Dear Friends (current and future!),
This is my inaugural dean’s message for the newly revised SPHTM Magazine. I couldn’t be happier to be at Tulane or more excited about the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.
We have a lot of great content in this issue, such as new research looking at how reducing blight could reduce neighborhood violence and the 50th anniversary of health policy and management at Tulane, so I won’t take up a lot of space or time here in the inside cover.
However, I do want you to know how important I think the school’s alumni and friends are to the future of SPHTM. You are our history but you are also part of our future. We very much want to reconnect with our alumni, which is one of the reasons I hope you will be seeing more of us. We want you to read this magazine. We want you to connect with us on the social media of your choice. We want to meet you in person at all of the important upcoming association meetings like APHA and ASTMH.
I hope to meet many of you, but more than that, I hope you will reach out to faculty and staff and share with them what you love about our school – your school – and what you’d like to see us do better. We can’t do everything at once, but we have a lot of plans and even more enthusiasm to make Tulane SPHTM the best in the country.
You’ll see later, in an article about someone named Thomas LaVeist, that I see us as foundational to public health in the United States. We need to live up to our place in history. I truly believe this school is uniquely located and positioned to make a tremendous difference in public health through our students, through our faculty, and through all of you and the work you do every day.
Now, go read some great articles about the school you love!
Best regards,
