Ninth Annual Maternal and Child Health Epidemiology Conference / December 10-12, 2003
TISHIA SMITH: Thank you. What a great day of presentations and discussions thus far. And as I walked around from breakout to breakout, I had a chance to notice that many of you were in--having some great conversations looking at indicators and interventions and cost on preterm birth. Many of you were engrossed in conversation on the M in MCH, looking in the area of maternal depression. And some of you got to hear an update on program and policy uses of the youth risk behavioral surveillance system. All very important issues for the field today. I would like to take this opportunity to call to the mic doctor Dr. Neil Halafan, and he will present the National MCH Epi Awards. Followed by Dr. Halafan, we’ll have Dr. Susan Nodder and Dr. Sam Posner to present this year’s conference awards.
DR. NEIL HALAFAN: Good afternoon, and I’m very pleased to be here, even for the 20 minutes that I’m going to be here to present this award. I have the great pleasure of presenting an award to Dr. Michael Lu. And Dr. Michael Luis an assistant professor at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at UCLA and an assistant professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences. When we present awards to people, especially awards early in the career, it’s both to mark what people have achieved, but also to continue to inspire them to greater heights. And Dr. Lu is someone who at the assistant professor level very early in his career has achieved a great deal through the work that he has done and the kind of conceptual work that he has done in the short time that he has actually had an academic appointment. I had the great pleasure of working with Dr. Lu on, I think, a really important article. I think it’s important. Since it was published in Milt Kotelchuck’s “MCH Journal,” Milt chose to write an eight-page editorial in which he said it was either brilliant or nonsense, and I think that it was more on the other side. And Dr. Lu is largely to credit for that.
I’ve actually also known Dr. Lu since his first day of medical school. I had the pleasure of first day of medical school when he was at UC Berkeley. He walked in, and I was teaching the Health Policy course with Paul Nuacheck there. When he walked in the door, we knew that we had a winner right off the bat. He went on at UC Berkeley to establish the Suitcase Clinic, which is a clinic that continues to exist for homeless people in Berkeley, and went from there to graduate UCSF, first to get an EPI degree in Berkeley, and then to UCSF, where he got his medical degree, and then to do a residency at UC Irvine. The work that he has done, importantly, has been looking at issues that have to do the prevention of preterm and racial and ethnic disparities, and specifically looking at life course issues in racial and ethnic disparities. I think that part of what his contribution is is to look beyond the period of pregnancy to understand what is happening in terms of the determinants of preterm births in birth outcomes.
And to help us look further beyond that period, I think a little bit we’ve been like drunks looking for our keys under the lamppost; instead of looking at the entire life course and what contributes to pregnancy risk, we’ve been looking at a narrow window of nine months or a little bit longer. And Dr. Lu’s work is pointed in an important direction. I want to just show a couple of slides that goes along with this. Can you put those on for me? This is Dr. Lu and his family.
He’s the little one there and family. He was born in Taiwan, and there he is with his family. There he is a little bit older in the life course, and there a little bit older and still the little one. But he’s a little bit older in each way. As we move further, we see there he is somewhat a loner in the wilderness before when he’s moved here to California. And I think you can notice that this is probably Yosemite. And there he is graduating from medical school. But his contribution, really, in the racial and ethnic disparities in birth outcomes that he published and several other related articles specifically looked at risk reduction strategies across the life course and indicated that if, in fact, we were going to change birth trajectories, we needed to have a life course orientation towards health promotion strategies. And he’s been very interested in how we accommodate the kinds of lifelong learning trajectories and health trajectories.
And as we can see, as we start to put him into this period, we can see that he’s been on a high trajectory the entire time, and he’s been on that upper trajectory, rather, at least in his educational area. Now, again, when we look at his reproductive trajectory, we can see, initially here, he didn’t look like he was on such a great reproductive trajectory, again, alone in the wilderness. But you can see there when he met his wife--and there was some cultural sensitivity issues that took place and cultural competence and proficiency, I would say--you can see that he moved back up to a higher reproductive trajectory. And there, you can see the proof of the pudding. He has a 10-month-old Sasha.
So, Michael, why don’t you come up here, and I’d like to present to you the Outstanding Young Professional Award, 2003 National MCH Epidemiology award for demonstrating outstanding work as a young professional in epidemiology to improve the health of women, children, and families.
DR. MICHAEL LU: Thank you, Neil, for that presentation of my life course, and thank you all for this great honor. You know, I’m always wanted to play baseball, so winning this award is like winning Rookie of the Year for me. It’s such a great honor. You know, I think for most of us, when we look back on our lives, we probably don’t remember very much of it except for a few very special moments. And I think for me, someday when I look back on my life, this is going to be one of those very special moments, standing before you, my peer, and being recognized for having begun to make a difference, make a contribution.
That really means a lot to me, and so I thank you all from the bottom of my heart. But I also know that this award does more than just honor me. You know, I think just like winning the Rookie of the Year award, you need to have great coaches. So anyone who’s ever won anything like the Young Professional Award knows that he or she is probably just lucky enough to have great mentors. So I just want to take a moment to honor my mentors both at UCLA, people like Dr. Helfan, and he’s just been a great source of inspiration for many of my ideas; people like, you know, Chris Dunkleshedder and Cal Hohel and Ganam Choudrey; and people outside of UCLA, people like in Milt Kotelchuck and Greg Alexander and Loretta Jones and Carl Damis and countless other people--and many of you are here in this room--for all the guidance and support and encouragement and inspiration that you’ve given me.
I really thank you from the bottom of my heart. I also want to just take a moment to also honor my parents, who probably never get awards like these just because they never had the chance to go to college--in fact, in my mom’s case, she never had the chance to go to high school--but who really taught me everything that I need to know about being a decent human being and caring for one another and making a difference in this world just by the simple eloquence of their example. I think you do them really a great honor by giving me this award. So again, I thank you very much. And finally, I just want to share this award with my wife, Jessie, who unfortunately couldn’t be here today, but whose love and support has really I think breathed new life into my work, and to her and to my baby girl, Sasha, for reminding me every day what our work is all about. So thank you very much.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Good afternoon. This year, there were 155 abstracts accepted for presentation or poster here at our Ninth Annual MCH Epidemiology Conference. I would like you to all join me in turning to page 86 of your program. As we all heard this morning, what is an MCH epidemiologist? One of the important talents that we need to have and develop is the ability to write and do it well. I am very pleased to present the award for the Top Abstract to Dr. Wanda Barfield for her paper and her abstract on “Racial Disparities in Late Fetal Deaths, United States, 1995 to 1998.” Her abstract was selected for clarity, an excellent topic to research, an understudied topic, population-based work, strong methodology, interesting implications. Dr. Barfield.
DR. WANDA BARFIELD: Well, I turned to the page as instructed and saw my own name on the abstract. I was like, “Me?” Gosh, this is an honor, a surprise. I just want to reiterate the importance of being lifted up, and being lifted up is being lifted up by others, first and foremost my parents and my family, also the wonderful mentors that are all here in this audience. Particularly, I want to acknowledge Dr. Honiatrash, whose vision inspired me to do this work, as well as my co-authors. There are just so many people to thank. In particular, he’s not here right now, but I want to thank my husband, Joseph Summers, who’s been an incredible source of support, and my son, who has missed a few hours being away from me in terms of work but has always been a joy. I just want to thank everyone. Thank you very much.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Good afternoon. I have the honor and the pleasure to announce the winners for the Poster Awards. And first, before we go there, I do want to thank my review committee who worked with me, Joan Kennelly, Emma Viera, Pat Simpson, Dee Weatherhall, Mary Rogers, and Tyra Shaw, who keeps us all in order and kept us moving along and coming to a decision. We reviewed a lot of great posters and had a good time doing it.
And the first poster that I’d like to recognize is the second place poster, if that makes any sense, and that goes to--on page 182, I’ll follow that lead--to Ellen Wilcox for her poster titled, “The Psychological Sequality of Childhood Fore-sex: a Study of Maternal Mental Health in Pregnant and Postpartum Adolescent Mothers.” And is Ellen here? Well, congratulations to Ellen. And our first place abstract was an abstract, I will say, that all the judges looked at and went, “Wow.
This is a great abstract.” And this can be found on page 187. And this goes to Carrie Kyooan, Beth Mueller, Harvey Chukaway--I hope I pronounced that right--and Marcia Swanson. The name of this abstract is “Risk of Malformations Associated with Residential Proximity to Hazardous Waste Sites in Washington State.” And they’re not here either. Well, we have two great posters, both of which are, I hope, still up over there. And please check them out. And I want to congratulate all the poster people. We had a great time looking at them all and had some challenges in making the decisions. These two were very good posters. Thank you