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Enhancing street smarts
Scholarship program caters to changing needs of public health workers

By Hope Green

Boston University's School of Public Health has a reputation for applied research, the kind of knowledge city agencies and community groups can use to tackle problems such as AIDS, alcoholism, and poor nutrition. Now SPH is enhancing its role as an active urban partner. A year ago the school launched the Community Scholars Program, an initiative designed to increase the number of working professionals earning a master of public health degree.

	Several SPH students attended a September 19 reception celebrating the one-year anniversary of the Community Scholars Program. Among the 20 current scholars are (left to right) Mike Immel (SPH'03), associate director, HIV health, AIDS Action Committee, Ira Schlosser (SPH'03), director of planning and development, Dorchester House Multi-Service Center, Elizabeth Hastie (SPH'03), women's outreach coordinator, Boston Living Center, and Dianna Christmas (SPH'03), project director, Boston Healthy Start Initiative. Photo by Sarah Zenewicz

Most people who work in public health earn salaries that start at less than $40,000 a year, putting the cost of higher education beyond their reach. But 20 public health workers are now enrolled at SPH through the scholarship program, which pays for half of their tuition.

Working professionals are an asset to the school because they bring their expertise to the classroom, says SPH Dean Robert Meenan. Conversely, they can take what they learn back to the streets.

"We set up this program because we want to keep up our link with the community," he says. "Our school started with students who were working people, and we want to make sure they continue to come here."

Among the Community Scholars is Lalita Pulavarti (SPH'04), principal research analyst for the Boston Police Department. Law enforcement and public health may at first seem an unlikely occupational mix. But by evaluating crime statistics, Pulavarti helps arm the police with information to work on issues such as teen violence and domestic abuse. In fact, she says, there is a large public health component to police work since the department collaborates regularly with hospitals, health agencies, faith-based groups, and universities.

"The nature of policing has changed over the years," she says. "It's no longer just police going after criminals. Police have to interact continuously with the community."

Pulavarti already has a Ph.D. in sociology. "A master of public health is much more practitioner-oriented," she says. "I want to learn how the police can interact with other agencies to implement our programs more effectively."

Another Community Scholar is Dianna Christmas (SPH'03). A high school dropout and former factory worker who completed her education in her mid-20s, Christmas is project director of the Boston Healthy Start Initiative, a federally funded project to reduce infant mortality. She got her start in public health as a caseworker for the Massachusetts Division of Youth Services (DYS) 30 years ago.

"I had been in foster care, and DYS was a place that did well by me, so I said, well, let me give back and help some kids who are in the same situation I was," she says.

Christmas has worked at Healthy Start for about a decade. "As time moves on you begin to realize there are still some skills you need -- you're never really quite done," she says. "I've been taking courses like biostatistics, health law, and epidemiology, and all of these are really complementing what I'm doing. They are helping to make me a better administrator and a better project director."

Michael Immel (SPH'03) is also attending SPH thanks to the Community Scholars Program. A former landscape architect, he is the associate director for HIV health at the AIDS Action Committee, where he administers a program to improve patient adherence to drug treatments. At SPH, among other things, he is learning more advanced ways to conduct a study, and for his qualitative research methods course he plans to interview HIV patients on their attitudes toward their pills.

"This way," Immel says, "I can learn that really profound qualitative value: what do people really think of these things they have to take day in and day out, and how does that affect their ability to take them?"

Immel entered SPH last fall, and this year one of his AIDS Action Committee colleagues applied and was accepted to the Community Scholars Program. "I think this program exemplifies the value that community is not just the subject of university research, but it's an active partner," he says.

SPH relies increasingly on community agencies to accept its students for field placements, Meenan says, so training their employees under the scholarship program is a means of giving something back.

"As we enroll younger students," he adds, "it's wonderful to have working students in the classroom, to tell people that this is what the real world is like."

The School of Public Health is currently seeking donors to help support the Community Scholars Program. SPH Dean Robert Meenan hopes to recruit individual as well as corporate sponsors, such as hospitals and health insurance companies. One model he has proposed would have SPH augment a company's existing tuition program with an additional SPH scholarship. Employees would be encouraged to compete for the benefit.

"The companies would get a smarter workforce, we would get good students, and the students would get an essentially free education," Meenan says.

For information on how to contribute, contact Betty Ollen at 617-638-4640.

28 September 2001
Boston University
Office of University Relations