On Tuesday, Provost Francis Doyle III and School of Public Health Dean Francesca Beaudoin PhD’17 discussed the SPH’s research progress and priorities for the coming year at the sixth annual State of the School event.
At the event, Beaudoin shared the launch of the Anchor Fellowship, a new program that will pair Brown master’s of public health students with public health organizations in Rhode Island.
This academic year, the SPH will pilot the new fellowship, which is funded by the school and will provide students with “meaningful professional experience by collaborating with community partners on projects that directly improve the health of Rhode Islanders,” Beaudoin said at the event.
This year’s ‘State of the School’ event was Beaudoin’s first time giving the address, as she officially took on the role of SPH dean earlier this year after holding the role in an interim position. In preparation for the event, Beaudoin told The Herald that she spent the summer and spring hearing from students, faculty, staff, alums and community members.
“Even though I have been a member of the School of Public Health community for a while, you can’t really understand the ‘state of our school’ without hearing from the people that make up our community,” wrote Beaudoin — who is also a professor of epidemiology and of emergency medicine and who has been part of the Brown community since 2006 — in an email to The Herald.
Engagement with the broader R.I. community came up multiple times during the address, as Beaudoin also noted that the SPH is connected with over 90 local organizations and 42 MPH students worked with R.I. nonprofits and agencies.
In the past year, faculty at the SPH also participated in over 200 briefings with congressional and state staff, in addition to four congressional and nine state testimonies, according to Beaudoin.
Beaudoin also highlighted the SPH’s current research landscape. SPH research funding made up a third of Brown’s overall research revenue, she noted, and researchers received approximately $95 million in total funding.
Beaudoin also emphasized the SPH’s commitment to “strengthening leadership pathways” for students, noting how in the past year, both the Health Equity Scholars program and the NextGen Scholars Program were expanded.
Last spring, the SPH also launched a partnership with Bryant University that reserves spots in Brown’s MPH program for high-achieving Bryant students.
Beaudoin also highlighted media coverage of SPH scholars’ work, including that of multiple researchers who had their work featured on “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.”
This fall, the SPH has been “launching new joint research pilot programs with partners across Brown,” Beaudoin said. These partnerships include the School of Engineering and the Watson School of International and Public Affairs. Next January, the SPH will formally rejoin the Brown Innovation and Research Collaborative for Health.
Larry Warner, adjunct assistant professor of behavioral and social sciences, attended the event because he was “eager to hear the state of the school and all of the good work that’s happening across the different centers and being led by students and faculty,” he said in an interview with The Herald.
Professor of Behavioral and Social Sciences and of Medicine Jasjit Ahluwalia came to the event because he believes that as faculty, it is “very important to support leadership and be a good academic citizen, and part of that is participating in events” he said.
He called Beaudoin “very upbeat and … very grounded” and predicted that “the school is going to do well over the next five to 10 years” under her leadership.
Lindsey Nichols and Kianna Arthur, postdoctoral research fellows at the SPH’s Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies, were impressed by the event. Nichols referred to Beaudoin as a “great speaker” who has “a really good vision.”
“Really getting to see where we’ve been and then also where we’re going, the the vision … was really inspiring,” Arthur said.
