By Anne DeLotto Baier

The College of Public Health last month launched its Department of Global Health — the fifth department in the college and the first new department since the college was established in 1984. The development of the department, several years in the making, was the outgrowth of a student initiative and faculty with strong global interests as well as the response to a national recommendation that global health be included in graduate-level public health education.

"We have responded to clear-cut demand," said Stanley Graven, MD, interim dean of COPH. "This new department is the fastest growing in our College. It has already attracted 85 students, including the highest number of newly admitted students in spring semester."

Leading universities are known for the international impact of their teaching and research, said JoAnn McCarthy, PhD, dean of USF International Affairs who serves on the new department's Council of Advisors. "The creation of a Department of Global Health within the College of Public Health aligns us with other top tier research institutions that have recognized the global dimensions of health issues and restructured their academic programs to reflect this reality."

Bioterrorism, transmission of disease by international travel and trade, antibiotic resistant diseases, and growing economic inequalities are among the complex challenges that threaten global health and security and require broad-based solutions, said Boo Kwa, PhD, chair of the new Department of Global Health. Dr. Kwa, an expert in parasitic diseases in developing countries, moved from chair of the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health to lead the new unit. Thomas Bernard, PhD, is the new chair of EOH. "We've always had students and faculty working on global health issues, but no single department provided a home," Dr. Kwa said. "We will focus our energies on finding solutions to global health problems that impact Florida and our community."

"The department centralizes the curriculum so that global health now has its own distinct identity and critical mass of faculty with international expertise," said Ann DeBaldo, PhD, professor and associate dean for research and international affairs at COPH. "This will help us pursue major research and training grants from governmental agencies like the U.S. Agency for International Development, World Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as well as from philanthropic foundations."

The Department of Global Health merges the existing college-wide global health program with EOH's Tropical Public Health/Communicable Disease concentration. It will provide interdisciplinary educational opportunities for students interested in the sociocultural, political and economic challenges of global health and train those specializing in emerging infectious diseases with transnational impact such as AIDS, SARS and West Nile virus.

Students can specialize in one of two concentrations — Global Health or Global Communicable Disease. The concentration in Global Health is the only one in COPH associated with the university's Masters International Peace Corps Program, begun this fall. The program allows U.S. students to complete their field experience and special project during Peace Corps service, a commitment of two years, and apply the experience toward credit hours required for the degree. As a special incentive, COPH will waive in-state tuition for the nine credits involved.

"Many students are calling about the program. They're excited about global health – and intrigued by the life-changing opportunity that Peace Corps service presents," said Elizabeth Gulitz, PhD, associate dean of academics for COPH.

The creation of the department comes on the heels of a recent Institute of Medicine Report titled Who Will Keep the Public Healthy: Educating Public Health Professionals for the 21st Century. The report identifies global health as one of eight areas critical to public health education. "Understanding global health issues is increasingly important as public health professionals are called upon to address problems that transcend national boundaries," the authors state. Spearheaded by a workgroup led by Jeannine Coreil, PhD, chair of the Department of Community and Family Health, the MPH in global health began as a college-wide interdepartmental program two years ago. Last spring, an International Health Committee co-chaired by faculty members Eknath Naik, MD, PhD, and Wayne Westhoff, PhD, proposed that COPH establish a Department of Global Health.

The proposal was submitted to Dr. Graven along with a petition signed by 70 public health students supporting the formation of a global health department. Fouzia Khan and Hokehe Eko, officers in the college's Global Health Student Association, worked with fellow students in the Infectious Disease Association, to organize the petition drive.
"Having a department that offers classes and field experiences devoted specifically to global health will make us more knowledgeable and competitive for jobs in the global arena," said Khan, who is earning her MPH degree with a concentration in Tropical Public Health/Communicable Disease. "It's really a very small world, and infectious diseases affecting one country can quickly spread to another. The more we understand about diseases around the world, the closer we come to attaining global health."

The new department reflects the diversity of the COPH's student population, she said, including representatives from Africa, India, South and Central America, the Caribbean, Japan and China.

COPH faculty who have transferred to the new department include Azliyati Azizan, PhD, a molecular biologist with expertise in dengue fever; Jacqueline Cattani, PhD, epidemiologist and director of the USF Center for Biological Defense; Ann DeBaldo, PhD, an expert in global tropical public health; Donna Haiduven, PhD, an infection control specialist; Ricardo Izurieta, MD, an expert in tropical diseases; Cherie Onkst, MD, JD, who specializes in environmental health; Eknath Naik, MD, PhD, an infectious disease epidemiologist and director of the USF-India Center for Health, HIV/AIDS Research and Training; Donald Price, PhD, parasitologist; Lillian Stark, PhD, a virologist with the Florida Department of Health; and Wayne Westhoff, PhD, a health educator with the Global Center for Disaster Management and Humanitarian Action.

For more information, check out the Department of Global Health website at http://hsc.usf.edu/publichealth/gh1.

Return to top

By Marissa Emerson

In an effort to bridge the perceived gap between physicians and lawyers, USF's fourth-year medical students and Stetson's third-year law students gathered at the new Stetson University College of Law Tampa-campus March 3 to discuss areas where the two professions overlap.

"Our goal is to create dialogue to enhance communication between these groups of students," said Jay Wolfson DrPH, JD, a USF professor of public health and medicine, a Stetson professor of health law, and co-director of the USF/Stetson Consortium for Law and Medicine, which has been conducting continuing education and research for more than five years.

Roy Soto, MD, assistant professor of anesthesiology and coordinator of the College of Medicine's third- and fourth-year colloquium, presented the group with a potential medical malpractice scenario. In sometimes heated conversation, the students discussed medical procedures, as well as the legal areas of negligence, informed consent, duty of the patient, duty of the patient's advocate, and burden of proof. "We were surprised at the level of lively debate that took place," Dr. Soto said. "Students from each program took great interest in what the other thought. It was great to see such an enthusiastic discussion between soon-to-be doctors and lawyers."

Fourth-year medical student Jorge Caso, who plans to practice urology, thought the experience was "important for fostering dialogue between disciplines that have traditionally been somewhat suspicious of one another. If nothing else, it provided some perspective for us (the medical students) of what sorts of ideas and concerns the law students have with medical issues."

The fourth-year colloquium activities prepare students for lifelong learning and continuing education, and the third-year colloquium emphasizes cutting edge basic science and its applications to the clinical years. USF and Stetson intend to grow the collaborative relationship for the benefit of student education, research and service. Stetson University College of Law Dean Darby Dickerson and Professors Mickey Smiley, Steve Everhart and Joseph Rugg also attended and participated in the discussion. USF Associate Dean for Medical Education Paul Wallach, MD, contributed to the planning of this program.

Return to top