WashU, SLU public health schools collaborate on annual lectureship

WashU School of Public Health and Saint Louis University College for Public Health and Social Justice together will celebrate and bring awareness to the impact of public health with the St. Louis Public Health Annual Lectureship. The inaugural lecture will take place Wednesday, April 8.

The event — which coincides with National Public Health Week, April 6-12 — will feature a lecture from John A. Rich, MD, MPH, director of the Rush BMO Institute for Health Equity at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. Rich’s work focuses on issues of urban violence, trauma, and health inequities, particularly as they affect the health of men of color.

WashU and SLU will alternate as hosts of the annual lecture. This year, it will be at Saint Louis University, in DuBourg Hall’s Sinquefield State Room, as well as online. A reception will begin at 4 p.m. and the lecture at 4:30. Register here to attend in person or online.

“John Rich has spent his career doing what public health at its best demands: listening to the people closest to the problem, and designing systems of care that meet them where they are,” said Sandro Galea, MD, DrPH, Washington University’s Margaret C. Ryan Dean of Public Health, Eugene S. and Constance Kahn Distinguished Professor in Public Health, and vice provost for interdisciplinary initiatives. “His work on violence, trauma, and the health of young men of color challenges us to see these not as criminal justice issues but as public health failures that require public health solutions. We are honored to welcome him to St. Louis during National Public Health Week, when that message is especially important to hear.”

Said Leslie McClure, PhD, dean of SLU’s College for Public Health and Social Justice, and a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics: “We are delighted to welcome Dr. Rich as the first speaker in the St. Louis Public Health Lectureship. This lectureship embodies the meaningful collaboration between the School of Public Health at Washington University and the College for Public Health & Social Justice at Saint Louis University, a partnership we look forward to deepening over time.”

Rich was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2006 for his work designing health-care models that melded medicine, education and social services for African American men in urban settings. Among other honors, Rich is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. He also is the author of a book about urban violence, “Wrong Place, Wrong Time: Trauma and Violence in the Lives of Young Black Men.”

Before Rich’s move to Chicago, he was a professor of health management and policy in the Dornsife School of Public Health at Drexel University. There, he co-founded the Center for Nonviolence and Social Justice and a hospital-based violence-intervention program called Healing Hurt People.

Before that, he served as medical director of the Boston Public Health Commission, where he led the city’s initiatives on men’s health, cancer, cardiovascular health, and health disparities. He also was a primary care physician at Boston Medical Center, where he started the Young Men’s Health Clinic and the Boston HealthCREW, a community health-worker training program for young Black men, focused on health education and men’s reproductive health.

Rich earned his medical degree from Duke University School of Medicine, a master’s degree in public health from the Harvard School of Public Health, and a bachelor’s degree in English from Dartmouth College.