Wednesday, June 10, 2009

XXXVI. Reflecting on the Grand Opening

It has been 4 days since we finished welcoming people to the new home of the South Carolina Statewide Cancer Prevention and Control Program. I wanted to share some of what I said in my introductory remarks. Here goes.

This is a great and auspicious day. Many thanks to friends within the University of South Carolina, community members, faculty from other institutions of higher education and clinical partners from around the state, representatives from the National Institutes of Health and sister organizations around the country for being here to celebrate with us today.

What began as a promise and a dream those many years ago has moved decisively from the abstract to the concrete (and steel, glass, granite, and bamboo). I feel blessed to be able to celebrate the opening of the Cancer Prevention and Control Program in this new and beautiful place on this day in early June of 2009. It is a wonderful thing to contemplate the future dreams that will come to pass in our new home; the discoveries that will be made, and the promises that will be kept.


Many of us call ourselves “educators” and even more of us are parents and mentors of one sort or another. We all know that to live meaningfully means to learn and to teach. Though reflection is a necessary part of living life well, much of what we do does not happen in isolation – and some of it can, should be, and is very public.


In academia we are judged primarily by the papers we publish and the grant funding we garner. But we are called to this work for even more important reasons: to change the world for the better; to touch lives in meaning ways. So, as the director of the CPCP I need to reconcile the need to be productive academically as well as socially and ethically. My own heroes are people who understand that life has little worth without social, economic, environmental and healthcare justice. It was the driving force for Mahatma Gandhi and his disciple, Martin Luther King Jr. Their legacy lives on in the form of the two smartest, most enlightened leaders in the world today, Manmohan Singh and Barack Obama. So, the promise that we have for a better, healthier tomorrow is shared by people who understand the fundamental meaning of life and support us in the work we do here in the South Carolina, elsewhere in the US, in India, and in other parts of the world.


In the way that the National Cancer Institute, and the NIH more generally, classifies people I am a basic scientist. Really, that is the way I think. Still, I am a realistic and a keen student of the history of public health. That impressive, and very public record, shows clearly that those changes in the environment that lead to more equitable sharing of resources have had much more to do with increases in longevity and improvements in the quality of life over the past 150 years than all of the remarkable achievements in biomedicine over that time. An important part of our job is to ensure that findings in the basic sciences are not exquisitely irrelevant with respect to the cancer-related and other disparities we are charged with reducing and ultimately eliminating.


We are often led to profoundly incorrect conclusions when we choose the expedient over the correct way to do our work. Many of you have heard me give examples of how we can get things wrong when we think narrowly and in isolation. As the plan for this building evolved, it was clear that the new home of the Cancer Prevention and Control Program had to be a very public place. It needed to be on a very busy corner in our beautiful city. It needed to convey openness and a sense of optimism and striving toward excellence that captures the essence of our program. An area called Innovista and a building named Discovery seemed perfect. Here we are.


On days like today, I am called to reflect on the many connections that have brought me, indeed all of us, to a place like this. There are accidents in life, but much of what happens can be predicted in advance and even more can be explained in retrospect. We are here because of the excellent things that we do: the many papers that we publish in high-impact journals; the many grants that are funded. Not only are we productive in an absolute sense, but we are extraordinarily efficient in the use of scarce and precious resources.


Although statisticians warn about extrapolating beyond the range of the data, university administrators know that they can only project based on past performance and that we are very likely to continue to be highly productive by any standard. So, we were a logical choice to be the first tenants in this new campus so filled with the promise of a better tomorrow. It is my hope, desire, and plan to expand the program. We have tens of millions of dollars in outstanding grants that could lead to exponential growth in the near future. Expansion is a good thing. However, we need to understand where we have come from and the promises that we have made along the way. We are driven by a commitment to social, economic, environmental and healthcare justice.


The philosophy of what we do and our commitment to the community are not sideshows. They are fundamental to our purpose. As president Obama reminded us recently, it takes a special kind of courage to criticize your friends. You are the people who will hold us accountable. Consider this an open invitation to do so.

I have spent most of the last six months living and working in India. Although I worked hard and much was accomplished, including fulfilling my commitments to people back home, this time away has given me a special opportunity to reflect on life. Of all the words that I could pick to describe my feelings over this time, I would have to choose gratitude.


I am blessed to have a wonderful family, amazing colleagues, and daily contact with people who are dedicated to the mission of the program, and understand that they are only as great as the commitments they make and the promises they keep.

Three people will be speaking to you over the next hour and a half. Not only will this be entertaining but it will give you great insight into the future of public health and how three amazing and very different people see, experience, and wish to help in delivering on the promise.


I first met Patricia Pastides about 20 years ago, when I was a faculty member at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester Massachusetts and her husband, Harris, was a faculty member at the School of Public Health in Amherst. Over the years we have become good friends. I wouldn't say that our relationship is limited to food, but eating and cooking together has been a source of comfort, joy, and learning over these decades. I would not be in South Carolina if it weren't for Harris and Patricia. More than any academic leaders I have met in my life, they understand what the CPCP is fundamentally all about.


Dr. Claudia Baquet is my counterpart as an NCI (CRCHD) Community Networks principal investigator. She directs the Maryland Regional Community Network (MRCN) Program to Eliminate Cancer Health Disparities, which is a model nationally, and very much specifically for South Carolina, for how to work to effectively educate legislators and others to change health policy in larger systems to reduce cancer-related and other disparities. Claudia, a pathologist by training and public health educator and activist by avocation, has been a great mentor to me and other members of the South Carolina Cancer disparities community network.


Dr. Leslie Cooper is the Program Officer from the National Cancer Institute, Center to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities and team member of the South Carolina Cancer Disparities Community Network. The SCCDCN is the main vehicle through which we conduct community-based participatory. Over the four years that our network has existed, Dr. Cooper has evinced a deep interest in what we do and support for our philosophy, perspective, and work style. At the same time, we have come to understand just how very good she is at doing her job. Not only does she make truly amazing observations on the scientific and programmatic side of things, she is a great connector. She is one of those rare individuals who can see connections between things that may appear superficially to have no relation to one another, but when connected amazing things happen.
(NB: Many more pictures from the Grand Opening are available on the CPCP website)

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