DEAN'S NOTE

Welcome, with a Focus on Inclusion

On the values that shape our community, as we look ahead to the coming year.

Welcome to the 23-24 academic year. To all our returning students, staff, and faculty, I hope everyone has had the opportunity for a restful summer break. To our new students, staff, and faculty, it is wonderful to have you join our community. I think, and hope, you will like it here.

As we enter the academic year, it seems appropriate to take a step back, to revisit the values that animate what we do. Our mission is to improve the health of populations. We do this through our scholarship, teaching, and engagement with the world of practice. And we do it by contributing to a better world, a more inclusive world, one where everyone is part of the conversation about health, and no one is excluded from the conditions that support a healthy life. Creating this world starts here at the school, where we aspire to be a school community that models the kind of world we would like to see. It is a privilege to be part of a community that embraces these core values, values that have remained constant throughout the school’s history.

In some ways, we are at a difficult time for public health, particularly for a public health that aspires to build a better world. We enter this academic year as the world grapples with the fallout of a divisive decade. For rather too long our culture and politics have been characterized by growing polarization, and the demonization of “the other.” The pandemic in many ways amplified this division, straining the connections that support a vision of health based on a shared pursuit of the common good. The work of public health is, in large part, the work of building—and, when necessary, rebuilding—these connections, of seeing that a healthier world is one that embraces a radical vision of inclusion rooted in our common aspiration of health. 

Recognizing the challenges posed by the world around us, and recognizing that there is much we can do to ensure we build the best community we can here at the school, we will, this academic year, have several events and activities that nudge us forward on our commitment to ensure that our school is welcoming and supportive of all members of our community. We do this both because it is right, aligned with our mission, and because it positions us well to contribute to building a better world, towards supporting the health of all.

Informed by our 10-point plan for diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice, we will start the year with our SPH Reads conversation on September 14. At the event, we will explore how we can make the world more inclusive for people who live with disability, as we come together to discuss Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century, a collection of essays by people who live with disability. We will welcome the book’s editor, Alice Wong, who will lead our discussion along with Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice Yvette Cozier. Creating a world that is more inclusive for persons who live with disability is a central, if too-often overlooked, dimension of the work of creating a more inclusive world for all. Events like our upcoming SPH Reads conversation and last year’s Public Health Conversation, “Centering Disability in the Public Health Agenda,” reflect how we can use our spaces and community events to broaden the conversation about inclusion so that it engages with a wider range of experiences and perspectives. This work will continue in the coming year. We will use SPH Reads to anchor Inclusive Conversations, a new series for faculty and staff, which will be hosted by Dean Cozier this fall and spring. We will also be restarting our Healthy Conversations series for students, under the leadership of Dean Craig Andrade. These conversations are meant as spaces where students can come together over the course of three sessions to discuss inclusion, empowerment, and identity. In October, we will convene our annual All-School Retreat for staff and faculty where we will discuss the theme of inclusion, guided by a guest from outside our community.

In our Strategy Map, we committed, collectively, to advancing diversity and inclusion as a core goal for our School. This means working to support inclusion on all dimensions, creating space for the mosaic of identities and perspectives that make our community a special place. Thank you to all who are creating this space every day. I look forward to continuing to do so together in the coming year.  

To all who are new to our community, I look forward to meeting you as the year unfolds.

My warmest wishes for the academic year,

Sandro

Sandro Galea, MD, DrPH
Dean and Robert A. Knox Professor
Boston University School of Public Health

Previous Dean’s Notes are archived at: http://www.bu.edu/sph/tag/deans-note/