Resources that Vic promotes

  1. The annual Minority Health Conference produced by student volunteers under the aegis of the Minority Student Caucus at the Gillings School of Global Public Health. The 37th annual conference will take place on February 26, 2016, including an interactive webcast of the keynote lecture. The students have created a video trailer showing scenes from past conferences. Referrer page on my site:  go.unc.edu/mhc, Conference home page: http://minorityhealth.web.unc.edu
  2. The National Health Equity Research Webcast, now in its 22nd year, disseminates a 2-1/2 hour interactive webcast the first Tuesday in June. Past broadcasts can be found at www.minority.unc.edu/institute/ (for the full web sites) or http://www.minority.unc.edu/resources/webcasts/ for links to the archived webcasts of all of the past broadcasts including those from the students’ annual Minority Health Conference
  3. Social Justice and Equality – in Search of John Cassel’s Epidemiology is a small seminar course that I co-teach with Bill Jenkins, a storied public health leader who had a long career at the CDC. We have most of the materials online including a “virtual library” of links related to the course: http://go.unc.edu/sjae  I also have recordings of many of the sessions (audio and/or video) [restricted dissemination]. The class is a work-in-progress, so these are not polished lectures!
  4. Principles of Epidemiology for Public Health is the introductory epidemiology course that I now teach only online. A recent edition of the lectures (slides and recordings), case studies, and other materials are online at www.unc.edu/epid600/  There’s also an online “Evolving Text” that I developed while teaching an introductory course for epidemiology majors (EPID168) and which was translated into Spanish by a Uruguayan epidemiologist. The textbook and some other materials are at www.epidemiolog.net
  5. My YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8phyT1CM4O8N7YJ_cwmtMg) has various items including extended interviews with Edward Ellis (the second African American to receive a PhD from the UNC school of public health), Sherman James (first African American epidemiology faculty member at UNC), Bill Jenkins (see above), and various other notable people. The video quality is highly variable, but some of the content is very interesting indeed!
  6. My faculty website (go.unc.edu/vjs) has various items including several audio interviews (see “Of possible interest” and click “UNC”) plus a personal scrapbook (with a link to my masters paper, “The negative health consequences of traditional sexual morality”).
  7. The Transcendental Meditation program (TM), an effortless mental practice that I learned in 1972 and have followed since then. TM holds great promise for developing human potential of individuals, communities, organizations, and societies. I realize that this characterization may strike you as grandiose and not credible, and I hope it does not cause you to dismiss out-of-hand what follows. Ten years ago the David Lynch Foundation (DLF) began disseminating TM to disadvantaged populations, including schools in poor neighborhoods, homeless persons, prisoners, veterans suffering from PTSD, and women victims of domestic violence. These transformative programs have demonstrated TM’s potential to improve public health and social wellbeing. For example, consider this testimonial for the DLF’s “Quiet Time” program (TM in the schools): “The Quiet Time Program is the most powerful, effective program I’ve come across in my 40 years as a public school educator. It is nourishing these children and providing them an immensely valuable tool for life. It is saving lives.” (James S. Dierke, Executive Vice President, American Federation of School Administrators). A former Principal of the Year, James Dierke introduced the Quiet Time program into a troubled middle school in the San Francisco Unified School District, which now has four schools participating in the program and 10 more on a waiting list. There are DLF programs in countries throughout the world, including ones that have reached tens of thousands of students in Latin America. You can learn about TM at www.tm.org, www.davidlynchfoundation.org, www.tmhome.com, and from a section of my “virtual library”. Opening the awareness of the public health professions to TM’s potential is a “capstone” project for my public health career.