thoughts as

Malagon wants underserved neighborhoods to become healthier places to live. His goals are farreaching—from combating epidemics of obesity and diabetes to improving high school graduation rates and economic opportunity. It’s a mission that speaks to his background as the son of Mexican immigrants and a first-generation college graduate. It’s also what brought him to Berkeley last fall, and why he was awarded a Kaiser Permanente Public Health Scholarship. His three-year program is exploring the connection between the “built environment”—everything from schools and parks to homes and workplaces— and the wellness of its residents. “Place really matters,” says Malagon, who earned his bachelor’s and master of education degrees from UCLA. “A lot of health outcomes are related to what exists or doesn’t exist in communities.” By invigorating troubled neighborhoods with safe streets and creating better access to fresh food, open space and jobs, Malagon believes local populations can reverse the inequities that undermine personal health and the quality of life overall. “I really see it as a systems issue and not an individual issue,” he says. “Change needs to happen across different domains.” Central to that strategy are improvements charted and led by community members themselves. At Berkeley, Malagon has hit the ground running. Initially planning to seek a public health degree

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SPOTLIGHT

alone, he soon added city planning to his academic plate. The combination of disciplines, he concluded, would give him grounding in economic development and community infrastructure and operations, along with a firm grasp for how living conditions, income, and other social determinants impact health. Off campus, Malagon recently joined a statewide project addressing the mounting crisis facing boys and men of color (BMoC). The initiative, headed by the State Assembly Select Committee on the Status of Boys and Men of Color, aims to break the cycle of poverty, violence, and disadvantage that disproportionately besets this demographic. Among their grim realities, boys and men of color are far more likely to drop out of high school, lack health care, and lose their life to homicide than their white counterparts. As a research fellow for PolicyLink, an Oaklandbased research and action organization, Malagon helped draft an action plan for the Select Committee. The plan offers multiple interventions in the areas of education, health, employment, juvenile justice, and youth development.

Rather than spending more money, many of the BMoC proposals involve allocating it differently, Lizardo notes. The state, for instance, spends some $9,800 a year on each public school student compared to almost $225,000 annually for each detainee in the juvenile justice system. For Malagon, the BMoC project has a deep resonance. “It is really speaking to who I am and what I want to do,” he says. Along with losing two young males to violence as a first-year teacher, Malagon witnessed the daily hardships facing underserved students and their families. “I’d have kids tell me, ‘I don’t feel safe even walking to school,’” Malagon says. In his role as his school’s English language coordinator, Malagon found multiple immigrant families cramped in the same living quarters—and saw the futility of encouraging parents to find a quiet place for their children to study. Perhaps most discouraging of all was the dropout rate. Of 1,000 students who started at his school in the ninth grade, only 300 graduated. Fewer than

“Kids and parents aren’t failing. Our systems are failing these communities.” Hundreds of youth and community leaders, service providers, and others testified on the plight of BMoC at a series of public hearings held throughout California in recent months. Among many calls for change were those for more schoolbased health clinics, expanded job training, and less punitive alternatives to school suspensions and expulsions. “Kids and parents aren’t failing. Our systems are failing these communities,” says Malagon, who has been reviewing the testimony and summarizing its recommendations. California can reach out to this vulnerable group in spite of the state’s monumental budget woes, says PolicyLink deputy director Rubén Lizardo.

half were boys. “What happened to those kids?” Malagon asks. Answering his own question, Malagon realizes many were driven from school by crushing adversity. Malagon knows firsthand how hardships can dismantle an educational quest. In the late 1990s, he almost flunked out of UCLA. His machinist father was unemployed at the time and Malagon, a community-college transfer student, was juggling three part-time jobs to help out. Commuting to campus from his family’s San Gabriel Valley home sometimes took two hours. “It became a challenge to focus on school, “says Malagon. Unable to complete his finals, he discovered he’d been dismissed.

As one of a small number of Latinos at a large institution, Malagon didn’t know where to turn for support from someone who would understand his situation. “I was really seeing the impact that race and class play in education,” he says. Too ashamed to tell his parents, he pretended he was still in school. Malagon credits a student-run retention center at UCLA with guiding him back. The peer counseling group got him on his feet academically and inspired him to support other students of color. “This was my entry into looking at equity,” says Malagon. During his senior year, he became director of the very organization that had been his lifeline. Teaching was a logical next step. Malagon was determined to work with students of color in inner-city schools. Along with its many challenges, Malagon’s classroom experience had its bright spots too. A community garden project was one of them. At Wilson High School, a predominately Latino school in East Los Angeles, Malagon’s students were researching the characteristics of low-, middle-, and high-income communities. That got them to thinking about their access to fresh food. Through field trips and surveys, they compared the food offerings in their working-class neighborhood to those in more affluent Pasadena. With a dearth of sources of fresh fruits and vegetables nearby, the students decided to grow their own food. An empty plot of school land blossomed into a community garden where students planted vegetables and herbs native to their cultures. In addition to being a source of healthy food, the garden “became a space for learning,” says Malagon. “We changed that space from blight to a positive space for the community.” Another outgrowth of the garden was evidence that such participatory action research projects could make a difference. “We can definitely affect where we live and what exists in the communities where we live,” says Malagon. At Berkeley, he’s finding many who share that view.

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FRESH PERSPECTIVE

OUR ROLE IN A MOVEMENT FOR

(HEALTH) EQUITY By Solange Gould, Ryan Petteway, Katherine Schaff, Jessica Schaffer, and Joseph Schuchter

As current students, we were drawn to Berkeley’s history of promoting social change and were motivated by Dean Shortell’s statement that the School of Public Health is “committed to eliminating the health inequities that exist due to social inequalities.” The School’s mission includes an “emphasis on diversity, human rights, and social justice in our research, teaching, and service activities” and a “concern for those who suffer disproportionately from illness and injury.” Last year saw the convergence of this mission with a major social movement. Social, economic, and political inequity generates, exacerbates, and perpetuates vast health inequities. In the United States, one’s ability to live a healthy life is directly correlated with income, place, and race. In the Bay Area, life expectancy between people residing in poor versus affluent neighborhoods differs by roughly 10 years. To sustain a healthy society, social and economic inequities must be addressed.

As the Occupy movement decried the widening wealth gap, we witnessed excessive police force used on non-violent protesters. On campus and elsewhere, hundreds of people were exposed to beatings with batons, harmful chemical agents, high-velocity projectiles, and other forms of violence. Though officials generally cited “public health” as a reason for curtailing Occupy efforts, such actions were often harmful to public health. Additionally, free speech and nonviolent protests are critical to addressing the very inequities that plague our communities. While many at the School are already active in social justice causes, Occupy resonated deeply within our community. We mobilized to protect free speech and highlight how the issues appearing on protest signs—education cuts, corporate

greed and corruption, the foreclosure crisis, antiimmigration laws, public transportation cuts— are all public health issues. We reached out to students, faculty, staff, and alumni to discuss our role in supporting these issues. Seventy-five public health students, faculty, staff and alumni sent a statement to the Chancellor and participated in actions across the Bay Area. This dialogue and action has revealed shared opportunities for the movement and our School of Public Health mission. We’ve realized the importance of practical cross-sector training and frameworks that break down the silos within and between the campus and communities. Many students—more than 20 of whom committed themselves to various Occupy Public Health working groups–commented that their

Close the

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Occupy Public Health members David Rebanal, Kara MacLeod, Alisun Chopel, and Katherine Schaff

Participating in Occupy has also challenged us to ask ourselves difficult questions about our own willingness to address power dynamics in our own public health work. participation in the workgroups provided the first opportunity to work across concentrations, roles, and programs within the school. Participating in Occupy has also challenged us to ask ourselves difficult questions about our own willingness to address power dynamics in our own public health work. Poverty, racism, and extreme social stratification, and subsequently substandard education, housing, and neighborhoods deeply affect the health of our nation. The Occupy movement provides an opportunity for public health to build and strengthen partnerships with leaders in education,

housing, transportation, city planning, social work, economics, policy, law, and the many other communities that can reduce and ultimately eliminate the vast inequities so harmful to our collective well-being. Social movements are dynamic processes full of differing perspectives on tactics, goals, and vision. Addressing structural racism, gender discrimination, heterosexism, and class discrimination within and external to the movement are enormous challenges. However, for many of us, this is the most significant social movement in our lifetimes. Regardless of our role as students, alumni,

faculty, or staff, we must start by evaluating the authenticity of our own engagement, considering how much power are we willing to share, and asking what our role is in eliminating health inequities. Together, we have an unprecedented opportunity to make health equity a reality. We encourage those involved in Occupy or other movements for equity or who would like to be involved to connect with us. Join our bspace group by emailing kschaff@berkeley. edu and our Facebook page at facebook. com/groups/OccupyPublicHealthBerkeley.

Health Gap

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The CAMPAIGN for the SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

FROM THE CAMPAIGN CHAIR THANKS TO YOU...Our Campaign will close out strong

The ambitious goal of raising $110 million in private philanthropy loomed large in the distance—a figure both inspirational and daunting. We envisioned all the great things this investment could accomplish: Scholarships and programs for students, improved facilities, recruitment and retention, world-class faculty, the advancement of vital health research, and strengthening of the School’s operations in a time of need. In short, the tools needed to help create “healthier lives in a safer world,” the theme of our Campaign. But we knew it would take the combined efforts of faculty, staff, advisers, alumni, volunteers, and friends to reach our bold objective. It’s now 2012, with only the final year left in The Campaign for the School of Public Health, which will end on December 31, 2013. As of April 2012, our

Campaign has raised a combined $107 million across all target areas, meaning we are $3 million away from our oncedistant goal. Thanks to the generosity of our private donors, as we near the finish line, success is well within reach. Please don’t miss out on being a part of this historic group endeavor. Until December 31, 2013, all gifts to the School count towards the Campaign total.

that support the limitless potential of the School community.

Alumni, don’t forget that your annual gift to the School in 2012–13 is also a gift to the Campaign. There’s no better way for you to show your commitment to the School and its bright future. With state support dwindling, your gifts are investments

Sincerely,

GOAL: $110

million 110

GOAL

107

11-12 10-11

82

09-10

45

08-09

27 24

06-07 05-06

10 Cumulative Total (in millions)

Healthier Lives in a Safer World

Fall 2012

Dr. Donald P. Francis Chair The Campaign for the School of Public Health

The Campaign for the School of Public Health

07-08

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I have been honored to serve as chair of this important endeavor. I continue to be inspired by the giving spirit of Berkeley alumni and friends. I hope you will consider joining me in supporting the school with a generous gift. Together, we can bring this campaign to a triumphant close.

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The School of Public Health launched a fundraising campaign in 2008, as part of the campuswide “Thanks to Berkeley” campaign.


The CAMPAIGN for the SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

DEANS CIRCLE

The School of Public Health Dean’s Circle is a community of individual 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, 2011, to June 30, 2012

$100,000 & Above

$1,000 to $4,999

William & Ute Bowes Kathy Kwan & Alan Eustace

Elaine Adamson & Edward Gould Ramona Anderson Stacey Baba & James Vokac Anne Bakar & Joseph Zadik Amy Bassell-Crowe & Jeffrey Crowe Raymond Baxter & Aida Alvarez Joan & Howard Bloom Jeffrey & Cathleen Brown Warren Browner Teresa & John Carlson George & Eleanor Cernada Eunice Childs Nilda Chong Leonard & Roberta Cohn Margaret Deane Susan & Michael Eckhardt Thomas Elwood Patricia Evans David & Ellen Feigal Robert & Carol Friis Sidney Ganis & Nancy Hult Ganis Wallace Gee Julie Gerberding & David Rose Evan Haigler & Rebecca Messing S. Katharine Hammond David & Katharine Hopkins Robert Hosang & Joyce Yap Jay & Kip Hudson David & June Jeppson Bethelen Johnson & Edmond Powers Jeffrey Kang & Brenda Lee-Kang Nancy Karp Julia Klees Joan Lam Lance & Jalyn Lang Carl Lester Yvette Leung & Liwen Mah Virginia & Franklin Lew Sa & Qiuyuan Liu Harriett & Don Long Lolita Lowry

$25,000 to $99,999 Stephen Bradley Susan Desmond-Hellmann & Nicholas Hellmann Rachel Morello-Frosch & David Eifler Steven Presser Leonard & Pamela Schaeffer Joel Simon John & Gail Swartzberg

$10,000 to $24,999 Patricia & Richard Buffler Chin Long & Fu Chen Chiang Gerald & Lorraine Factor Catherine & James Koshland Richard & Susan Levy Robert Margolis Lisa & John Pritzker Steven & Sally Schroeder Allan & Meera Smith

$5,000 to $9,999 Linda & James Clever Fred Cohen & Carolyn Klebanoff Ted Gianaris Michael Hannigan The Hosel Family Susan Ivey & Peter Bernhard A. Arlene Kasa Doris Maslach Edward & Camille Penhoet Janet Perlman & Carl Blumstein Ernest & Gunde Posey Rosalind Singer Kirk Smith & Joan Diamond

Robert Meenan Ruth & Harry Metzger Meredith Minkler & Jerry Peters Ivan Miter William & Kathleen Moeller Thomas & Johannah Newman Nora Norback & Darrel Hess Roberta O’Grady Nanette & John Orman Lisa & Roger Ota Gerald Pier Robert Porter Mary Jo Potter Darwin & Donna Poulos Arthur Reingold & Gail Bolan Lois Rifkin Richard & Dana Sankary Janet Schilling Thomas & Mary Schwartz Betty Seabolt Steve & Nancy Selvin Stephen & Susan Shortell Shoshanna Sofaer & Lawrence Bergner Jonathan Spanier Maury Spanier Harrison & Christine Spencer Herbert & Marcia Steinhardt Sheila Stewart & Charles Wilson Frances & Mark Sturgess Paul & Andrea Swenson Patricia & Kenneth Taylor Kenneth Taymor & Beth Parker Robert Tufel & Michael Sasso Judith Tuller Eric Vittinghoff Joan Wheelwright Stephen & Kimberly Wold Susan & Christopher Woodward John & Roxana Yau Matthew Zack Xuexin Zhang

The CAMPAIGN for the SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

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The CAMPAIGN for the SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

HONOR ROLL The School of Public Health gratefully acknowledges the following individuals and organizations for their generous contributions from July 1, 2011, to June 30, 2012. INDIVIDUALS Partners ($500 to $999) Anonymous Ellen & Paul Alkon Pamela & Rodrick Alston Phillip & Kristin Berman Lan-Anh Bui Merrill Buice Elizabeth Calfee Gretchen & Charles Carlson Margaret Cary Judy Chan Farmer & Kenneth Farmer Po-Shen Chang & Julie Craig-Chang Sandra Clement Myrna Cozen Orville & Helen Deniston Molly & Kevin Efrusy Mary Field Michael & Sandra Fischman Susan & James Foerster Michael Gallivan & Douglas Rice Jane Garcia & Chris Kiteas Kimberly Garfinkel Edward Gastaldo Robin Gillies Lawrence Green & Judith Ottoson Thomas Hazlet Genevieve Ho Sophia Hur

Laura & Richard Jacobs Nicholas & Debra Jewell Joshua & Elaine Kaufman Walter Keller James & Sarah Kimmey Laurence Kolonel Carrie & John Lee Christiana & Charles MacFarlane Anthony Marfin & Amy Bode Mary & Raymond Murakami Ralph & Jane Myhre Linda Neuhauser & Craig Buxton Jonathan Newhall Kim Nguyen Mary & Craig Noke Kara O’Keefe & Massimiliano Poletto Diana Petitti Anna Lisa Robbert Silvestre & Victor Silvestre Beth Roemer Joan & Jesse Rothstein Lewis Scarpace & Michele Cohen Stephen Taplin Timothy Taylor Rajesh Vedanthan & Sujatha Srinivasan Margaret Wang & Michael Nguyen Kathleen Wesner & Daniel Sullivan John Williams Annie Worth

GIFT SPOTLIGHT Infectious disease students get help in the laboratory Amount: $230,000 ($115,000 matched by the Chancellor’s Challenge for Student Support) Who: Steven A. Presser and Stephen P. Bradley, in memory of wife and sister Sally Anne Bradley Presser M.P.H. ’97 Impact: The Sally Anne Bradley Presser and Steven A. Presser Graduate Student Support Fund will assist Ph.D. students who are doing infectious disease laboratory-related work. Sally Presser, who passed away on May 18, 2011, received her M.P.H. in biomedical laboratory sciences and worked as a virologist for the School for more than 30 years.

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Fall 2012

Friends ($250 to $499) Donald Abrams John Alexander Richard & Carlene Anderson Marilyn Barkin Michael Bates Michelle Berlin Lowe & Robert Lowe Chhaganbhai & Sarojben Bhakta Julie Brown Pam Bruckert Burke Bundy & Sherri Rose Larry Bye Peter Carpenter & Jane Shaw Charlotte Chang & James Lastoskie Nancy Chapman Colb & Andrew Colb Patricia & Scott Charles Eunice Chee Carol & Ronald Clazie Richard Conant Bernard Cordes Michael & Nan Criqui Louise Detwiler James & Dorothy Devitt Jacquolyn Duerr & Alberto Balingit John & Marlene Eastman Denise & David Evans Tamar & Joe Fendel Daniel Fogel Dava & Donald Freed Connie Gee Daniel Gentry & Patrick Dunn Carol Giblin John Golenski & Edgar Brenninkmeyer Yevgeniy Goryakin Joseph Guydish Mark Hamilton Jean Hankin & Fred Jones Annie Heremans Christopher Hest John & Leta Hillman Hallie & Gilbert Holtzman Jim & Bethany Hornthal Debbie Huang Nancy & Kurt Jackson Michael Jamieson Ernst Janson Rosalia Kersch Theodore & Lym Kotzin Shirley & John Kresse Clement & Donna Kwong Andrew Lan Geoffrey Lang Lauren Le Roy & Jaime Biderman Frances & Ronald Ledford Jay Levy Ying Lu & Weizhao Zhou Howard & Siesel Maibach Stuart & Judith Marylander Stuart McIntee

Justin Rausa, an M.P.H. student in health and social behavior, and A. Arlene Kasa, a member of the School of Public Health’s Dean’s Circle, at the annual Scholarship Tea Paul McKnight Anne & Richard Melbye Edward Melia & Elaine Melia-Silver Thomas & Margaret Merzbacher Antoun Nabhan Mary O’Connor & Emil Brown Kurtis Opp Demos Pantelides Eileen & Mark Pearl James Platts Malcolm Potts & Martha Campbell Denise & Michael Prince Valerie Randolph & Donald Fenbert David Rempel & Gail Bateson Maria Roberts Joseph Robinson Shelley Roth Sidney & Sally Saltzstein William & Enid Satariano Donna Seid Sharon & Scott Shumway Robert Simon Jacqueline Smith Sharon Solkowitz Usha & Bharat Srinivasan Emily Stauffer Anne & Thomas Stewart Judith Stewart Yingmei Tcheou & John Cunningham Karen Tejcka Irene & Marsh Tekawa Clifford Tong Feng Tsai Eileen & James Vohs Girish Vyas R. Berna Watson Michael Weiss Eric & Marni Welch David & Kathryn Werdegar Patricia & Phillip West Katherine & Robert Westpheling Karin Winnard Barbara Wismer Brian Wong & Cindy Gok Miranda Worthen Zheng Yin Katherine Yu & David Su Yi Zhou & Ququan Liu

Supporters ($150 to $249) Anonymous Georgette Adjorlolo-Johnson Victor & Karen Alterescu Tomás & Irene Aragón Ann-Marie Askew Robin Azevedo Dean Baker Marina Baroff Ernest Bates George Baxter Lucinda & Ronald Bazile Bruce Bealke John Beare Harvey & Bonnie Bichkoff Patricia Boehme Frances Bowman Lynda Bradford Claire & Ralph Brindis Warren & Mary Brown Maureen Browne Alexandre Bureau & Sylvie Marceau Barbara Campbell Gerald Caples Diana Cassady Peggy Chan & Frederick Gladstone Raymond & Grace Chan Ryan Chan Doris Chang Sophia Chang & Anson Lowe boona cheema & Daniel Barth Dolores & Samuel Clement Simon & Janet Cohn Marcus Conant David Crouch Dale Danley Rena David & Walter Meyers Robin Dean Patricia & Walter Denn Barbara DeRiemer Alice & Robert Diefenbach Leland & Marta Ehling Frederick & Jean Erdtman Terry Etherton & Penny Kris-Etherton Mark Finucane Kari Ann Fisher Carol & James Floyd Deborah Freund & Thomas Kneisner


The CAMPAIGN for the SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH Katharine & Daniel Frohardt-Lane Terhilda Garrido Nancy Gilien Janice Goode Leslie Griffith William & Lynda Gross Conn & Anne Hallinan Glenn & Jan Hildebrand Nina Holland David Hoskinson Estie & Mark Hudes Joseph Hummel Mark Illeman James & Meryl Jackson Richard Jackson & Joan Guilford Deborah Jan Cornelius Jansen & Tanya Mamantov Kathryn Johnson & John Culver Yeva Johnson & Michael Potter Patricia Jones Mark Kaplan Irene & Kiyoshi Katsumoto Edward Klinenberg Deniz Kursunoglu Claudia Landau Sandra Lane Jennifer Lin Robert & Sharlene Lund Frank & Waneka MacKison Aditya Mane Harry & Claire Manji Karen Martz Caitlin Merlo Veronica Miller

Florence Morrison Clark Ruth Morse Edward Murphy & Miriam Eisenhardt Frank Mycroft & Sue Tsang Beata & Harlen Ng Luna Okada & Wynn Sheade Steve Paris Stephen Pascal Richard & Martha Pastcan Lesley & Jayson Pereira Frances Petrocelli Therese Pipe Fred & Marjorie Pitts Brian & Tacy Quinn Judith & John Ratcliffe Barbara Reiss & James Snyder Joseph & Nancy Restuccia Dorothy Rice Gordon & Whit Robbins Corinne Rocca Anthony & Barbara Rooklin Sheryl Ruzek & James Griesemer Gopal & Andrea Sankaran Robert Sass Robert Schlegel & Janet Fogel Megan Schwarzman & Michael Wilson Dana Seeley-Hayse & Tom Hayse Jessica Siegel & Stephen Tsoneff Harry Silas Muriel Simmons Joshua Simon Lorraine Smookler Robert & Patricia Spear

Laurence & Ann Sykes Coralyn Andres Taylor & Peter Taylor Joske Thompson Diane Tokugawa & Alan Gould John Troidl Laura Trupin Carrie Tsai Mary & Kenneth Tuckwell Robert & Allene Tumelty Clarence & Judith Ueda Gail & Kazuo Unno Paul Volberding Barry & Susan Wainscott Nina Wallerstein Lesley & Carl Walter Lynne Wittenberg & James Feathers Evaon Wong-Kim & Jean Kim Kara Wright & T. James Lawrence Xiaopeng Xu Steven & Victoria Zatkin Stacey Zones

Contributors ($1 to $149) Joel Ackerman Anita Addison Pulkit Agarwal Bilaal Ahmed M. Bridget Ahrens & Jean Szilva Donald Allari Jana Aloo Beth Altshuler Richard & Sue Ames Adele Amodeo Dahlia An Laura & Calvin Anderson

Patricia Anderson Daniel & Jan Anzel Karina Arambula & Andy Capdarest Anne Ashe & Larry Orman Brett Augspurger Harshith Avula & Vidya Pai Howard & Anita Backer Katherine Bai Richard Bailey Narayani Balakrishnan & Balakrishnan Lakshmanan Vidya Balakrishnan Dennis Balint Shelly Ball Keith & Gail Bandel Sarah Barber Howard Barkan & Annette Blackman-Barkan Arthur & Mary Barnes Carol Barnett Charles Baroo & Pat Heaphy Monica Barr David Barrows Elaine Base Sheila Baxter Barbara Beach & Geoffrey Kotin Jessica Beard Gerald & Pamela Beck Adam Becker Rasika Behl Monica Belyea & Stephen Smith Mary Ann & Ed Benik Lester & Evelyn Bennett Elisabeth Berger

David Berke Muriel Beroza William Beyer Michael Bird Thomas Blair Logan Blank & Leigh Everson Rebecca Blankenburg & Steven Lieske Babette & Sydney Bloch Barbara Bodle-Pedersen & Raymond Pedersen Barbara Boehler Mattie Boehler-Tatman Daniel Bohl Caroline Bowker & Charles Bliss Hilda Boyd Anne Bracker & Jefferson Singer Ellen & Nelson Branco Russell Braun Joseph Brazie Donald Brecker & Ann Darling Lauren Brener Letitia Brewster & David Walton Camille Broussard Kay Brover Claude Brown Elizabeth Brown Garrett Brown & Myrna Santiago Gertrude & William Buehring Sally & Graham Bullock Daniel & Thelma Burke Michael Butler Evelyn Caceres-Chu & Albert Chu Raul Caetano & Patrice Caetano Vaeth

Decade Club Recognizing individuals who have given for the past 10 years consecutively Elaine Adamson & Edward Gould M. Bridget Ahrens & Jean Szilva Pamela & Rodrick Alston Adele Amodeo Ramona Anderson Richard & Carlene Anderson Howard & Anita Backer Richard Bailey Dean Baker Marina Baroff John Beare Joan & Howard Bloom Lynda Bradford 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 Patricia & Scott Charles Chin Long & Fu Chen Chiang Eunice Childs Carol & Ronald Clazie Dolores & Samuel Clement

Linda & James Clever Ashley & Kenneth Coates Seymour Cohen Carol & S. Bruce Copeland Lawrence & Constance Cowper Dale Danley Margaret Deane Marlene Dehn 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 Michael Gallivan & Douglas Rice Wallace Gee Daniel Gentry & Patrick Dunn Carol Giblin Marian & Roger Gray Linda Greenberg & Hiroshi Motomura Jean Hankin & Fred Jones Elizabeth Hibbard

Glenn & Jan Hildebrand Marisa Hildebrand David & Katharine Hopkins Patricia & Harold Hosel David Hoskinson Estie & Mark Hudes Alma & Ian Kagimoto A. Arlene Kasa Leanne & Richard Kaslow James & Sarah Kimmey Julia Klees Laurence Kolonel Catherine & James Koshland Kathryn Kotula Clement & Donna Kwong Joan Lam Andrew Lan Bruce Lane Frances & Ronald Ledford Kelvin & Brenda Lee Carl Lester Virginia & Franklin Lew Robert & Sharlene Lund Shirley Main Karen Martz Robert Meenan Raymond Meister & Mary Miller Mark Mendell Meredith Minkler & Jerry Peters Mary & Raymond Murakami

Ralph & Jane Myhre Linda Neuhauser & Craig Buxton Beata & Harlen Ng Joel & Phyllis Nitzkin Mary & Craig Noke Mary O’Connor & Emil Brown Roberta O’Grady Alan Oppenheim & Alice Salvatore Artist Parker Edward & Camille Penhoet Janet Perlman & Carl Blumstein Darwin & Donna Poulos Savitri Purshottam Lois Rifkin Jean & Francis Riley Gordon & Whit Robbins Lisa Sadleir-Hart & Thomas Hart Sidney & Sally Saltzstein Gopal & Andrea Sankaran Janet Schilling Takeo Shirasawa Stephen & Susan Shortell Jessica Siegel & Stephen Tsoneff Robert Simon Rosalind Singer Allan & Meera Smith Esmond Smith Kirk Smith & Joan Diamond Linda Smith Schermer & Harry Schermer 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 Paul & Andrea Swenson Laurence & Ann Sykes Kenneth Taymor & Beth Parker Marilyn Teplow Pamela Thompson Richard & Mary Haven Thompson Diane Tokugawa & Alan Gould John Troidl Laura Trupin Sandra Tye Clarence & Judith Ueda Eric Vittinghoff Eileen & James Vohs Harvey & Rhona Weinstein Michael Weiss Katherine & Robert Westpheling John Williams Michael Williams Barbara Wismer Brian Wong & Cindy Gok Channing Wong Kara Wright & T. James Lawrence Katherine Yu & David Su

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The CAMPAIGN for the SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Beth Roemer M.P.H. ‘76, past president of the Public Health Alumni Association board of directors; Mike Hannigan, cofounder of Give Something Back, Inc.; and Beth Malinowski, recipient of the Give Something Back, Inc. Scholarship, at the annual Scholarship Tea Phillip Calhoun Sheila Callahan Rose Calnin Diana Camacho Maria Camargo Vegas Louie & Glennda Campos Megan Canon James Carpenter Paul Caslavka Chheke Chale Albert & Yvonne Chang Tommy & Caroline Chang Scott Chasalow & Margret van Vuuren Helen Chase Melody & Richard Chasen Mei Yu Chen Lee & Mu En Lee Gao Chen Munoz Sameera Chilakapati Peter & Elisa Chiu Vidita Chopra Eric Chow Noel & Judith Chrisman Angela Chu Oliver Chu & Joice Huang Joyce Chung & Kevin Yang Shana Chung Michael & Jan Clar Jennifer Clarke Eric Clausen Ashley & Kenneth Coates Pamela Cocks Susan Codeglia Alison Cohen Sarah Cohen Seymour Cohen Karen Cohn Kelin & Stig Colberg Mary Collins Paul & Susan Conforti Clare Connors Emily & Christopher Contois Won Cook Carol & S. Bruce Copeland Kitty Corbett & Craig Janes Lawrence & Constance Cowper Marguerite Cowtun & Henry Terrell Juliette Cubanski Edwin & Naomi Curtis Peter & Gwen Dailey

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Healthier Lives in a Safer World

Helena & James Daly Lois Damiani Charles Darke David Dassey David Dauphine Robert Davidson Harry & Laurie Davis Laurel & Stuart Davis Robert & Merle Davis Stephen Davis & Christine Laszcz-Davis Sylvia de Trinidad & Andrew Young Marlene Dehn John & Joybna Dellar Sarah Demlow Barbara Des Rochers Debra DeZarn Edwin Dhaens Olga Diaz Marlowe Dieckmann Ronald Dieckmann & Patricia Gates Alexander & Kimberly Ding Maureen Dion-Perry & Edward Perry Doris & Carl Disbrow Hellan & Bradley Dowden Sonya Dublin Erin Dugan & Brian Purcell Gordon Dugan Zhanna Duiseneyeva Carol & Ken Duncan Christine Dunham Kathleen Dunphy Debra Durchslag & Craig Zarley Louise & Toby Duys Joan Edelstein Evelyn & Leslie Edens Jose Eguia John Ekwaru Linda Elam Catherine Eliot John Ellis & Katharine Bostick Devy Emperador Alina Engelman Marsha Epstein Amanda Evans Emily Ewell Eileen Faulkner Martin & Juliana Feder Sue Felt & Michael Wilhelm Flora Fernandez Fall 2012

Maria Fernandez Rosa Fernandez & James Roybal Jared & Janet Fine Robin & Mark Fine Gerald & Linda Finer Kimura Flores Stewart & Lillian Fong Florence Fox E. Lynn Fraley & Kenneth Lindahl Karen Franchino & Reed Foster Donald & Diana Francis Constance Fraser Julie Freccero Mindy & Philip Friess Abe Froman Charles & Marilyn Froom Daniel Funderburk Edward Gallagher David Gan Gordon Gao & Carrie Peng Celeste Garamendi Brad & Pauline Garber John Garrison Jeremiah Garza Jane Gehring Aimee Geissler Robyn Gerdes Inna Gerlovina Neil Gesundheit & Eleanor Levin Sophia Gill Katharine Go Ang & David Ang Martha Goetsch & Linda Besant Cherie Golant Marilyn & Amos Goldhaber Sidra Goldman-Mellor Aliza Goldstein Brenda Goldstein Petra & Stan Goodell Mindy Goodman & Kadek Dirga Bea Goop-Lott Gloria & Alfonso Grace Marian & Roger Gray Brent Green Linda Greenberg & Hiroshi Motomura Nathaniel & Ella Greenhouse Barbara & Gary Greensweig Megan Grimm Cara Gueye Smith Erica & Casey Gunderson Anne Gwiazdowski & William Andersen Jill Hacker-Chavez & Raymond Chavez Judith Hahn Marian Haley Rita Hamad Jacalyn Hamburg Mary & Paul Hamer Nicola Hanchock & James Moore Gale Hannigan & Stephen Bartold Cooper Hanning Durrain Haq Sverre Harbo Marianne Harlow M. Antoinette Harris William Harrison Constance & Gregory Haslett Norman & Nora Hauret Richard Hayes Alvia & Yvonne Hearne

Mary Henderson Dana Henderson-Moore Samantha Henstell Janet & Leon Heon Keith Hermanstyne Lisa & Matthew Hernandez Dorith Hertz & Teven Laxer Elizabeth Hibbard Allan & Nancy Hikoyeda Marisa Hildebrand Beverly & Hugh Hilleary Richard Hirsh & Cathy Neto Rosemary Hoban Carolyn Hoke-Van Orden & Frank Van Orden Alan & Harriet Hollett Elizabeth Holly & Bruce Seidel Audrey Holm Noor & Farhad Hooda David & Kathryn Hornung John Hough Elizabeth & John Howe Benjamin Howell Janmei Huang Karen Hughes & David Mayer Peggy Hung Phyllis Hunt Wendy Hussey Carolina Ibarra Hazuki Inoue Daniel Irby Virginia Irving & Lawrence Moll Kiersten Israel-Ballard Mary & Kraig Jacobson Andrea Jacoby Loisann Jacovitz Cari Jarbouai

Angela Jenkins Dionne Jirachaikitti Steven Joffe & Elizabeth Haas Lorine Johnson Laura Jokela Rachael Jones Andrew Joseph Ngon Jue Farah Kader Udani Kadurugamuwa Alma & Ian Kagimoto Kathleen Kahler & Brian Stack Sereyvicheth Kaing Stuart Kamin Johnathan Kao Jane Kaplan & Andrew Condey Naomi & Jeffrey Karlin Leanne & Richard Kaslow Mary Keenan Terry Kekaha Jenness & James Keller Jo-Anne & Juan Kelly Lani Kent Eric Kessell Balvir & Kuljit Khunkhun Eunice & Paul Kilkenny Cynthia King Gile & Matt Gile Megan Kinsey Amy Kistler Nancy & Kenneth Klostermeyer Carol Koch Jean Kohn Eugene Konagaya Zoe Kornberg Jill Korte Bruce Kosanovic Kathryn Kotula

GIFT SPOTLIGHT Memorial gift aids future leaders in public health nutrition Amount: $100,000 ($50,000 matched by the Graduate Fellowships Matching Program) Who: Joel Simon M.D., M.P.H. ‘90, in memory of his wife Sarah E. Samuels Dr. P.H. ’82 Impact: The Sarah E. Samuels Graduate Award in Public Health Nutrition will support high-achieving graduate students specializing in public health nutrition at UC Berkeley. Sarah Samuels was a pioneer in the field of nutrition and physical activity research, and was a committed advocate for nutrition policies that would improve the public’s health.


The CAMPAIGN for the SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH Phyllis Kravitch Alise Kreditor Tendesayi Kufa Peter Kunstader Ruby Kuritsubo Kristina Kutter Wendy Kwalwasser Katherine Kwong Stella & Karman Kwong Mariah & Franquel Lafleur Maureen Lahiff Robyn Lamar Susan Lambert Bruce Lane Steven Lane & Selora Albin Elizabeth Laposata Abiose Lasaki Symoine Laufe Bach-Hue Le Fern Leaf Simone Leask Leisha Leclair Kelvin & Brenda Lee Kim Lee Richard & Christine Lee Sheryl Lee Simon Lee Priscilla Lee Chu & Eugene Chu Henry & Helga Leighton David Lein Joseph Leonard Fernanda Lessa & Ronaldo Pinto Lillian & Dan Levy Penny Levy Kathy Lewis Markell Lewis Shi Liaw Adrienne & Van Horn Lieu Maurine Lightwood Jessica Lin Samuel Lind Jean & Robert Lindblom David Lindquist Elena Lingas Aviva Lipkowitz Shayla Livingston William Lober & Christine Rodgers Anna Loeb Donna Lohmann & Christopher Barker Peggy Loper & Michael McShane Yang Lu Betty Lucas & Gordon Jackins Walter & Marsha Lucio Roger Luckmann & Erica Foldy Ellen Luecke Jessica Lum Peter Lurie Olivia Lustro Claudia & Robert Lutz Patricia MacHoll Meghan Madhusudhan Sheryl Magzamen Joseph Mailloux Shirley Main Eugene & Monica Malmquist Tatiana Mamantov David & Anne Manchester Siranush Manukyan-Navruzyan

Arthur Markowitz Kimberly Marsh Joanne Martin Marty Martinson Janet Masur John Mateczun & Elizabeth Holmes Karen Matthews & John Oldson Julie Mattoon Rosemarie Maune Marlon Maus Maranda May-Miller Robert & Darlene McCarthy Susannah McCormick Janet McDonald Ruth McHenry-Coe Carol McKee Marta McKenzie & Lawrence Chapter Janet McNamara Leslie McNeil & Jonathan Rabinovitz Paul Mead Nancy & Cary Meister Raymond Meister & Mary Miller Robin Mejia Maya Melczer Mark Mendell Nancy & Larry Merriman James Merson Rei Miike Andrew Miller Francine Miller & Daniel McLaughlin Robert & Faith Miller Robert Miller & Paula Shadle Maria Minjares Jo & A. Aaron Mintz Seema Mittal Leone Mohney Susan Moldaw Delfi Mondragon Lydia Moran Luc Moritz Kerry Morrissey Hallie Morrow Heidi Moseson Andrea Moss Emily Mou Marian Mulkey & John Powers Mark & Nancy Munekata Mary Murphy Pamela Murray Michael Musante Jean & Antoinette Naples Amalia & Carl Neidhardt Richard Neumaier Duylinh Nguyen Russell Nickels Karen Nikolai Joel & Phyllis Nitzkin Laura Nixon Audrey Nolte Audrey & James Nora Ramona Noriega Jean Norris & Bluford Hestir Monica Nowakowski-Carlson Gertrude Obi Michelle Odden Michael O’Donnell Marcellina Ogbu Afolabi & Mojirola Oguntoyinbo

Dean’s Advisory Council gains three new members The School of Public Health Advisory Council gained a wealth of health policy experience in the last year, with two health management consultants and a veteran of state health services lending their expertise. John D. Golenski Ed.D. John Golenski is the cofounder and chief executive officer of My Dutch Uncle, a company that provides business services and strategic planning to nonprofits. He has served as an executive for several major nonprofits and has a diverse background in pediatric psychology, clinical services, health policy consulting, and pastoral care. He is also president of the Health Priorities Group, an interdisciplinary health policy consulting group. Golenski founded the Health Priorities Group in 1989, and in that role he has advised a wide range of hospitals and medical centers, as well as health insurers, large employers, and governments in the areas of health care delivery and health policy.

Mark Horton M.D. Mark Horton is a lecturer with the Center for Health Leadership at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. Prior to that, from July 2007 to March 2011, he was state public health officer and director of the California Department of Public Health. With more than 30 years of experience, Dr. Horton has a strong background in public health programs and clinical practice. He has served as state public health officer and chief deputy director of the California Department of Health Services. He previously served as the deputy agency director and health officer for the County of Orange Health Care Agency from 1999 to 2005. Prior to that, he was vice president for community programs, director of the Center for Child Protection, and director of the Center for Healthier Communities for Children at San Diego Children’s Hospital and Health Center. He also served as director of public health for the State of Nebraska.

Dennis J. Patterson Ed.D. Dennis Patterson is the founder and chairman of the Collaborative for Leadership Excellence, a firm that coaches senior executive teams in creating high-performing hospitals. He has nearly four decades of executive hospital and turnaround management experience in the United States, Canada, and Europe. He has been instrumental in devising and implementing programs that dramatically improved performance in some of the nation’s top hospitals and health systems. Patterson also serves as a trusted advisor to senior executives, trustees, and government officials in hundreds of hospitals worldwide.

Christina O’Halloran Margaret O’Halloran & Christopher Lutz Mary O’Leary Perkins & Arthur Perkins Patricia & Richard Olney Alan Oppenheim & Alice Salvatore Kathryn Orsini Joanna Ortega Susan Osaki Holm & Mark Holm Charles & Barbara Osicka Beverly Ovrebo John Palmer & Sherrill Martinez Leslie & Alex Palmerlee

Monique Parrish Padmini Parthasarathy Jolie Pearl Michelle Pearl Karen Peifer Alissa Perrucci Audrey Pettifor & Mark Schoeman Sarah & Zeno Pfau Giorgio & Kathleen Piccagli Tommie Pippins Mary Pittman & David Lindeman Jya Plavin

Adam Polis Katherine Pollard Hopkins Poon Ann Porcella Maribel Portilla Lisa Prach Dudley Price Gayle Price Susan & John Proctor Savitri Purshottam Nancy Puttkammer & David Saxen Stephen Quinet

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The CAMPAIGN for the SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

School of Public Health Policy Advisory Council 2012–2013 Margaret Cary M.D., M.B.A., M.P.H. Special Assistant to the Chief Technology Officer Department of Veterans Affairs

Kenneth S. Taymor J.D., Chair Executive Director Berkeley Center for Law, Business, and the Economy UC Berkeley School of Law

Linda Hawes Clever M.D., M.A.C.P. Senior Physician California Pacific Medical Center

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

President, RENEW

Lucinda Bazile M.P.H. ’94 President Public Health Alumni Association

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

Director, Policy and Special Projects LifeLong Medical Care

John D. Golenski Ed.D. CEO My Dutch Uncle

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

Penelope Jane & Lincoln Quintana Samantha Quon Edith Radkey Meena Ramachandran Tatiana Ramage Patrick Ramirez Florence & Paul Raskin Justin Rausa & Colleen Klus Reimert & Betty Ravenholt Erika Redke Irene Reed Shirley & Samuel Reed Kyndaron Reinier & David Henehan Anna Reyes Liza Reynolds & Jason Landis Lani Riccobuono Michael Richards Allyson & Ralph Rickard Jean & Francis Riley Stephan Ritter Marilyn Robbie Jossens & Lawrence Jossens Annette & Wilfrid Roberge Scott Robinson & Deborah Dobin Alexandra Rodionova Tracy Rodriguez Trevor Rodriguez Carla Rogers Judith & Paul Rogers Malaya & Eddy Rogers Michael & Sharon Rogers James Rogge Gloria Roman Nila Rosen Allan Rosenberg Ellen & Paul Rosenberg E. Scott & Shirley Rosenbloom Nicholas Ross Shelley Ross-Larson Elizabeth Rottger Alice Royal

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Mark B. Horton M.D. Lecturer UC Berkeley School of Public Health

Victor Rubin Glen & Corinne Ryland Lisa Sadleir-Hart & Thomas Hart Lisa Safaeinili Linnea Sallack Cornelio & Annie Grace Samaniego Agustin Sanchez Jaspal Sandhu Kelly Sandin Martha Sandy & Qi Dang Baljeet Sangha Kriselle Santos Rupinder Sarai Ingrid Sausjord Rosita Saw Jessica Schaffer Joann Schroeder Erika Schwilk & Shane Papke Frank Sclafani Harry & Monika Scott John Scott & Samantha Pitts Katherine Scott Nancy Scott Winifred Scott Lynn Scuri & John Glaser John & Karen Senteno Shira Shafir & Ted Kroeber Zeheria Shifa Takeshi & Mizuho Shinomoto Takeo Shirasawa Karen Shiu Dara Shulman Stephen Sidney & Carolyn Schuman Lillian Sie Regina Silbert Marilyn Silva & Warren Musker Ellen & Gary Sirbu Annie & Tim Siu Joan & David Skurnick Andrew Slocombe Charlotte & Jim Smith

Healthier Lives in a Safer World

Fall 2012

Anthony B. Iton M.D., J.D., M.P.H. ’97 Senior Vice President, Healthy Communities The California Endowment

Mary Pittman Dr.P.H. ’87 President & CEO Public Health Institute

Kenneth W. Kizer M.D., M.P.H. Director, Institute for Population Health Improvement UC Davis Health System

Mary Jo Potter M.A. Senior Advisor BDC Advisors, LLC

Lauren LeRoy Ph.D. President and CEO Grantmakers in Health

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

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

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

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

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

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

Esmond Smith Karen Smith Lester & Pauline Smith Margot Smith Randall Smith Linda Smith Schermer & Harry Schermer Kristie Snider Robert Snyder Susan & David Snyder Marvin So Krikor & Caline Soghikian Marcia & Robert Somers Lucia & Peter Sommers Anatole Soyka Jeanette Spangle & Alan Walfield Joan Sprinson Kathryn Stambaugh & Thomas Mazzotta Susan Standfast & Theodore Wright Tara Starr-Keddle Martha & Robert Stebbins Joan Steber Jacklyn Stein & Matt Atwood Nina Steinberg Edith & Guy Sternberg Wayne Steward Marilyn & William Stocker Elizabeth Stone Corwin Strong May & Jim Sung Ann & Ted Suyeyasu Christine Swanson Samina Syed Esther Tahrir & Axel Dubon Debbie Talianko Joan Tanzer Cathy Taylor & Thupten Cholang Judith Taylor Alexandra Tee Shifra Teitelbaum Marni Temple Marilyn Teplow

Susan Thapa Gregory & Bonita Thomas Geoffrey Thompson Pamela Thompson Linda & Jon Thurston Cheryl Toledo Alannah Tomich Janis & Daniel Tuerk Steven Tulkin Ashley & Paul Turek Dennis Turner Sandra Tye Jennifer Uphoff Dorothy & Clasten Vaughn Barbara Veirs Elizabeth Velten Wendy Verret Paul Vesper Sara Viteri Miranda Walker Amelia Wallace Mats & Susan Wallin Jim Wambach Jennifer Wang William & Kathryn Ward Marcella & James Warner Resa & Matthew Warner Christina Watson Natalya Watson Emily Webb Patricia Weber Sarah & Joel Weinberger Harvey & Rhona Weinstein Miriam Weisel & Paul Hamburg Brooke Weisenberger Constance & Stanley Weisner Morris & Audree Weiss Gordon Werner Sanford & Carolyn Werner Elizabeth Wessel Amanda Wheeler

Maureen White Todd Whitehead Sabrina Wickremasinghe & Pejman Pour-Moezzi John & Elizabeth Anne Wikle Jacquelyn Williams Michael Williams Lacie Wilson Robin & Peter Winokur Marian & Charles Woessner Channing Wong Lisa Wong Otis & Teresa Wong Walter Wong Ron & Genevieve Wood Richard Woodul Paula Worby Stanley Wu Ronald & Lona Wyatt Ivy Xin Juan Yang Frank & Gaylian Yee Lily Yip Mary & Melvyn Yokan Sallie Yoshida & Max Kelley Linda Young Ryan Young Richard Younge & Yukiko Umemoto Nichole Young-Lin Amy Yu Stella Yu & Hingloi Hung Kevin Yuen Judith Zaborowski Nancy Zacher Walter Zaks Samantha Zaplinski Courtney Zecher Marshall Zemon Evelyn & Robert Zlomke Partow Zomorrodian Lisa Zwerling & Ron Birnbaum


The CAMPAIGN for the SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

IN MEMORY OF Eki and Nobuta Akahoshi and Seiko Baba Brodbeck by James Vokac & Stacey Baba Robert Amber by Donald Allari Asha Bhende by Aditya Mane Henrik Blum by Anita Addison William Bruvold by Katharine & Daniel Frohardt-Lane

Donald Minkler by Allyson & Ralph Rickard Gopal & Andrea Sankaran Lela Morris by Kathleen Kahler & Brian Stack Kim Nguyen by Jennifer Wang Ralph Paffenbarger Jr. by Joann Schroeder Nicholas Parlette by Thomas Elwood

Pauline Burt by Sheryl Ruzek & James Griesemer

Sally Anne Bradley Presser by Stephen Bradley Louise & Toby Duys Steven Presser

Victor Cabasso by Leonard & Roberta Cohn

Phoebe Prince by Daniel Fogel

Yoshi Carpenter by James Carpenter

Sarah Rao by Aditya Mane

Alfred Childs by Eunice Childs

Samuel Reed by Barbara Reed Waske

C. Mayhew Derryberry by Thomas Elwood

Shirley Roach by Betty Seabolt

Evon Dery by Charlotte & Jim Smith

Beryl Roberts by Elaine Base Thomas Elwood

Susan Kersch DeYoung by Rosalia Kersch Ann Edwards by Eileen & Mark Pearl Sanford Elberg by David Lindquist Donald Gentner by Judith Stewart William Griffiths by Thomas Elwood Sidney & Sally Saltzstein Harold Gustafon by Thomas Elwood Riad Hamad by Rita Hamad Hilda Haus Boyd by Maurine Lightwood Ruth Huenemann by Doris & Carl Disbrow Alma & Ian Kagimoto A. Arlene Kasa Betty Lucas & Gordon Jackins Marni Temple Mary & Kenneth Tuckwell Mark Kutnink by Jill Korte Isolde Loewinger by Lorraine Smookler Christine Mackenzie by M. Antoinette Harris Larry Macupa by Linnea Sallack Walter Mangold by Lawrence & Constance Cowper Sheldon Margen by Linda Neuhauser & Craig Buxton William McFate Smith by Jacqueline Smith Carl Meyer by Maurine Lightwood

Sarah Ruby by Joan & Howard Bloom Judith Zaborowski Sarah Samuels by Joel Ackerman Anne Ashe & Larry Orman Dennis Balint Barbara Beach & Geoffrey Kotin Adam Becker Kay Brover Larry Bye California Center for Public Health Advocacy The California Walnut Board The California WIC Association Sheila Callahan Diana Cassady The Center for Science in the Public Interest Tommy & Caroline Chang Eunice Chee Carol & Ken Duncan Catherine Eliot Terry Etherton & Penny Kris-Etherton Susan & James Foerster Florence Fox Jeremiah Garza Connie Gee The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation Virginia Irving & Lawrence Moll Richard Jackson & Joan Guilford Naomi & Jeffrey Karlin Carol Koch Theodore & Lym Kotzin Phyllis Kravitch Alise Kreditor Wendy Kwalwasser Symoine Laufe Penny Levy Kathy Lewis Markell Lewis Patricia MacHoll Arthur Markowitz Janet Masur

Rosemarie Maune Maranda May-Miller Meredith Minkler & Jerry Peters Lydia Moran Pamela Murray Nanette & John Orman Shelley Roth Victor Rubin Janet Schilling Steven & Sally Schroeder Stephen & Susan Shortell Joel Simon Joshua Simon Ellen & Gary Sirbu Sharon Solkowitz Joan Steber Nina Steinberg Joan Tanzer Yingmei Tcheou & John Cunningham Linda & Jon Thurston Clifford Tong Steven Tulkin Maureen White Robin & Peter Winokur Richard Woodul Stacey Zones Alfred Sasso by Robert Tufel & Michael Sasso Leona Shapiro by Margot Smith Marilyn & William Stocker Marni Temple

William Taylor by Judith Taylor

Jerome Vaeth by Raul Caetano & Patrice Caetano Vaeth

Sue Williams by Nancy & Kurt Jackson Melvina Williams by Jacquelyn Williams Ellen Wilson by Megan Schwarzman & Michael Wilson Warren Winkelstein by Marsha Epstein Thomas & Johannah Newman

Amount: $20,000 ($10,000 matched by the Chancellor’s Challenge for Student Support) Who: Professor Emeritus Chin Long Chiang Impact: This gift, along with additional gifts from friends, family, and colleagues, will establish the Chin Long Chiang Graduate Student Fellowship, which will aid Ph.D. students specializing in biostatistics. Professor Chiang served on the Berkeley faculty for 36 years and was the chair of the Biostatistics program. He received the Berkeley Citation for distinguished achievement in teaching from the University upon his retirement in 1987.

Dixie Collins by Mary Collins

Jean Todd by Lynda Bradford

Russell Watson by Christina Watson

Professor emeritus gives back to fledgling biostatisticians

Chin Long Chiang by Margaret Deane Elizabeth Holly & Bruce Seidel Ying Lu & Weizhao Zhou

Chuck Smith by Orville & Helen Deniston

Elaine Walbroek by Ron & Genevieve Wood

GIFT SPOTLIGHT

Brenda Eskenazi by R. Berna Watson Sara Gale by Cornelius Jansen & Tanya Mamantov Narendra Gurung by Mindy Goodman & Kadek Dirga Charisma Hooda by Noor & Farhad Hooda Shobna Khunkhun by Balvir & Kuljit Khunkhun Sheldon Margen by Linda Neuhauser & Craig Buxton MCH Program by Donald Brecker & Ann Darling MCH Program Class of 2012 by Wendy Hussey

Steve Selvin by Gertrude & William Buehring Patricia & Richard Buffler Burke Bundy Sandra Clement Inna Gerlovina Patricia & Harold Hosel Deborah Jan Nicholas & Debra Jewell Yeva Johnson & Michael Potter Eugene Konagaya Maureen Lahiff David Lein Harriett & Don Long Jonathan Newhall Edward & Camille Penhoet Arthur Reingold & Gail Bolan William & Enid Satariano Stephen & Susan Shortell Allan & Meera Smith Anatole Soyka Marcella & James Warner Karen Sokal-Gutierrez by Joshua & Elaine Kaufman Mary Keenan Marvin So

Robert Worth by Annie Worth

Messing & Haigler Wedding Guests by Evan Haigler & Rebecca Messing

Sara-Mae Goldenberg Zemon by Marshall Zemon

Eileen Peck by Katherine & Robert Westpheling

S. Leonard Syme by Marsha Epstein Samuel Lind

IN HONOR OF

Nicholas Petrakis by Marilyn Silva & Warren Musker

Richard and Dolores Tejcka by Karen Tejcka

Erma Anderson by Ramona Anderson

Edmond and Elizabeth Preston by Catherine & James Koshland

V. Reddy and Suguna Avula by Harshith Avula & Vidya Pai

Tom Rundall by Daniel Gentry & Patrick Dunn

Robert Tufel by Lauren Brener Sarah Cohen

Robert Bramson by Eric & Marni Welch

Allen Samaniego by Cornelio & Annie Grace Samaniego

Ralph Catalano by Sidra Goldman-Mellor Samuel Lind

Courtney Scott by Nancy Scott

Helen Wallace by Claude Brown Kazem, Farnaz and Reza Zomorrodian by Partow Zomorrodian

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The TheCAMPAIGN CAMPAIGNforforthe the SCHOOL SCHOOLOF OFPUBLIC PUBLICHEALTH HEALTH

ORGANIZATIONS

Director’s Circle ($50,000 to $99,999)

Executive Circle ($100,000 and above) Blue Shield of California William K. Bowes Jr. Foundation California HealthCare Foundation The California Wellness Foundation Cedars-Sinai Medical Center Consejo Nacional De Ciencia Techologia Consulado de Mexico The David & Lucile Packard Foundation Dignity Health The Doris Duke Foundation East Bay Community Foundation Eustace-Kwan Family Foundation Genentech, Inc. Gilead Sciences GlaxoSmithKline Institute of International Education The Joffe Charitable Trust Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc. Kalmanovitz Charitable Foundation Servicios De Salud De Zacatecas Sharp HealthCare Sutter Health Care Ubs Optimus Foundation University of Southern California WellPoint Health Networks, Inc.

Abbott Laboratories Bristol-Myers Squibb US Pharmaceutical Group British United Provident Association Limited California Endowment George Washington University Merck & Co, Inc. Sustainable Sciences Institute Leaders ($25,000 to $49,999) Bessemer Trust Company Fred H. Bixby Foundation Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals Inc. Janssen Research and Development Passport Foundation Quintiles Transnational Tibotec Pharmaceuticals University Of Minnesota Twin Cities Vertex Pharmaceuticals Benefactors ($10,000 to $24,999) Achillion Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Beauregard Family Foundation Council For Education & Research On Toxics Dartmouth College Max Factor Family Foundation

At Commencement, 2012 Class Gift Committee co-chairs Hue Le M.P.H. ’12 and Samantha Quon B.A. ’12 present 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. The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation Health Net HealthCare Partners Medical Group Hill Physicians Medical Group Idenix Pharmaceuticals W.K. Kellogg Foundation Monarch Healthcare Monogram Biosciences

Class Gift Anonymous Dahlia An Brett Augspurger Harshith Avula & Vidya Pai Katherine Bai Narayani Balakrishnan & Balakrishnan Lakshmanan Vidya Balakrishnan Jessica Beard Rasika Behl Elisabeth Berger Thomas Blair Barbara Boehler Mattie Boehler-Tatman Camille Broussard Rose Calnin Diana Camacho Maria Camargo Vegas Ryan Chan Tiffany Chia Sameera Chilakapati Vidita Chopra Angela Chu Oliver Chu & Joice Huang Jennifer Clarke Alison Cohen Clare Connors Sarah Demlow Olga Diaz Marlowe Dieckmann

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John Ekwaru Devy Emperador Alina Engelman Emily Ewell Maria Fernandez Julie Freccero Sophia Gill Sidra Goldman-Mellor Aliza Goldstein Cooper Hanning Durrain Haq Sverre Harbo Dana Henderson-Moore Samantha Henstell Benjamin Howell Peggy Hung Wendy Hussey Carolina Ibarra Hazuki Inoue Cari Jarbouai Angela Jenkins Dionne Jirachaikitti Farah Kader Udani Kadurugamuwa Sereyvicheth Kaing Stuart Kamin Johnathan Kao Zoe Kornberg Katherine Kwong Stella & Karman Kwong

Healthier Lives in a Safer World

Fall 2012

Robyn Lamar Bach-Hue Le Simone Leask Leisha Leclair Jessica Lin Aviva Lipkowitz Shayla Livingston Anna Loeb Yang Lu Ellen Luecke Meghan Madhusudhan Siranush ManukyanNavruzyan Marlon Maus Susannah McCormick Robin Mejia Heidi Moseson Duylinh Nguyen Laura Nixon Christina O Halloran Joanna Ortega Janet Pan Jya Plavin Hopkins Poon Maribel Portilla Ankita Prasad Samantha Quon Meena Ramachandran Patrick Ramirez Justin Rausa & Colleen Klus Anna Reyes

Lani Riccobuono Alexandra Rodionova Trevor Rodriguez Rupinder Sarai Jessica Schaffer Winifred Scott Lillian Sie Charlotte & Jim Smith Robert Snyder Marvin So Alexandra Tee Alannah Tomich Jennifer Uphoff Elizabeth Velten Miranda Walker Amelia Wallace Jennifer Wang Natalya Watson Emily Webb Sarah & Joel Weinberger Brooke Weisenberger Elizabeth Wessel Amanda Wheeler Lacie Wilson Miranda Worthen Stanley Wu Ivy Xin Amy Yu Samantha Zaplinski Partow Zomorrodian

Novartis Pharma AG Novartis Pharmaceuticals Pacific Biosciences Lisa & John Pritzker Family Fund Public Health Foundation Enterprises Roche Molecular Systems, Inc. The San Francisco Foundation The Schwab Fund for Charitable Giving Silicon Valley Community Foundation Society of Family Planning Techworkers Patrons ($5,000 to $9,999) American Foundation For AIDS Research, Inc. Peter B. Bernhard Irrevocable Trust The Commonwealth Fund Delta Dental Plan of California Give Something Back, Inc. Global Healing International Epidemiological Association International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis The James Irvine Foundation The McKesson Foundation Ralphs Grocery Company Secretaria Nacional del Migrante de Ecuador United Way of Greater Los Angeles Advocates ($1,000 to $4,999) Anonymous Adamas Pharmaceuticals Chevron Corporation Cisco Systems Foundation Cornell University Dextra Baldwin McGonagle Foundation The Friendship Fund

The Arnold P. Gold Foundation Google, Inc. Keenan & Associates Los Palos Gastroenterology, Inc. Mountain Travel Sobek My Dutch Uncle Public Health Institute Texas Pacific Group University of Oxford Wells Fargo Foundation Partners ($500 to $999) American Medical Student Association BASF Corporation California Association of Healthcare Leaders Commonweal Retreat Center GalenMD System, Inc. Huntington Insurance Agency F. Korbel Bros KPMG Foundation Lantern Projects Friends ($250 to $499) American Chemistry Council Freed & Associates Goldman Sachs & Company Nova Fisheries Inc. The Oregon Community Foundation See’s Candies Wellspring Medical Group Supporters ($150 to $249) California Center For Public Health Advocacy California Walnut Board Hafner Vineyards Pfizer Foundation The United Way of the Bay Area


The CAMPAIGN for the SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH Contributors ($1 to $149) California WIC Association Center for Science in the Public Interest Chez Panisse Cafe & Restaurant HR Dowden and Associates Evercare Hospice & Palliative Care The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation Independent Plus, Inc. Jewish Community Foundation of the West Legacy Film Series Meals on Wheels of San Francisco Merck Company Foundation Richard W. Neumaier Trust Northrop Grumman Foundation Monica Nowakowski, LCSW On Lok Lifeways Senior Alternatives Sesen Elder Care Tender Rose Home Care

MATCHING GIFTS BASF Corporation Bristol-Myers Squibb US Pharmaceutical Group California HealthCare Foundation Chevron Corporation Goldman Sachs & Company

Google, Inc. The James Irvine Foundation Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Just Give Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc. Local Independent Charities of America Lockheed Martin Merck & Co, Inc. Northrop Grumman Foundation Pfizer Foundation Texas Pacific Group The United Way of the Bay Area Wells Fargo Foundation

GIFTS IN KIND Acme Bread Company The Albatross Pub Asian Art Museum Berkeley Playhouse Berkeley Repertory Theatre Bette’s Oceanview Diner Harvey & Bonnie Bichkoff Bread Workshop Café Tibet Camino Chez Panisse Cafe & Restaurant Comedy Off Broadway Robin Dean Ecology Center Fat Slice Pizza Filippo’s

Funky Door Berkeley Grand Lake Theatre Hafner Vineyards Homemade Café Jodie’s Bar-B-Que Kiehl’s Since 1851 F. Korbel and Brothers Deniz Kursunoglu La Mediterranee La Note Restaurant Lake Chabot Golf Course Lawrence Hall of Science Le Bateau Ivre Lindsay Wildlife Museum The Natural Grocery Company New Century Chamber Orchestra Oakland East Bay Symphony Oakland Ice Center Rialto Cinemas San Francisco Cruises San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Zoo Janet Schilling See’s Candies Semifreddi’s Bakery Karen Shore Stephen & Susan Shortell Venezia West Edge Opera Wine and Canvas

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

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

Estate gifts received from July 1, 2011 to June 30, 2012 The Estate of Sally Anne Bradley Presser The Estate of Eleanor Langpaap The Estate of Sarah Samuels

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, 2011, to June 30, 2012. 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.

Your memorial gift honors the past while protecting the future A memorial gift can serve as a wonderful tribute to a family member, a friend, or a beloved professor, student, or staff member. Your gift can help perpetuate the values and ideals that guided someone’s life. It could establish a student fellowship, support faculty research, or provide general support to help the UC Berkeley School of Public Health continue to solve the world’s most pressing health problems.

Any type of gift can be designated as a memorial gift.

To learn more, please contact Pat Hosel at (510) 642-9654 or phosel@berkeley.edu. The CAMPAIGN for the SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Fall 2012

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AROUND THE SCHOOL

KUDOS

Selvin awarded Berkeley Citation for service to University Professor of Biostatistics Steve Selvin, a dedicated member of the School’s faculty for the past 40 years, received the Berkeley Citation for his “distinguished achievement and notable service to the University.” Selvin, who served as head of the Division of Biostatistics for 25 years, joins a cohort of extraordinary staff, faculty, administrators, and friends of the campus who have received the Citation since its creation in 1968. In a nominating letter, Associate Dean Gertrude Buehring praised Selvin’s “incredible contributions to teaching,” “prolific writing,” and “strong contributions to the curricula.” Selvin was instrumental in establishing the undergraduate major in public health, which has become one of the most popular majors on campus.

Abrams elected to Institute of Medicine Barbara Abrams, professor of epidemiology, maternal and child health, and public health nutrition, was among 65 new members and five foreign associates joining the Institute of Medicine (IOM) at its last election. Abrams was cited for her contributions to maternal and child nutrition—notably, her studies documenting the association between maternal weight gain and birth outcomes. Election to the IOM is considered one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine and recognizes individuals who have demonstrated outstanding professional achievement and commitment to service.

Berkeley team takes first place in health leadership College Bowl In March 2012, UC Berkeley’s team of undergraduate public health students took first place in the California Association of Healthcare Leaders (CAHL) 4th Annual College Bowl Competition in Sacramento. The Berkeley team—Benfie Liu ’12, Chu Fang “Phoebe” Tseng ’13, and Zeyu Xu ’12 (pictured second, third, and fourth from left)—beat undergrad and graduate teams from California State University, East Bay; the University of San Francisco; the University of the Pacific; California State University, Chico; and Fresno State. The competition is designed to sharpen and test the skills of each university’s students in health policy and management. The UC Berkeley team took home the perpetual trophy, a $750 cash prize, and the title of CAHL’s 2012 College Bowl Champions.

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Jewell wins Harvard award for statistical science Nicholas P. Jewell, professor of biostatistics and statistics, received the Harvard School of Public Health’s 2012 Marvin Zelen Leadership Award in Statistical Science. The award recognizes an individual who, by virtue of his or her outstanding leadership, has greatly impacted the theory and practice of statistical science. Jewell is well known for his methodologic work on HIV/AIDS, parametric estimation under truncation or response-selective sampling, current status data analysis, and the analysis of binary responses. He has also developed and promoted biostatistics at Berkeley, mentored graduate students, recruited outstanding faculty, and served as vice provost of UC Berkeley and chair of the graduate groups in Biostatistics and in Computational and Genomic Biology.

Smith awarded 2012 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement Professor of Global Environmental Health Kirk Smith was one of two winners of the 2012 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement. The Tyler Prize is given to those who “confer great benefit upon humankind through environmental restoration and achievement,” and is regarded as the premiere award for environmental science, environmental health, and energy. Smith was recognized for his work identifying that household air pollution from the burning of biomass fuels in developing nations represents one of the world’s greatest health threats and is responsible for nearly two million premature deaths per year, due to a heightened risk of pneumonia, cataracts, tuberculosis, heart disease, and chronic lung disease.

Morello-Frosch honored with Chancellor’s Service Award Associate Professor Rachel Morello-Frosch Ph.D. ‘97, M.P.H. ’93, expert in environmental health and justice, was honored with a 2012 Chancellor’s Award for Public Service in the area of Research in the Public Interest. She was selected for her rigorous research that contributes to the public good, her outstanding commitment to empowering underserved communities, and her dedication to educating the next generation of scholars. She received 12 nominations from faculty members, students, and colleagues, who praised her commitment to environmental justice, student mentorship, and community-based research. The Chancellor’s Awards recognize students, staff, faculty, and community partnerships that embody UC Berkeley’s proud tradition of public service and commitment to improving the local and global community.


AROUND THE SCHOOL

NEW FACULTY

New faculty members strengthen Public Health Nutrition Program Over the past year, the School’s Public Health Nutrition Program has welcomed two new members to its faculty. Associate Professor Barbara Laraia joined the School last fall to lead the program, and the recent addition of Assistant Professor Kristine Madsen rounds out the expanded public health nutrition faculty. The successful recruitment of Laraia and Madsen ushers in a new era for the program. The two complement each other with expertise in different areas of obesity prevention. Laraia is an expert in nutritional epidemiology with a focus on racial and social disparities in nutrition and diet-related chronic disease. Much of her work focuses on the food environment. Madsen is a pediatrician whose primary area is pediatric obesity and chronic diseases that result from obesity. She brings expertise in the physical activity side of the obesity equation. Laraia comes to the School from UCSF, where she was an associate adjunct professor at the School of Medicine from 2006 to 2011. She was as a research instructor and assistant professor at University of North Carolina (UNC), Chapel Hill, from 2000 to 2006. She earned both her Ph.D. and M.P.H. in nutrition at UNC Chapel Hill, and is a registered dietitian.

The successful recruitment of Laraia and Madsen ushers in a new era for the program. The intersection of food policy, the food environment, and health is a fascinating area of study for Laraia. “I’m very interested in how place and macroenvironment gets under people’s skins, especially with regard to nutrition and obesity and reproductive health,” she says. “I mainly look at the retail food environment and the access to food, such as distance to grocery stores and fast food. But I’m also interested in the family context and how households’ food insecurity influences obesity and pregnancy outcomes.” At UCSF, Laraia’s research projects included measurement issues of the food and physical

activity environments; influences of the food environment on diet and weight among postpartum women; and understanding the role that tiendas (Latino grocery stores) play in diet quality among Latinos. Laraia is no stranger to the UC Berkeley School of Public Health; she has worked closely with several of the School’s faculty members, and she is a faculty member and mentor of the UC Berkeley-UCSF Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholars program. Madsen also comes to the School from UCSF. She is a proud Cal alumna who received her undergraduate degree at UC Berkeley. She has a medical degree from Indiana University School of Medicine and an M.P.H. in epidemiology from Indiana University School of Public Health. She completed her residency and a fellowship in general pediatrics at UCSF, and has been an assistant adjunct professor there since 2006. Madsen’s research has been funded by the NIH, the American Heart Association, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and The California Endowment. She is currently looking at ways to reduce obesity in youth and the health disparities that are associated with obesity. She approaches this by mapping out a typical day in the life of a child to identify the best opportunities for altering the environment. “We think about where kids find themselves before and after school,” says Madsen. “We’ve done research with multiple Bay Area school districts, looking at ways to promote physical activity, particularly among low-income youth. And we’ve developed really strong partnerships with local community based organizations like the YMCA,

Barbara Laraia Kristine Madsen and

the Boys and Girls Clubs, and Playworks, that are also invested in youth development and health.” Madsen, who is also teaching in the School’s Joint Medical Program with UCSF, is thrilled to be at the School of Public Health. “I am a pediatrician, I love my patients, but I feel that the obesity epidemic is not going to be solved in a physician’s office,” she says. “We have to change the community and change the environment if we really want to address the causes of obesity. So being in a place like Berkeley’s School of Public Health, where that’s how everyone thinks, opens up potential for collaborations and generating ideas around the solutions to this epidemic.” Laraia too is eagerly embracing what the School has to offer. “I’ve had an amazing experience at UCSF with medical students and postdocs,” she says, “but there’s something about undergrad and graduate students that really drives some of the thinking. You’re mentoring them, but their questions and their energy feed us too.”

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AROUND THE SCHOOL

RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS

Lifelong brain-stimulating habits may lower risk of Alzheimer’s A study led by Professor William Jagust provides even more reason for people to read a book or do a puzzle, and to make such activities a lifetime habit. Brain scans revealed that people with no symptoms of Alzheimer’s who engaged in cognitively stimulating activities throughout their lives had fewer deposits of beta-amyloid, a destructive protein that is the hallmark of the disease. While previous research has suggested that engaging in mentally stimulating activities—such as reading, writing and playing games—may help stave off Alzheimer’s later in life, this new study identifies the biological target at play. This discovery could guide future research into effective prevention strategies. The NIH and the Alzheimer’s Association helped support this research and the findings were published in Archives of Neurology.

HIV experts propose new pathway for conducting Phase 3 drug trials As the war on HIV/AIDS begins its fourth decade, a new scientific challenge has emerged: how to demonstrate the safety and efficacy of promising new antiretroviral drugs when the two traditional study designs are no longer useful in showing improvements in patients. To address this problem, the Forum for Collaborative HIV Research has released a new scientific

paper that lays out a substantially different approach for conducting Phase 3 HIV clinical trials. Published in the journal AIDS, the paper suggests moving from the large-scale study model to an approach where clinical improvements are demonstrated through a sequence of short, step-wise efficacy and safety studies. The new proposal focuses specifically on trials in multi-drug resistant

On-site worker rescue plan urged for confined spaces Many employers are mistakenly relying upon public fire departments to rescue workers from confined spaces, such as water and sewer pipes, manholes, and tunnels, according to an analysis by UC Berkeley health researchers of hundreds of deaths in the United States over 13 years. Since fire crews need time to evaluate the hazards at a specific site, companies should instead have rescue personnel stationed at the entrance of potentially dangerous confined spaces who can pull workers out more quickly in an emergency, the study concludes. The lead author was Michael P. Wilson Ph.D. ‘03, M.P.H. ‘98, director of UC Berkeley’s Labor Occupational Health Program. The paper was published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene.

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patients, where rates of accrual into HIV clinical trials have declined precipitously. The recommended changes are intended as a pathway for regulatory approval of promising new drugs that will address multi-drug resistant viruses while also offering advantages in safety and tolerability for patients while also offering advantages in safety and tolerability for patients.


For more research highlights, visit Berkeley Health Online at sph-publications.berkeley.edu

Why dengue infection can hit harder the second time around One of the most vexing challenges in the battle against dengue virus, a mosquito-borne virus responsible for 50-100 million infections every year, is that getting infected once can put people at greater risk for a more severe infection down the road. For the first time, an international team that includes UC Berkeley researchers has pulled apart the mechanism behind changing dengue virus genetics and dynamics of host immunity. The researchers showed that a person’s prior immune response to one serotype of dengue virus could influence the interaction with virus subtypes in a subsequent infection. How that interaction plays out could mean

Taking bushmeat off the menu could increase child anemia A study finds that consuming bushmeat had a positive effect on children’s nutrition, raising complex questions about the trade-offs between human health and environmental conservation. Researchers estimated that a loss of access to wildlife as a source of food would lead to a 29 percent jump in the number of children suffering from anemia. Left untreated, anemia in children can impair growth and cognitive development. Christopher Golden M.P.H. ’10 did the research while a graduate student at the School. Associate Professor Lia Fernald worked with Golden to design the study. The findings were published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

the difference between getting a mild fever and going into a fatal circulatory failure from dengue hemorrhagic fever or dengue shock syndrome. The findings were published in Science Translational Medicine and have implications for the efforts to combat a disease that has grown dramatically in recent decades, including the development of a firstever dengue vaccine. Molly OhAinle, postdoctoral fellow in infectious diseases, was the lead author. Researchers used data

from a Nicaragua-based study headed by Eva Harris, professor of infectious diseases and director of UC Berkeley’s Center for Global Public Health.

Wildfire smoke linked to lower birth weights Pregnant women exposed to wildfire smoke during Southern California’s epic 2003 fire season had babies with lower birth weights, according to a study led by Rachel MorelloFrosch Ph.D. ‘97, M.P.H. ‘93, Associate Professor in environmental health sciences. Morello-Frosch and her team examined birth records in areas affected by smoke from seven fires—including the Old Fire that burned

across the mountains and into the city of San Bernardino—that altogether consumed 750,000 acres. The results of the study were published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. The differences in the newborns’ weights were small, slightly less than 10 grams for those exposed during the second trimester of the pregnancy, but the finding was significant. Although the effects are much smaller than for many other exposures, such as smoking, the extent of exposures during wildfire events and their increasing frequency suggests potentially important implications for infant health and development. The research was supported in part by a California Air Resources Board grant agreement and by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Regional Applied Research Effort grant.

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AROUND THE SCHOOL

NEWS AND NOTES

New grads celebrate at Commencement On May 19, more than 300 students crossed the stage in Zellerbach Hall to receive their diplomas at the 2012 UC Berkeley School of Public Health Commencement ceremony. 1

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School’s pioneering online M.P.H. program completes inaugural semester In May 2012, eight students completed the inaugural courses of the On-Campus/Online Professional M.P.H. Degree Program, the firstever online degree offered by UC Berkeley. Part of the impetus behind the pioneering online program is an estimated shortage of 250,000 trained public health professionals

Dean Stephen Shortell; students Paul Nugent, Mary Russell, Sukhminder Khurana, and Ravi Mehta; and program director Nap Hosang

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in the United States. In California alone, the shortage numbers 25,000 to 30,000. Approximately 450,000 paid, full-time workers—an estimated 45 percent of whom are employed in governmental settings—now comprise the national public health workforce. “For many of these workers, leaving their fulltime jobs to obtain a degree is impractical,” said Dean Stephen Shortell. “The online/ on-campus format we are offering gives working professionals the ability to obtain a degree while continuing their employment.” Final approval to move forward with the School of Public Health’s program came in December 2011, and the school admitted an initial group of students for the Spring 2012 semester. The first two courses offered were Environmental Health Sciences and Biostatistics. “We’re intentionally keeping the number of

students small during the first year, which we consider to be a pilot phase,” said Nap Hosang M.D., M.B.A., M.P.H. ‘85, who heads the online degree program. While UC Berkeley has offered individual online courses before, and many courses now have an online component to them, the offering of an entire degree online is a milestone for the campus. The School of Public Health expects to reach the full capacity of 214 students by the end of 2015. Students will complete two courses per semester for a total of 14 courses in the seven-semester program to earn their fully accredited degree. Admission to the program is on a rolling basis. For more information about applying to the program, visit onlinemph.berkeley.edu.


For more School news, visit Berkeley Health Online at sph-publications.berkeley.edu 1. Angela Glover Blackwell J.D., founder and CEO of PolicyLink, delivers the keynote address. 2. Dean Stephen Shortell with Joel Simon M.D., M.P.H. ’90 (who accepted the Alumna of the Year award on behalf of his late wife Sarah E. Samuels Dr.P.H. ’82) and award presenter Maria Lafleur M.P.H. ’09 3. Patricia Crawford Dr.P.H. ’94, recipient of the Zak Sabry Mentorship Award, with award presenter Lorrene Ritchie Ph.D. ’94 4. A group of the School’s new graduates and future public health leaders 5. Mortarboard art by a graduate of the Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology M.P.H. program

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Public Health Heroes honored at 16th annual awards gala Dr. Marcus A. Conant, a physician who was among the first to identify and treat AIDS, and Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and former UN Commissioner on Human Rights, each received a 16th annual Public Health Heroes Award from the UC Berkeley School of Public Health on March 21, 2012, at a gala reception and ceremony at the Hotel Nikko San Francisco. The award 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. 1. Dr. Donald P. Francis, executive director, Global Solutions for Infectious Diseases; Dr. Marcus A. Conant; Ken Taymor, chair, School of Public Health Policy Advisory Council; Mary Robinson; Stephen M. Shortell, dean, School of Public Health

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2. Mary Robinson greets Martha Campbell, president, Venture Strategies for Health and Development and lecturer, School of Public Health. Also pictured: Pat Hosel, assistant dean, external relations and development, School of Public Health, and Malcolm Potts, Bixby Professor of Population and Family Planning, School of Public Health 3. UC Berkeley Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost George W. Breslauer makes welcoming remarks. 4. Representatives of two past Organizational Public Health Heroes: boona cheema, executive director, BOSS, and Jane Garcia M.P.H. ’80, CEO of La Clínica de La Raza Berkeley Health Fall 2012

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ALUMNI NEWS

Alumni and friends “jazz it up” School of Public Health alumni and friends gathered for food, music, networking, and a silent auction on May 20 at the annual “Jazzing It Up with Alumni and Friends” event. Melanie Tervalon M.D., M.P.H. ’86, an expert in culture, race, ethnicity, and social identity in health care, and Carl Lester M.P.H. ’65, champion for culturally relevant health career programs for urban youth, spoke at the event.

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1. Diversity champion Carl Lester M.P.H. ’65 and featured speaker Melanie Tervalon M.D., M.P.H. ’86 2. Public Health Alumni Association (PHAA) board members Brian Raymond M.P.H. ’83, Mary Adèr M.P.P., M.P.H. ’98, Erika Schwilk M.D., M.P.H. ’09, and School of Public Health Dean Stephen Shortell 3. Pamela Arbuckle Alston (recipient of 2000 UC Berkeley Public Health Hero award) applauds a speaker. 5. Michael Sasso; PHAA Vice President Rob Tufel M.S.W., M.P.H. ’90; and PHAA board members Erika Schwilk M.D., M.P.H. ’09 and Deniz Kursunoglu M.P.H. ’11

Saluting excellence in achievement The California Alumni Association awarded its 2012 Excellence in Achievement Award to three individuals—two of whom received degrees from the School of Public Health: Susan Desmond-Hellmann M.D., M.P.H. ’88, is an oncologist and biotechnology leader and current chancellor of UC San Francisco. During her 14 years at Genentech, she became head of product development and the company became the nation’s leading producer of anti-cancer drug treatments. She was named to the Biotech Hall of Fame in 2007 and has been listed many times among Fortune magazine’s Top 50 Most Powerful Women in Business. In 2010, she was 44

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Excellence in Achievement award winners Julia Chang Bloch, Susan Desmond-Hellmann, and Barbara Staggers

inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was also elected to the Institute of Medicine.

Barbara Staggers M.D., M.P.H. ’80 is director of adolescent medicine at Children’s Hospital & Research Center Oakland. She has devoted much of her life to studying and helping highrisk urban youth. She cofounded the Faces for the Future internship program to inspire and support minority students interested in pursuing careers in health care. Honored nationally for her achievements, her UC Berkeley honors include the Peter E. Haas Public Service Award (2004), the School of Public Health Alumna of the Year Award (2006), and the Public Health Hero Award (2008).


ALUMNI NOTES

For more Alumni Notes, visit Berkeley Health Online at sph-publications.berkeley.edu

1960s Lucy Johns M.P.H. ’67 writes, “The SF Dept. of Public Health has released a draft ‘Report for the Health Care Services Master Plan,’ mandated by ordinance in 2010. The ordinance resurrects area-wide health planning to address needs, resources, and issues on a citywide basis. (Blum lives!) The report incorporates the work of a Health Care Services Master Plan Task Force and advises SFDPH what to incorporate into its own forthcoming strategic plan. The report uses a multiple determinants of health framework; provides health and use data by neighborhood (in three languages); offers input to SF Planning Dept. for land use decisions; anticipates Health in All Policy for SF; and addresses providers interested in responding to community needs.” James. R. Kimmey M.D., M.P.H. ’67 was honored by Saint Louis University (SLU) by having the first endowed chair in its School of Public Health named after him in November 2011. A generous gift to the university from the Missouri Foundation for Health, where Kimmey is the outgoing president and chief executive officer, helped to establish the James R. Kimmey Endowed Chair in Public Health. Kimmey had been executive vice president and vice president for health sciences at SLU and was the founding dean of SLU’s School of Public Health, which remains the only school of public health in Missouri and at a Jesuit university. Kimmey left SLU in 2001 to lead the newly formed foundation.

1970s Albert “Fred” Hartman M.P.H. ’74 was honored with Penn State’s Outstanding Science Alumni Award for the year 2011. Hartman is a 1965 graduate of the Penn State University Eberly College of Science. He is a physician who specializes in infectious disease and epidemiology, with more than 30 years of experience as a technical adviser, senior project manager, epidemiologist, and professor. Currently he is the global technical lead for communicable diseases and epidemic preparedness for all activities of the nonprofit Management Sciences for Health. In this capacity, he led the human health activities in the Stamping out Pandemic and Avian Influenza project. He is also the country lead for the organization’s Ethiopia HIV/AIDS Care and Support Program and the Sudan Health Transformation Project II. Hart-

Built environment expert wins Heinz award Richard J. Jackson M.D., M.P.H. ’79 received one of five prestigious Heinz Awards administered by the Heinz Family Foundation. Jackson, a distinguished pediatrician, epidemiologist, and UCLA professor, was recognized for sparking a national conversation about the relationship between the physical design of communities and rising health risks. In his lectures, books, and recently-released PBS documentary, Designing Healthy Communities, Jackson has become a leading national voice for reinserting health considerations into decisions about urban, suburban, and transportation design projects. Jackson served for nine years as director of the CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health and was later state health officer for California. He was an adjunct professor at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, where he received the Distinguished Teacher and Mentor of the Year award in 2007. Currently he is professor and chair of Environmental Health Sciences at the UCLA School of Public Health.

man has consulted for USAID, UNICEF, WHO, and PLAN International. He also worked as a senior technical adviser with Hope for African Children Initiative, a project of a pan-African consortium involving six major non-governmental organizations focusing on the needs of children affected by HIV and AIDS. Peter van Dyck M.D., M.P.H. ’76, FAAP, was named the winner of the Martha May Eliot Award by the American Public Health Association. The award, which honors exceptional achievement in the field of maternal and child health, was presented during the 139th APHA Annual Meeting and Exposition at the Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. Van Dyck was formerly the associate administrator of the Maternal and Child Health Bureau, Health Resources and Services Administration, Department of Health and Human Services. He has a nearly 40-year history of active participation in the maternal and child health community. James N. Mullally M.P.H. ’78 has worked in public health for more than 32 years across five continents in 41 countries, including eight years as a resident public health adviser. He has contributed to White Paper requests from USAID, DfID, and AusAID on lessons learned and best practices for building long term sustainability of public health practice in developing nations and on cross-cultural methodology for working in collective community. He was previously retired from the World Health Organization before accepting long term assignments in his niche expertise: building individual, systems, and organizations in conflict and post conflict settings. For the Repub-

lic of Liberia, Mullally agreed to undertake a comprehensive overhaul of the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare’s capacity building of individual staff professionals, systems, and organizational development. K. Paul Knott M.P.H. ’79, has been named the founding director of the new Lenoir-Rhyne University Center for Graduate Studies in Asheville, N.C. The center, which accepted its first students in August 2012, offers master’s and professional preparation programs in a variety of areas, including degrees in public health, nursing, health care administration, and sustainability studies, along with a dietetics internship focused on childhood obesity prevention.

1980s Gregory S. Thomas M.D., M.P.H. ’80 was named the new medical director for the MemorialCare Heart & Vascular Institute (MHVI) at Long Beach Memorial in Long Beach, Calif., in May 2012. He brings 25 years of clinical, research, and leadership experience to this position. His research accomplishments include the development of a new type of stress test that combines exercise with a medication to simulate stress in those for whom extensive walking is challenging. He is perhaps best known as the co-leader of a joint US-Egyptian team that discovered that ancient Egyptian mummies had atherosclerosis. Last year, his team discovered that an ancient Egyptian princess who lived 3,500 years ago—before King Tut and Moses— had blockages of her heart arteries. The team’s work challenges the conventional wisdom that

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ALUMNI NOTES atherosclerosis is a disease of contemporary humans. On behalf of the team’s work, he received the Award of the First International Scientific Conference on Ancient Egyptian Culture awarded by the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities and Cairo University. Jeffrey L. Kang M.D., M.P.H. ’81 was named senior vice president of health and wellness services and solutions at Walgreens Pharmacy, Health and Wellness, in October 2011. Previously, Kang was chief medical officer at Cigna. Before joining Cigna in 2002, Kang was chief clinical officer at the Health Care Financing Administration (now the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services). He has also served as chief medical officer for the federal Office of Managed Care and on the faculty at Beth Israel Hospital, Harvard Medical School. Sarah Krevans M.B.A., M.P.H. ’84 was named chief operating officer for the not-for-profit health care network Sutter Health, based in Sacramento, Calif. Krevans, who assumed her new role in January 2012, oversees the operations of Sutter Health’s five Northern California regions and the Sutter Care at Home network of home health and hospice services. She also provides senior executive oversight of Sutter Health’s ongoing multi-billion-dollar facility investments and is responsible for a $300 million cost reduction effort already under way within Sutter’s systemwide administrative functions. Prior to joining Sutter Health in 1999, Krevans was a Northern California-based executive with Kaiser Permanente for more than a decade. She earlier served as deputy director in the Bureau of Medical Services for the state of Maine. Donna S. Jordan Ph.D., M.P.H. ’87, writes, “I earned an M.P.H. from UC Berkeley in 1987, and

went on to receive a Ph.D. in philosophy and religion (Asian/Comparative Studies) from California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco (1999). I also hold an M.A. in English from UCLA. An elaboration of my doctoral dissertation has just been published, titled Shakti’s Revolution: Origins and Historiography of Fierce Indic Goddesses (Munshiram Manoharlal, New Dehli). Shakti’s Revolution chronicles the historical evolution of Hindu and Buddhist fierce Kali-like goddesses and their devotees, from the Indus Valley civilization, c. third millennium BCE, to the present. I am currently working on a new book on European heathenry, the pre-Christian and Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon religion, and the correspondences of the Eddas to the Indian Vedas.”

1990s LaMar Hasbrouck M.D., M.P.H. ’90 was appointed director of the Illinois Department of Public Health by Illinois Governor Pat Quinn in April 2012. Hasbrouck previously served as the public health director and commissioner of mental health in Ulster County, New York. Prior to that, he worked for the CDC for 11 years, most recently as director of the CDC’s office in Georgetown, Guyana. Prior to assuming the Guyana post, he was a senior medical officer of the CDC’s Global AIDS Program management team. Herminia Palacio M.D., M.P.H. ’92 was appointed by President Barack Obama to the Advisory Group on Prevention, Health Promotion, and Integrative and Public Health in November 2011. She currently serves as executive director of Harris County Public Health and Environmental Services. She is also an adjunct faculty member of the Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Texas School of Public Health. She previously served as special policy adviser to the director for the San Francisco Department of Public Health. Prior to that, she served on the advisory committee of the CDC Preparedness and Emergency

Recent graduate wins Olympic medals in swimming Nathan Adrian ’12 made a splash at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, winning gold medals in both the 100-meter freestyle and the 4x100-meter medley relay, and a silver medal in the 4x100-meter freestyle relay. He also currently holds the American record in the 50 and 100-yard freestyle events. Adrian majored in public health as an undergraduate and was a member of the Cal Men’s Swimming team and a five-time individual NCAA champion. 46

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Public Health Alumni Association Board of Directors 2012–2013 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 Adér M.P.P., M.P.H. ’98 Trula Ann Breuninger, M.P.H. ’91 Catherine Carpenter, Ph.D., M.P.H. ’87 Myrna Cozen M.P.H. ’89 Rosa Vivian Fernandez M.P.H. ’91 Deniz Kursunoglu M.P.H. ’11 Michelle Loya-Talamantes M.P.H. ’04 Brian Raymond M.P.H. ’83 Baljeet Sangha M.P.H. ’10 Erika Schwilk M.D., M.P.H. ’09 John J. Troidl Ph.D. ’01, M.B.A. Evaon Wong-Kim Ph.D., M.S.W., M.P.H. ’90

Response Research Center at UC Berkeley, the CDC Advisory Committee to the Director, and the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on Prepositioned Medical Countermeasures for the Public. Palacio was awarded the Excellence in Health Administration Award by the American Public Health Association in 2007. Michael Busk M.D., M.P.H. ’93 began serving as system executive of the WellCare Institute at St. Vincent Health in November 2011. He is the former director of the Indiana University Executive Health, Corporate Wellness and Prevention Program. Prior to that, he was the medical and research director for the National Institute for Fitness and Sport and its cardiopulmonary rehab program; associate professor of Clinical Medicine at Indiana University School of Medicine in the Division of Pulmonary, Allergy, Critical Care, and Occupational Medicine; and the Catherine and Lowe Berger and Pauline L. Ford Investigator in Pulmonary Medicine. He also served as principal investigator and director of the American Lung Association – Asthma Clinical Research Center at Indiana University. In November 2011, he received the American Lung Association in Indiana’s


Legacy award for his work and research in lung disease. Bruce Kieler Dr.P.H. ’94, M.P.H. ’88, M.B.A. was a visiting Fulbright scholar at the International Workshop on Tamil Epigraphy, sponsored by the Ecole pratique des hautes études of the University of Paris (the Sorbonne) and held in Tamil Nadu, India. Kieler and other Tamil language researchers from France, Italy, Sri Lanka, and India received advanced training in techniques used to trace and preserve centuriesold inscriptions carved on stone in Hindu temples, royal monuments, border markers, and cave shrines in Thanjavur District. Damen Hailemariam Ph.D. ’96 conducts research on the scope and impacts of HIV/AIDS in Ethiopia. He is currently a full professor in the School of Public Health at Addis Ababa University (AAU), where he is associate dean of the College of Health Sciences. He was the primary force behind the 2003 creation of a doctoral program in public health at AAU, and he advises doctoral and master’s level students in the areas of public health systems and health financing. He recently served as president of the Ethiopian Public Health Association for four years, during which time he secured CDC funding to pursue investigation of HIV prevention strategies and to carry out translational research and to train health workers. Hailemariam is also the editorin-chief of the Ethiopian Journal of Health and Development. Sandra J. Martinez M.P.H. ’96 was appointed director of public policy by the California Wellness Foundation (TCWF) in January 2012. In this role, Martinez plans, coordinates, and oversees the foundation’s public policy activities in order to advance the foundation’s mission and amplify the impact of its grantmaking. Martinez joined TCWF in 2002 as a program director during the final year of the foundation’s 10-year $60 million Violence Prevention Initiative. In 2003 she was assigned to oversee the foundation’s grantmaking in special projects. Prior to joining TCWF, Martinez directed the Progressive Los Angeles Network and also directed other community organizing efforts at Community Coalition in South Los Angeles. She currently serves as president of the board of the Echo Park Film Center in Los Angeles. In 2010, Martinez was a

fellow in the Grantmakers in Health’s Terrance Keenan Institute for Emerging Leaders in Health Philanthropy. Amy Kalkbrenner M.P.H. ’98 has joined the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Joseph J. Zilber School of Public Health as an assistant professor of epidemiology. Her research focus is environmental epidemiology, and she is currently looking and potential links between air pollutants and disorders like autism and attention deficit disorder. She joined the faculty in Fall 2011. Oladele Ogunseitan Ph.D., M.P.H. ’98, professor of professor of public health and founding chair of the Department of Population Health and Disease Prevention at UC Irvine, received the OpenCourseWare Leadership Excellence Award from the OpenCourseWare (OCW) Consortium. The award recognized his role in raising the profile of the UC Irvine free and open education site. Ogunseitan received his award at the OCW Consortium’s annual conference in Cambridge, UK, in April 2012. He is chair of UC Irvine’s Program in Public Health and a professor of social ecology, and has operated as the co-director of the UC Irvine Framework Program in Global health since 2009. He also serves as the director of research education, training, and career development for the NIH-funded Institute for Clinical and Translational Science.

2000s David K. Duong M.D. , M.S. ’02 received the 2012 Academic Senate Distinction in Teaching Award from UCSF. He is a health sciences assistant clinical professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine, School of Medicine. Recipients of the distinguished faculty awards were honored by the UCSF chancellor at the annual Founder’s Day Banquet in April, 2012. Duong graduated from the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program in 2004 and completed his residency in Emergency Medicine at Boston Medical Center in 2008. His research interests include emergency interventions for substance abuse and emergency medicine education. He volunteers as a physician for Project Vietnam, a nonprofit humanitarian program providing healthcare assistance to children of poor rural communities in Vietnam.

In recognition of her work in Vietnam, Nicole Smith receives the “For the People’s Health” citation from the Vietnam Health Ministry.

Nicole Smith Ph.D. ’02, M.P.H. ’90 entered the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) program after graduating from the Health Services & Policy Analysis program. As an EIS officer, she participated in two responses related to the World Trade Center attacks, as well as the response to the SARS outbreak. She writes, “More recently, I spent almost three years in Hanoi, Vietnam, assigned to the WHO country office’s Communicable Disease Surveillance and Response Team, including more than a year as the Acting Team Leader—a responsibility I was given the same week that the first pandemic influenza H1N1 cases were reported! Since returning from Vietnam in August 2010, I’ve been doing more traditional policy work at CDC—first as the associate director for policy for the Influenza Division, and now for the Center for Global Health, where I’m responsible for coordination and integration of policy, short-term and longterm issues management, and strategic partnership efforts including congressional relations, budget formulation, and program evaluation and monitoring.” Michael P. Wilson Ph.D. ’03, M.P.H. ’98 was named director of the UC Berkeley School of Public Health’s Labor Occupational Health Program (LOHP), within the Center for Occupational Health (COEH). He brings 30 years of experience working in the public interest to the position. Wilson began his career as a firefighter and paramedic, representing fellow workers as a union officer and SEIU field representative. He

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ALUMNI NOTES has spent the last several years as a research scientist at COEH, emphasizing the protection of workers from on-the-job-hazards through writing, organizing, teaching, and testifying in Sacramento and Washington, D.C. Most recently, he worked with colleagues across campus to establish the Berkeley Center for Green Chemistry, which links chemistry with public health, law, and policy. John Downey M.D., M.P.H. ’08, writes: “I completed my internship at Memorial SloanKettering Cancer Center in New York City and returned to California to continue my residency in radiology at Stanford University Medical Center, where I am now in

my third year. I have one more year of residency and this past summer applied for an additional year of subspecialty fellowship training in breast imaging…Beyond risk factors for breast cancer, I’m interested in addressing the socioeconomic and racial disparities that manifest themselves in differential rates of mortality from breast cancer…Although not related to breast imaging, I’m happy to say my Interdisciplinary Program project paper, ‘Is Patient Safety Improving? National Trends in Patient Safety Indicators: 1998–2007,’ was published the February 2012 issue of the journal Health Services Research. The paper explores the rates of various preventable medical errors across the United States. Finally, on a personal note, my partner of three years, Brad, and I will be getting married in Hawaii in 2013.”

2010s Baharak Amanzadeh D.D.S., M.P.H. ’10 writes, “After completing my M.P.H., I was accepted by UCSF’s residency in dental public health, where I have been working closely with CAN DO—the Center to Address Disparities in Children’s Oral Health—and the amazing scientists working in the field. We work closely with organizations in dental public health. I enjoy being involved in policy development, collaboration with the Department of Public Health, program planning and education, and public health research.” Following her residency, Amanzadeh joined the faculty at UCSF in the School of Dentistry’s Division of Oral Epidemiology and Dental Public Health, where her time is split between research, public health projects, and teaching.

IN MEMORIAM The following alumni deaths were reported to the School of Public Health between July 1, 2011 and June 30, 2012: Max C. Bader M.D., M.P.H. ’67 Helen Bartholow B.S. ’47 Harold J. Bates, Jr. M.P.H. ’94 Asha A. Bhende Ph.D., M.P.H. ’62 William J. Bicknell M.D., M.P.H ’68 Aaron L. Bond M.P.H. ’62 Kathryn E. Brandon M.D., M.P.H. ’70 June K. Brown M.P.H. ’84 Jacqueline J. Chang D.D.S., M.P.H. ’64 Ezra T. Clark M.D., M.P.H. ’70 Gary D. Davidson Ph.D., M.P.H. ’62 Peter S. Dietrich M.D., M.P.H. ’84 Barry S. Dorfman M.D., M.P.H. ’70 Deborah S. Edelman Dr.P.H. ’04 Robert B. Elfont B.S. ’50 Ms. Mary J. Friedrichs B.S. ’45 Lt. Col. Thomas B. Gibble M.P.H. ’58 Phyllis W. Gomez B.S. ’50 Doris L. Grasshoff B.S. ’49 Robert W. Hayes M.P.H. ’51 Alberta P. Horn M.D., M.P.H. ’63 Rita F. Hose M.P.H. ‘48

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Donald C. Johnson Dr.P.H.’77, M.P.H. ’55 Melvin Kirschner M.D., M.P.H. ’55 Doris E. Lauber M.P.H. ’56 Edward G. Leong B.S. ’50 Eva B. Linker B.S. ’48 Marjorie F. Lollich M.P.H. ’55, B.S. ’49 Betsy B. MacCracken M.D., M.P.H. ’61 Ruth L. McHenry-Coe B.S. ’57 Carmel A. McKay M.P.H. ’57 Craig C. Merrill M.P.H. ’70 Edwin P. Merwin Ph.D., M.P.H. ’70 Paul F. O’Rourke M.D., M.P.H. ’60 Bettie Basye H. Ott M.P.H. ’65, B.S. ’50 Stanley G. Rosenberg M.P.H. ’60 Sarah E. Samuels Dr.P.H. ’82 Florence Y. Shikasho B.S. ’54 Capt. James L. Shoemake M.P.H. ’61 June F. Shwayder B.A. ’40 Ben J. Simboli Dr.P.H. ’76, M.P.H. ’71 Marc C. Slone M.P.H. ’81 Sister Marian M. Strohmeyer M.P.H. ’70 William J. Studebaker B.S. ’60

Margaret Barnes Tharp B.A. ’39 Floyd H. Tilton M.P.H ’63 Gail Tucker M.P.H. ’65 Abraham Virdeh B.S. ’58 Louis Warshaw O.D., M.P.H ’67 Beatrice W. Webb B.S. ’48 Andrew T. Weir B.S. ’65 Eugene M. Weiss Ph.D., M.P.H. ’65 Alvin E. Winder Ph.D., M.P.H. ’80 Hildene V. Witt B.S. ’50

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.


IN IN MEMORIAM MEMORIAM

For more obituaries, visit Berkeley Health Online at sph-publications.berkeley.edu

Sarah E. Samuels, 2012 Alumna of the Year Sarah E. Samuels Dr.P.H. ’82 died March 29, 2012, at Oakland Kaiser Hospital. She was 61. Samuels was a leader and visionary in the field of public health. For more than 25 years, she worked on public health and health policy issues for government, university, and philanthropic institutions. As a program officer at the Kaiser Family Foundation, she conceived and directed Project LEAN (Lowfat Eating for America Now), the first national nutrition social marketing campaign. In 1994, she founded Samuels & Associates, a public health evaluation, research, and policy consulting firm.

Samuels served on the Institute of Medicine Planning Committee on Community Perspectives on Obesity Prevention and the CDC Committee on Community Strategies and Measurements to Prevent Obesity in the United States. She was appointed to the Women’s Health Council for the State of California, and she testified to the California State Legislature on a variety of nutrition bills, as well as briefing U.S. Congressional staff on school nutrition policies. She also served on the UC Berkeley Public Health Alumni Association board of directors. Samuels received the 2005 Catherine Cowell Award for Public Health Nutrition Practice from the American Public Health Association and the 2003 Public Health Institute Pioneer Award in Healthy Eating and Active Living. Prior to her death, she was named the UC Berkeley School

of Public Health’s 2012 Alumna of the Year. Her husband, Joel Simon M.D., M.P.H. ’90, accepted the award on her behalf at the School’s commencement ceremony. In addition to her doctorate from UC Berkeley, Samuels held a bachelor’s degree from Antioch College, two master’s degrees from Columbia University (one in nutrition and the other in nutrition education), and she completed a postdoctoral fellowship as a Pew Health Policy Scholar at the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies at UCSF. Gifts in Samuels’s memory may be made to the “UC Berkeley Foundation” and sent to the attention of Pat Hosel, UC Berkeley School of Public Health, 417-H University Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720-7360. Please note in the memo field “In memory of Sarah Samuels.”

Warren Winkelstein, Esteemed Epidemiologist and Former Dean Dr. Warren Winkelstein Jr., professor emeritus of epidemiology and a former dean of the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, died July 22, 2012, at his home in Point Richmond, California. He was 90. Winkelstein’s distinguished career spanned six decades and was marked by numerous accomplishments, such as leading the landmark San Francisco Men’s Health Study, which provided information about HIV transmission starting in the early 1980s, a time when little was known about the virus. Winkelstein served in the Army in World War II before continuing his education at the University of North Carolina, where he received his bachelor’s degree in sociology in 1943. He went on to earn his medical degree from Syracuse University in 1947, and his master’s degree in public health from Columbia University in 1950. After graduation, he served a year with the U.S. Public Health Service, where he was assigned to work on a Special Technical and Economic Mission to North Vietnam. This work was a forerunner to the creation of the U.S. Agency for International Development. In 1951, Winkelstein joined the Erie County

Health Department in Buffalo, New York, as a district health officer. Two years later, he became director of the department’s Division of Communicable Disease Control, a position he held until 1956. During his tenure there, he headed one of the largest trials ever conducted of the Salk polio vaccine. Winkelstein also established the Epidemiology Research Program at the State University of New York, Buffalo, and while there he led one of the first studies to successfully isolate air pollution as the cause of health problems in low-income neighborhoods. That work helped influence the development of U.S. air quality standards.

Gifts may be made in Winkelstein’s memory to The Warren Winkelstein Epidemiology Graduate Student Support Fund. Checks should be made payable to the “UC Berkeley Foundation” and sent to the attention of Pat Hosel, UC Berkeley School of Public Health, 417-H University Hall, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-7360. The name of the fund should be noted on the check.

Among his other achievements was the first case-control study of risk factors of coronary heart disease in women, and his pioneering research on the link between tobacco smoke and cervical cancer. Winkelstein joined the UC Berkeley School of Public Health as a professor of epidemiology in 1968 and served as the School’s dean from 1972 to 1981. He remained active after his retirement in 1991, teaching graduate courses and writing biographical sketches of prominent figures in the field of epidemiology.

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University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health 50 University Hall #7360 Berkeley, CA 94720-7360

WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

Incoming students lend a hand On August 22, incoming public health graduate students spent the afternoon performing public service at nonprofit organizations throughout Berkeley as part of the UC Berkeley School of Public Health’s 8th annual Volunteer Mobilization Day. Led by a Friends of Five Creeks volunteer, students remove weeds and invasive plants from the Eastshore State Park at the Berkeley Marina.

If you’re only reading our print magazine, you’re just getting part of the story. Visit Berkeley Health Online, your gateway to everything that’s happening at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health.

• Read the magazine, enhanced with extra photos, related videos, and online-only content • Catch up with your classmates via online Alumni Notes • Get the latest news and research • See photos and videos from School events • Leave comments and share stories on social media Visit us and bookmark: sph-publications.berkeley.edu.

Student Danny Melter organizes a pantry at Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency (BOSS), a Berkeley organization that provides housing and services for homeless families and individuals.

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