DEAN'S MESSAGE

As you, a reader of Rollins magazine know, public health touches all sectors of our lives. It is at the heart of many issues facing our towns, states, and countries. The current U.S. election cycle serves as a reminder of this as candidates debate over the various policies, political stances, and funding decisions that impact the health of our nation’s communities. It is also a time when tensions are running high.

Sometimes those tensions erupt into violence, as we saw during the deadly shooting at the rally for former President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania. Violence has no place in a democracy and is antithetical to the core principles of public health.

Our school’s mission is to make the world healthier and more equitable through excellence in research, education, and practice. Our work, the discoveries we make, the students we teach, and the partners we support are directly related to many issues of importance in the presidential election.

With this in mind, we have compiled a special edition of our magazine to share thought leadership and research at Rollins centered in four core areas that will repeatedly surface this election cycle: health equity, health policy, reproductive health, and climate change. We hope you find this issue helpful as you frame discussions with friends, family members, and those who hold both similar and contrary opinions to your own about the health-related aspects of these four subjects. 

This is also an important time for us to lean in to accurate science communication, empathetic discourse, and respectful dissent as strong personal convictions and alternate viewpoints receive heavy focus in the media and in our everyday lives. With our public health knowledge and understanding, we can provide critical insights about key election topics to those in our personal and social networks and can ground divisive issues in the context of science. 

A major challenge for all of us will come in how we approach difficult conversations and how we handle the outcome of this election. Making space for disagreement is not easy, but it can be done peacefully and thoughtfully. I believe we can navigate this terrain together if we address our conversations with the values that pointed many of us to public health: empathy, care, and respect for fellow human dignity. We can disagree with others while remaining kind, respectful, and measured in our encounters. This will be hard, but is a critical part of effective communication about public health evidence, policy, and implementation.

M. Daniele Fallin, PhD
James W. Curran Dean of Public Health
Rollins School of Public Health
Emory University

^{Illustration by John Jay Cabuay}