FACULTY-STAFF COLLABORATIONS: SHARING EXPERTISE TO SOLVE REAL-WORLD PROBLEMS

SOON AFTER HE JOINED THE UNIVERSITY IN 2016, Jim Lavery learned about the longstanding partnership between Emory and The Carter Center. Lavery, the inaugural Conrad N. Hilton Chair in Global Health Ethics at Rollins, had just given his introductory lecture at the school when he was approached by the center’s Gregory Noland 18MPH.

In addition to being director of The Carter Center’s river blindness, lymphatic filariasis (LF), and schistosomiasis program, Noland also leads the Hispaniola Initiative to eliminate malaria and LF from the island. But in recent years, progress in eliminating LF in Haiti had stalled due to increased insecurity, especially in the capital, which led to declining rates of drug treatment coverage to prevent infection.

Noland and his team were looking for an independent analysis of how to improve program implementation in these difficult-to-access areas. “This was an opportunity for me and my team to apply our expertise in a partnership with one of the world’s leading global health organizations,” Lavery says. “It was clear to me from the very beginning that it was going to be very rewarding experience.”

The overture was a welcome one to Lavery as a newcomer to Emory. However, such collaboration is part of the legendary symbiosis between Emory and The Carter Center, with the two institutions working hand-in-hand together on initiatives involving everything from global health to international peace.

“Being able to engage with Emory’s experts, as well as faculty and students who are passionate about their respective spaces, is a great amplifier of the center’s impact,” says Barbara Smith, vice president of peace programs at The Carter Center. “And the work also provides faculty and students with real-world practical experience that can launch their careers.”

Even as the relationship has proven mutually beneficial to both institutions—and the individual careers of their representatives—the core of this ongoing cooperation is an enduring trust.

“We value the experience and expertise of Emory students and faculty,” adds Kashef Ijaz, the center’s vice president of health programs. “And those who come to work with us often seek us out. That speaks volumes to me.”

Lavery was blown away by the amount of access Noland gave him and his team to real-world problems, as well as the opportunity to work side-by-side with The Carter Center’s experts. But he was impressed most of all by the humanity of the center and its people.

He dove into the program, conducted interviews, and compiled ideas on how The Carter Center team—which includes former Emory Foege Fellow and longtime center consultant Madsen Beau de Rochars 10MPH—could boost treatment coverage in Haiti.

For instance, after learning that many Haitian residents didn’t trust how the drug treatment posts were presented, Lavery’s team made recommendations about how to professionalize the locations, improving signage and issuing uniforms that clearly identified health workers. The Emory-based team also suggested a supplemental house-to-house approach for drug distribution.

Through this collaboration, a vital friendship has been forged.

“Jim and I are like two musicians each playing their part in sync with one another,” Noland says. “It’s science and learning in action. And it provides cutting-edge answers to common problems faced by similar programs. The work we do contributes to the learning agenda on the global level.”—Tony Rehagen continued from page 23 the Lillian Carter Center for Global Health and Social Responsibility honors Carter’s mother, who was a nurse and social activist, by improving the health of vulnerable people worldwide through nursing education, research, practice, and policy.

The Carter Center Mental Health program, led by Rosalynn Carter until her retirement, benefits from a dynamic relationship with Emory that includes the departments of psychiatry and psychology as well as the Rollins School of Public Health and Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing.

TEACHER AT EMORY, EXEMPLAR FOR THE WORLD

In 2002, Jimmy Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The Norwegian Nobel Commi ee cited his “decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.”

Cheers erupted around the world but were perhaps loudest close to home. “On behalf of everyone at Emory, where President Carter has served for many years as a member of the faculty, we are immensely proud that the Nobel Peace Prize has gone to this messenger and apostle of peace and understanding,” said then Emory President William M. Chace.

A later-arriving honor occasioned good-natured ribbing between Carter and Emory leaders: tenure. Carter first raised the question of his receiving tenure with Laney, who facetiously said that not only would Carter have to develop a good reputation as a teacher, he needed to write books too. As Carter laughingly recalled, “So I wrote one book, then I wrote two books. . . . finally I wrote thirty-three books, and Claire

[Sterk, Emory’s twentieth president] finally granted me tenure.”

His tenured faculty appointment in 2019 in four schools—Emory College of Arts and Sciences, Oxford College, Candler School of Theology, and Rollins School of Public Health—reflects the breadth of the president’s impact on numerous fields.

On October 1, 2021—which is Carter’s birthday—the Atlanta JournalConstitution published “Ninety-seven ways to celebrate Jimmy Carter.” A book out this year by journalist Arthur Milnes ticks that number up to ninety-eight in honor of his most recent birthday.

For Carter, however, the list is just three items long: “I would like to be remembered as a champion of human rights, as a president who kept our country at peace, and as having been a distinguished professor at Emory University.”