Dear Colleagues:

In today’s Dean’s Note, I comment on the importance of language in translating science towards the end of improving the health of populations. This theme emerged from our community Strategic Thinking Initiative and builds on our aspiration to be a leader in the public health conversation, as outlined in our School’s Strategy Map.

In line with these efforts, I am delighted to announce the launch of Public Health Post (PHP), a new venture housed at SPH that aspires to elevate the conversation on public health. The anchor for PHP is the website www.publichealthpost.org. The website has now been live for one week, and I encourage members of our community to browse, follow us on Facebook and Twitter, and even contribute a piece to the website.

Our goal is to facilitate an ideas-first dialogue around public health that focuses on the drivers of population health. We seek to engage policymakers, journalists, and academics who can make change on a local, state, national, and global scale. We aspire to foster an online portal that is fresh, fun, and appealing to people across sectors; to feature work from across the world; and to become the go-to-place for the public health conversation. PHP will include internally generated content and externally aggregated information. We will highlight how scholarship and research findings can inform current policy debates. The editors will most certainly choose to highlight research from SPH, but it is just as likely that they will focus on work going on at other institutions. The goal is to elevate the work we do collectively in public health. In this way, PHP will complement the work of our website, which is focused on SPH research, education, and practice. PHP will also actively articulate and disseminate information through social media and other avenues. I am thrilled that Professor David K. Jones has agreed to serve as the inaugural editor-in-chief; thank you.

One of the goals of PHP is to engage students. PHP is therefore seeking applications for a unique fellowship opportunity. The second cohort of the fellowship begins in January 2017 and lasts through January 2018. We thank Jonathan Gang, Nicholas Diamond, and Maggie Thomas—students from SPH, the School of Communications, and the School of Social Work—who have done tremendous work as the first cohort of fellows in preparation for the site’s launch. Fellows play a prominent role in the creation and dissemination of content. The ideal candidate is an excellent writer, passionate about public health, comfortable with social media, well-organized, and creative. Graphic design, WordPress, and other web skills are a plus. Fellows will report to Editor-in-Chief David Jones and Project Manager Melissa Davenport. Fellows will be expected to produce one new article per week, working on average 15 hours per week, and will receive a stipend of $10,000 for the year. Any interested students should send a cover letter, CV, and writing sample to Melissa Davenport at davenpor@bu.edu. Feel free to send any other materials you think are relevant, including art or links to websites you have developed. Applications received by November 18 will receive priority.

I look forward to seeing PHP evolve, building on our aspiration to Think. Teach. Do. For the health of all.

Warm regards,

Sandro Galea, MD, DrPH
Dean and Robert A. Knox Professor
@sandrogalea

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