Liz Walker to Deliver 2017 Convocation Address.
Liz Walker, pastor of Roxbury Presbyterian Church and Boston’s first African American television news anchor, will deliver the 2017 School of Public Health Convocation address.
Walker was called to ministry after 21 years on WBZ TV and more than a decade of humanitarian work in what is now South Sudan. Under her leadership, Roxbury Presbyterian Church is home to the Cory Johnson Program for Post-Traumatic Healing, an effort to address high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder in its neighborhood. The program works to increase community awareness of PTSD, improve access to mental health services, and provide skills to cope with and respond to PTSD.
Before Boston, Walker’s career in television news took her from Arkansas to Colorado to San Francisco, where she received an Emmy Award for her coverage of the Jonestown massacre.
After first visiting what is now South Sudan in 2001 for a story, she cofounded My Sisters’ Keeper, a grassroots initiative that built the region’s first school for girls in the village of Akon. She also helped initiate Sisterhood for Peace, a network of Sudanese and South Sudanese women collaborating for peace across race, ethnicity, religion, and geography.
Walker is a member of the Core Strategy Team of the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, serves on the Board for the New England Chapter of the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, and is an advisor to the Women2Women International Leadership Program. She has also worked extensively with the Belgian State Department, helping young Muslims, Christians, and Jews develop intercultural communications skills.
A native of Little Rock, Arkansas, Walker received her BA in Education from Olivet College in Olivet, Michigan, and studied television communications as a graduate school at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. She graduated from Harvard Divinity School in 2005, and holds honorary degrees from institutions including University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth; Boston College; Simmons College; and Salem State University.
Student Speaker
Cassandra Osei, an MPH recipient committed to tackling structural inequities, has been named the student speaker at the 2017 SPH Convocation.
Osei is currently designing an online intervention aiming to decrease the incidence of mood disorders among young black women in Chicago. The independent project jumps off of work with Professor of Community Health Sciences William DeJong, looking at ways to translate cognitive behavioral therapy strategies into online resources to reach that population.
Osei discovered public health as an undergraduate unsatisfied with her biology pre-med track. “I tacked on political science and international studies as a double major,” she says, “and then anthropology and black world studies as a double minor, and I was like, ‘Why am I pre-med? This is what I care about.’” Public health offered a way to integrate all of her interests, taking on the macrosocial factors that can complicate and impede the health of individuals.
Toward the end of her time at SPH, Osei says she fell in love with population mental health, drawn to the gaps in knowledge in that area, “particularly for black women, a population that I’m very passionate about.”
Osei is also a spoken word poet, a passion she says informs her public health work. “Poetry, storytelling, anything that presents a narrative is the qualitative data that put a face to the quantitative data,” she says. “If we’re not taking these narratives into account, we’re really missing why we care, and why we should care.”
At SPH, Osei has worked to promote diversity, wellness, and community in the student body, taking on leadership roles in Students of Color for Public Health and in the Racial Justice Talking Circle, and contributed as a teaching assistant for PH720: Individual, Community, and Population Health and SB780: Mental Health and Public Health.
Leonard H. Glantz Award for Academic Excellence
Ayobami Olanrewaju, an MPH recipient, is the winner of the 2017 Leonard H. Glantz Award for Academic Excellence.
The Glantz Award is the highest award granted to a graduating MPH student at SPH. The award is named in honor of Leonard H. Glantz, a current professor of health law, bioethics & human rights, who served for 30 years as academic dean and demanded rigorous standards in curriculum and teaching throughout the academic program.
Glantz Award winners are nominated by faculty, and should demonstrate exceptional academic performance, creative, and critical thinking, and seriousness and professionalism in public health.
Olanrewaju graduated from medical school in Nigeria in 2011, where he worked as a medical officer in a pediatric hospital before obtaining a master of science degree in tropical pediatrics at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine.
“He has been a star,” one faculty member said of Olanrewaju, both in class and as a research student. “I do believe that Ayo is a serious and creative thinker who will go on to improve child health as both a pediatrician and public health practitioner, whether here in the US, his home country of Nigeria, or worldwide.”
Norman A. Scotch Award for Excellence in Teaching
Howard Cabral, professor of biostatistics and co-director of the Biostatistics Graduate Program, is the winner of the 2017 Norman A. Scotch Award for Excellence in Teaching.
The Scotch Award is presented annually to an individual who has made outstanding and sustained contributions to the education program of SPH. The award is meant to recognize individuals, faculty, or others who have substantially enriched the educational experience for the students at the School.
Cabral holds an MPH and a PhD in biostatistics from SPH. He joined the faculty in 1998, and has co-directed the MA and PhD programs since 2004. He has taught courses in both biostatistics and health services research, receiving multiple awards for excellence in teaching. Cabral has also mentored student research in every graduate program at SPH, and has also served as a research mentor to students in the Division of Graduate Medical Sciences and at the Goldman School of Dental Medicine.
He began his work in the field of public health as a community research assistant on the Woburn Health Study, an investigation into a childhood leukemia cluster that helped raise awareness of the health dangers of environmental exposures. With over 250 peer-reviewed publications to date, his research spans both observational studies and randomized clinical trials, including on cardiovascular health on the effects of substance use on health across the life span,
“Dr. Cabral began his statistics training at BU, and has been an important member of the SPH community ever since,” wrote a former student in one of several nomination letters. “It has been the great fortune of students and research collaborators that he has remained a constant feature of SPH, and we hope he will remain so for many years to come.”
Faculty Career Award in Research and Scholarship
Judith Bernstein, professor of community health sciences, is the winner of the 2017 SPH Faculty Career Award in Research and Scholarship.
This honor is given annually to recognize a faculty member for a distinguished body of scholarly or scientific work on a specific topic or within a general area of expertise.
The main focus of Bernstein’s research and scholarship efforts has been the development, testing, and implementation of preventive efforts that bring public health into clinical settings. Bernstein holds a joint appointment in the School of Medicine’s Department of Emergency Medicine, and for the past 25 years has led a multidisciplinary research team to develop methodology for facilitating behavior change in a variety of clinical environments. Her work has had significant policy implications, including a study used to pass a bill guaranteeing the right to language interpretation during emergency department visits in Massachusetts hospitals.
Bernstein co-directs the SPH BNI-ART Institute, and has conducted training and consultation with regional systems of care from Alaska to Texas. She served for 17 years on the national Ethics Committee of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), and currently teaches courses at SPH in women’s health policy and public health intervention development.
“She is one of the most dedicated and productive researchers I’ve ever encountered, and has multiple irons in the research ‘fire’ at all times,” a colleague wrote in one of many nomination letters from students and faculty. “She has been an advocate for women’s health in one way or another since the 1960s, when she began community organizing to improve the healthcare of pregnant undocumented immigrant women in California. Many at her stage of career might be content to rest on such an extensive track record of accomplishment, but I see little sign of Dr. Bernstein slowing her pace.”
Dzidra J. Knecht Staff Award for Distinguished Service
Karen Smith, department and financial manager for community health sciences, is the winner of the 2017 Dzidra J. Knecht Staff Award for Distinguished Service.
The Knecht Award recognizes a staff person who has made outstanding and sustained contributions to the administrative functioning of their department, and therefore the School. It is named in honor of Dzidra J. Knecht, the School’s first associate dean for administration, who spent 30 years working for the University, 20 of them at SPH.
Smith began her career in health care with a key role establishing Partners HealthCare. She spent nine years as department administrator in Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics at the Tufts University School of Medicine before joining the Department of Community Health Sciences in 2011.
In her role as research administrator, Smith is responsible for a portfolio of funding from the NIH, HHS, the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation, and the Department of Justice, among many others. She coined the phrase “Let’s put ‘community’ back in Community Health Sciences,” and was instrumental in initiating the department’s annual faculty and staff day of service.
In his nomination letter for the award, Chair of Community Health Sciences Richard Saitz described how Smith joined the School’s newest department soon after it formed, and has been a true leader ever since. “Karen goes well beyond every day and every week, exceeding my expectations and those of Department faculty and staff,” Saitz wrote. “She cares a great deal about SPH, its mission, and its students,” from encouraging and facilitating faculty development, to advocating for students, to promoting community within the department and across SPH. “Much of what I see working well on a day to day basis in the Department of Community Health Sciences I can attribute to Karen’s leadership, approach, and attention.”
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