Welcome, in a Time of Challenge and Change.
As we begin the academic year, a word of welcome to all members of our community—students, faculty, staff, and alumni. It is truly a joy to be able to reconnect with colleagues and friends to continue the work of our school. The reoccurrence of academic seasons, with their sense of regularity and renewal, is especially welcome in difficult times, like the moment we now face.
Over the last five years, these Dean’s Notes have often addressed moments of challenge, disruption, and change. Such moments include political shocks, climate-driven natural disasters, and outbreaks of violence and hate. These Notes have also addressed social movements, the role of compassion in shaping health, and the importance of pursuing social and economic justice as a means of building a healthier world. Yet even in this eventful context, this year has stood out for its historic significance and relevance to our work.
The COVID-19 pandemic has, seemingly overnight, changed our world. It has shaped how we interact, how we organize ourselves, how we think about health. It has sparked renewed focus on the causes of poor health in our society, the inequalities and injustices that often underlie disease. And it has all overlapped with a federal election year in the US, a race which reflects recent changes and promises to usher in new ones, regardless of the election’s outcome.
It is with these evolving circumstances in mind that we begin our academic year. To the members of our school community—welcome. Hopefully, everyone had a summer that was safe, healthy, and, in terms adjusted for the challenge of our present moment, enjoyable. Welcome, especially, to our new students. Thank you for your eagerness to join the mission of public health, to engage with the flux of this moment to build a healthier world. We are delighted to have you with us, and look forward to working with you toward the goal of better health for all.
And there is much work to do. This virus has challenged us all. It has shown our health is connected, inspiring a new solidarity around health. It has revealed we can transform society quickly when we decide health demands it. It has urged a focus on the core drivers of health, and on the importance of investing in the policies and institutions that promote and sustain health. And it has shed light on health disparities and how they intersect with core societal injustices. In particular, it has catalyzed a conversation around race and health. The death of George Floyd happened in a context of disproportionate vulnerability to Covid-19 among communities of color. We as a society are finally starting to have the difficult, needed conversations about how these societal ills are connected, about the history that informs them, and about what we must do to build a healthier future. Boston University has long engaged with these conversations, through the work of The Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground, the University’s Center for Antiracist Research, the leadership of BU’s Vice President and Associate Provost for Community and Inclusion Crystal Williams, the leadership of Yvette Cozier, Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice (DEIJ) here at SPH, and the ongoing discussions taking place among members of our community across the University. These conversations took special focus in June, when BU came together for “A Day of Collective Engagement: Racism and Antiracism, Our Realities and Our Roles.” Earlier that month, at SPH, we engaged with these themes through our three-part symposium, “Teaching Public Health: Diversity, Inclusion, Equity, and Justice.” The School is deeply committed to issues of diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice and has a robust suite of programs around these topics, starting with the year-long conversations facilitated through SPH Reads, through our monthly racial justice talking circles, monthly virtual coffee and conversation with the Associate Dean of DEIJ, trainings, and our ongoing work through department diversity and inclusion committees, as examples. We see these programs as central to our efforts to advocate for the health of all and our efforts to be a community that lives our values. Continuing a robust dialogue about racial injustice is central to mitigating COVID-19 and to creating the conditions where such injustice no longer allows poor health to proliferate.
We have heard much about how unprecedented the COVID-19 moment is. It is true, we have never seen anything like this pandemic in our lifetimes. But it is also true that the forces that gave rise to this moment have long been the core focus of public health. These issues are where we live, where we have always lived, as a field and as a school community. This pandemic has centered the public debate on how health is shaped by structural forces, from the injustices which inform police brutality, to politics and polarization, to economic inequality, to the ongoing challenge of noncommunicable diseases, to how public health engages with the media. All of these are areas we regularly explore here at SPH. In recent years, for example, we have hosted events addressing race and policing, how to use politics and policy to create a healthier world, income inequality and health in America, the legacy of slavery and its implications for health, tackling infectious threats like tuberculosis, and other issues core to this moment. We have also welcomed to our school many public health leaders who are now helping to shape our response to the pandemic at the federal level, including CDC Principal Deputy Director Anne Schuchat and Surgeon General Jerome Adams. Since COVID-19 emerged, we have responded with a series of virtual seminars about how issues of longstanding public health concern intersect with the challenge of this pandemic—the events can be viewed in the Public Health Conversations. The public health issues that have informed COVID-19 have also been central to these Notes, which have addressed topics such as health inequalities, the burden of noncommunicable diseases, racism, and the link between politics and health. Engaging with these conversations is both a reflection of the moment we are in and a function of our ongoing mission as a leading school of public health—to engage with the foundational causes of health, with special focus on the marginalized and vulnerable, with the goal of shoring up these foundations to improve the health of populations. To hear these these efforts have inspired policy, action, and change is a legacy we are grateful to be part of.
Consistent with this mission has been our efforts to ensure the year begins in a context of health and safety for our community. In May, we convened SAFER (Safe Actions for Employees’ Return), a working group to help guide our return to campus. Over the summer, the group worked towards this goal, reporting its progress in regular updates to the community. Through safety best practices, social distancing, and a reimagining of our school’s physical space, we are poised to create the healthiest possible environment for our community as we navigate this moment. But perhaps the most important safeguard against the virus is our willingness to contribute to a culture of safety in the coming months, engaging with new protocols as extension of our mission as a school to promote health as a collective good.
This is a difficult time, but it is also an historically unique chance to build a healthier world. This pandemic reflects, in many ways, a status quo we have too long accepted, where we have given short shrift to the foundational forces that shape health. We have come to see doctors and medicine as paramount to our health and neglected the social, economic, and political factors that truly decide who gets to be healthy in our country and our world. By disinvesting in the health of populations and not fully addressing the poor health of marginalized communities, we have created the conditions for COVID-19 to become the crisis we now face. Mitigating this pandemic has caused the country to begin to have conversations about how this status quo has left us open to poor health, the same conversations which have long been ongoing in public health. Capitalizing on this moment means ensuring that these conversations do not end with the pandemic, but continue towards the creation of a healthier world. The changes needed to create such a world are significant, structural. They require us to address society at the deepest level, to acknowledge where we have fallen sort, and to make the difficult effort to do better.
Change on this level can be daunting to consider. But COVID-19 has shown that large-scale change will come regardless of what we do. Choosing not to address the structures that shape our health simply means that these changes, when they occur, are likelier to do more harm than good. Committing to advance change as a positive force not only prevents that worst from happening, it cultivates the likelihood of the best possible outcomes for our world. Driving this change is the work of public health.
The year upcoming is the 45th anniversary of SPH. For this milestone, we have chosen to elevate the theme, “Now is the time.” Because now is the time for public health. The values that will steer us out of COVID-19 towards a healthier future are the values of public health and the values of our school. These values, along with our dedication to justice and creating a a more equitable world, aspire to improve the conditions that shape health and wellbeing. As these values increasingly inform the public conversation, our task is to make sure they lead to the structural changes necessary to mitigate COVID-19 in the short-term and prevent future pandemics by creating a world where such outbreaks no longer emerge. I know I echo many when I say it is a privilege to be able to pursue this work as part of this community.
I hope everyone has a good week.
Warm regards,
Sandro
Sandro Galea, MD, DrPH
Dean and Professor, Boston University School of Public Health
Twitter: @sandrogalea
Acknowledgement: I am grateful for the contributions of Eric DelGizzo to this Dean’s Note.
Previous Dean’s Notes are archived at: http://www.bu.edu/sph/category/news/deans-notes/