Candidates for SPHHS dean visit

by Daniel J. Fitzgibbons, Chronicle staff

he first of four candidates for dean of the School of Public Health and Health Sciences visited campus April 7 for meetings with faculty, staff and students.

     David Mirvis, director of the Center for Health Services Research at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis, also gave a presentation entitled "Influencing Health and Health Care in the Volunteer State: The Center for Health Services Research."

     Three other candidates for the post are slated for visits over the next four weeks. They are Howard Spivak, director of the Tufts University Center for Children; Steven Zeisel, associate dean for research at the school of public health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and John Allegrante, professor of health education at Columbia University.

     Mirvis has been director of the Center for Health Services Research since 1999. He is also professor of medicine and professor of preventive medicine at Tennessee's College of Medicine, where he joined the faculty as an instructor in 1974. Over the past 29 years, he has held a number of posts at the college, including chief of the section of medical physics; associate chief of the division of circulatory diseases; associate dean for Veterans Affairs medical center affairs; director of the division of health services and health policy research; and director of the health policy focus in the graduate program in health science administration.

     Mirvis, who has an M.D. from Albert Einstein College of Medicine, also holds adjunct faculty appointments in the Herff College of Engineering and the Fogelman College of Business and Economics at the University of Memphis. He also serves on a National Institutes of Health Research Resource Advisory Committee at Harvard University and Beth Israel Medical Center in Boston.

     Since last year Spivak has directed the Center for Children at Tufts University, where he is professor of pediatrics and community health in the school of medicine and adjunct professor of child development in the school of arts, sciences and engineering.

     He previously held teaching appointments in pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and Boston University Medical School. He is currently chief of the division of general pediatrics and adolescent medicine, director of the office of community health and vice president for community health programs at New England Medical Center. He is also director of pediatrics at Carney Hospital and executive director of the Bingham Program, a foundation addressing health issues in Maine. In 1988-90, Spivak was deputy commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, where he was involved in developing public policy and programs on issues such as school-based health care, infant mortality reduction, violence prevention, AIDS education and health issues related to minority communities and the elderly.

     Spivak completed his M.D. at the University of Rochester School of Medicine.
In addition to his duties as associate dean for research at UNC's school of public health, Zeisel is professor and chairman of the department of nutrition and professor of pediatrics. He was appointed associate dean in 1999 and has been on the UNC faculty since 1990. From 1982-90, he was on the pathology faculty at the Boston University School of Medicine.
At UNC, he has been the principal investigator on a number of major research grants funded by the National Institutes of Health. Zeisel also has published more than 190 papers on basic research in nutrition and developed new graduate level courses and seminars as well as a computer-assisted distance education course on nutrition.

     Zeisel holds a Ph.D. in nutrition from MIT and received his medical degree at Harvard Medical School.

     Allegrante joined the health education faculty at Columbia University Teachers College in 1979, where he is currently a professor. From 1980-96, he chaired the department. In 1981, he co-founded Columbia's Center for Health Promotion, which he still directs. He is currently president and chief executive officer of the National Center for Health Education and a senior scientist in the research division at the Hospital for Special Surgery, both located in New York. He is an adjunct professor of behavioral science in medicine at the Weill Medical College and Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Cornell University, also in New York.

     In 1997-98, he was president of the Society for Public Health Education in Washington, D.C. From 1987-88, Allegrante was a Pew Health Policy Fellow at the Rand/UCLA Center for Health Policy Study.

     Allegrante has authored, co-written and edited more than a dozen books and book chapters and more than 50 journal articles. He has been involved in a number of research projects related to arthritis and musculoskeletal disorders funded by NIH, the Arthritis Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

     He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois.

     Current SPHHS dean Stephen Gehlbach plans to step down in July after heading the school since 1988.