PHN Research Agenda

17 June 2011

The mostly grey skies over Seattle didn't bother me; I was inside walking around the convention center and attending AcademyHealth sessions. AcademyHealth has grown over the years that I have been attending, and the science has become far more sophisticated and complex in keeping with the health services issues being addressed.

As usual, I made the rounds at the post sessions, scouting out potential manuscripts for the journal. I spent time with previous doctoral students, listening with some pride at their new career achievements. Naturally, networking and planning collaborations was a major activity. It's always difficult to know whether those conversations will prove fruitful. So, this year I am being more proactive than in the past and doing my part to follow-up and actualize the potential.

With the ever shorter time between the release of an RFP and the date due, we all must have a grant ready for minor changes. There is no longer time to generate something new. The shorter proposals are nice, but also harder, requiring a highly advanced skill in writing and explaining.

After AcademyHealth, I spend the morning in Longview WA for the KRISP Project. I did a session with the public health nurses on the PDCA cycle. After a year of bi-monthly meetings, the lights are going on. They began to generate a set of possible, very doable QI projects which would increase their efficiency. They actually sounded excited about the possibilities. After the session, we all went to lunch. It was reassuring to hear them say that they are no longer going merely because they were told to go to my sessions. For at least a moment or two, I felt like we were all nurses sharing the same passion for our communities and patients. It was good.

10 June 2011

Computer reflections

Most organic systems have a developmental curve that is either linear or exponential which eventually flattens out near the end of the system. No, I don't have data to support this statement nor literature. It just feels like what happens in life. What is not well captured in my non-scientific observation-proposition is the time line or time limit to that development. Nor does it capture the "experience" of being on the steep slope of development.

What I can say is that since my first days with a Radio Shack TRS computer, the slope has been steep and the experience has been challenging. I have gone from watching the key punch cards sort my programming code to downloading mobile apps.  I have gone from using a mainframe requiring air conditioning, tape reels and large rooms to having  a phone with more capability than several of those old IBM mainframes. I have gone from needing to know a set of DOS commands to get the computer started to having a computer that can "find" my home wifi router.  I have gone from mimeographed handouts to asynchronous distance education courses (aka internet courses).

A week ago, some construction workers cut the fiber optic cables that carried telephone and internet information to our part of campus. We were forced to read email from our phones rather than from our desktop computers, and we could not use the office VOIP phones to call for help. After a couple of hours, staff gave up and went home to work.  Seeing this dependency effect productivity was scary and revealing. Dependency is rarely a good thing, even if it is necessary.

As the tech support people worked with faculty this week to do a major upgrade, all these "then and now" thoughts come to the forefront for me.  My philosophy as a faculty has always been that I must stay current with the computer and information technology in order to be able to interface with my students, both technologically and culturally. In the years since those first Radio Shack computers, I'm not sure whether the developmental curves for technological or cultural changes have been steeper. I am sure that neither curve will flatten soon and that I will continue to be challenged to stay current with my students.

03 June 2011

Summer begins

The spring graduating students have dispersed and their MPH essays can now gather dust. I had a busy couple of months, reading and editing essays, psychologically supporting students, and a little celebrating their rite of this passage. Now, I am looking beyond tomorrow to the summer. The summer schedule has a full June and a busy July, right up to the start of school.

Just when I thought I was caught up, I realized that I have six presentations and a poster between now and mid-August. Three are for the KRISP project. One is a pre-conference presentation at ACHNE, and it is finished. The poster is for the Public Health Systems and Services Research Interest Group of  AcademyHealth. I now rarely accept doing a poster session, but I will be with good company  of co-poster presenters. I think we will have fun. Lastly, I have two presentations at Academy of Management. Whew, the beginning of school will seem like a breeze.


I have decided to balance my grumbling about this old, increasingly dirty and technologically challenged building with positive thoughts about a donor funding the building of a new SPH building.  Based on the past rates of my grumbling, we ought to find the rich, willing, generous donor in short order. We deserve much better than we have. We are open to receive and are willing to work diligently to make a new SPH building a reality before the end of this decade.  There. I said it. Now, let's make it a reality.

And the other news is that I will be writing a third edition of my textbook. Yikes more work. But, oddly, happily, I have ideas for making improvements. Which is say that I am learning and teaching.