Dear Colleagues:

Public health aspires to create the social, economic, and cultural conditions that promote the health of populations. An important part of our work is translating our science so that we can effectively inform and inflect the public conversation. Effective storytelling is a key part of this effort. Narratives help to create, represent, and reflect the structures that affect health. As a way of reflecting on the role of narrative in what we do, we are marking March as SPH Narrative Month, featuring several events in March that speak to the power of narratives.

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Look for the SPH Narrative Month icon on events, articles, and more.
Several of our Dean’s Seminar Series (DSS) events this month focus on generating conversation around topics of contemporary concern. On March 15 we are hosting a special event in collaboration with the BU Program on Global Health Storytelling & the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting on the topic of “Ending AIDS: The Politics of Possibility.” On March 20 our event is on the topic of “Dispatches from the North: Learning from Canadian Health Care.” Our last DSS in March will be on March 28, and Georgia Arnold from the MTV Staying Alive Foundation and others will be speaking about “Creating Culture, Making Change: The Role of Entertainment in Global Health.”

On March 22 we are hosting our annual Cathy Shine Lecture, which honors the memory of Cathy Shine and her dedication to the rights of all those in need of care. The annual Cathy Shine Lecture offers fresh perspectives on protecting the human rights of patients, and this year’s topic is “Maine v. Kaci Hickox: Public Health Protection or Ebola Panic?” And on March 29 we have our monthly Public Health Forum. This month’s topic of discussion will be “Behavioral Policy in Contexts of Scarcity.”  As always, all of our signature events are live-streamed for those who are not local or unable to attend in person.

We will be hosting two regional receptions this month.  On March 16, we will host a reception in Washington, DC, and will be joined by Professor David Jones, who will be talking about a new special initiative at SPH titled Public Health Post (PHP). PHP is a forum for discussing and advancing public health through online conversation. We will also be in Chicago on March 28, hosting a reception with Professor Chris Louis in conjunction with the American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE) Congress. We hope to find time to reconnect at one of these events.

I hope everyone has a terrific month.

Warmly,

Sandro Galea, MD, DrPH
Dean, Robert A. Knox Professor
sgalea@bu.edu

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