Bloomberg School of Public Health
Advisory Board Meeting Minutes
Thursday, June 28, 2007 | 3 p.m. | 921st Meeting

Members Absent: Drs. William Brody, Robert Black, Ron Brookmeyer, John Groopman, Edward Miller, and James Yager; and Ms. Robin Fox.

Guests: Dr. Sharon Krag, Professor Stephen Teret, and Ms. Diane Glover.

Meeting convened: Provost Steven Knapp convened the meeting at 3:10 p.m.

Approval of the Minutes: Minutes of the 920th Advisory Board meeting of May 15, 2007 were approved as submitted.

Remarks by the Provost

Provost Knapp deferred his remarks until the reception in his honor following the meeting.

Remarks by the Dean

Dean Klag congratulated Dean Krag upon her imminent retirement. He reported on the enthusiastic turnout for a farewell reception held a week earlier in her honor, and said that the love and affection for her shown by attendees was emblematic of Dr. Krag's character and leadership. Dean Klag continued by noting that this would be Provost Knapp's final meeting prior to his departure from Hopkins, and that a reception in his honor was to follow this meeting.

The Dean commented on departmental chair searches. Dr. Griffin, chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology search committee, concurred that viable applications have been received to date, with an August 1 deadline for applications. Dr. Zeger will share a departmental self-study at the July 2007 Advisory Board meeting, after which the Dean will appoint a chair search committee.

Dean Klag then updated the Advisory Board on recent work to develop School activities for the United Arab Emirates. He expressed confidence that efforts will come to fruition and credited Dr. Holtgrave for his role in moving the initiative forward.

The annual Management Retreat will be held at the end of July. The three recently-appointed associate deans will begin serving during July — Dr. Janet DiPietro, Associate Dean for Research, on July 1, Ms. Alexandra McKeown, Associate Dean for Research Administration, on July 23, and Mr. Paul Seifert, Associate Dean for Development and External Relations, on July 30.

Report of the Faculty Senate

Dr. Louis offered congratulations and best wishes to Provost Knapp as he assumes the presidency of The George Washington University. Dr. Louis continued by noting that the last Faculty Senate meeting of the 2006 - 2007 academic year will be held July 12, which will feature a recap the past year and review of plans for the coming year. Dr. Caulfield will begin serving as Faculty Senate president in August.

Other Business

List of faculty for 2007 - 2008 reappointment

The list of faculty appointments was approved, including changes to the list distributed by Ms. Glover at the meeting.

Proposed revisions to the HPM doctoral program

Dr. MacKenzie gave the report, assisted by Professor Teret. The proposed revisions resulted from a process begun after the HPM Division of Social and Behavioral Sciences moved to the newly-created Department of Health Behavior and Society. HPM then reviewed and revised its mission, and restructured, eliminating divisions. The Department now functions as a faculty of the whole, with 2 deputy chairs, Dr. Morlock and Professor Teret. In a 5-year strategic plan, the Department examined its curriculum, particularly its PhD degree program.

The existing PhD in Health Policy and Management will be replaced with 4 distinct PhD degrees: Economic Evaluation and Policy, Prevention and Public Policy, Bioethics and Public Policy, and Health Services Research and Policy. Professor Teret and Dr. Weiner co-chaired a curriculum committee which created the 4 new programs and worked intensively to develop a PhD core curriculum of 4 courses, 2 of which are new and 2 of which were reformulated from existing courses: Social and Economic Determinants of Health, Public Health Policy Formulation, Health Policy Analysis and Synthesis, and Health Policy Research and Evaluation Methods. After completing these and other requirements such as epidemiology, biostatistics, and ethics coursework, PhD students will proceed in one of the 4 degree tracks. In developing the core courses, the curriculum committee collected and took into consideration how these topics are being taught in other schools of public health.

The Department will no longer offer its introduction to health policy course, but will keep the course available online. If other departments want to use this course, the Department will work with them to devise an acceptable solution. The MPH Program was made aware of this change informally through Committee on Academic Standards discussion and records.

Dr. Zeger commented that HPM should guard against the core courses being over-subscribed by students from other departments as that could diminish cohesion among groups of PhD students. Dr. MacKenzie acknowledged that this could become an issue and that her Department will monitor this. She also added that an additional 1-unit seminar will be offered for HPM PhD students only. These seminars will be used to supplement the material presented in each of the core courses.

There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 3:50 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,
Susan C. Williams

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Last updated 01Jul08 by dgips@jhu.edu