Beyond the Books

School of Public Health students take part in a national summit on pandemic flu.

By Kris Stouffer

It wasn’t your ordinary Spring Break.

Three weeks into spring semester, 18 students from Michael Osterholm’s “Emerging Infectious Diseases” course at the School of Public Health flew to Orlando, Fla. They dined with senior executives from Fortune 500 companies. They rubbed shoulders with national and international leaders. They received career advice from former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

When your professor is an internationally known expert in infectious diseases, your life as a student can take an extraordinary turn.

On February 5 and 6, Osterholm’s students worked at the “Business Preparedness for Pandemic Influenza” second national summit, sponsored by the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP), of which Michael Osterholm is director. From appearances on CNN and “Oprah” to testimony before Congress, Osterholm has been calling for the world to prepare for history’s next influenza outbreak.

At the summit, students listened to corporate executives debate real-life pandemic issues rarely talked about in public-health classrooms: How would businesses manage to distribute critical supplies such as masks, drugs and food? What if half of the workforce fell ill? Would the Internet function? What would the legal implications be? Listening to speeches by national leaders and participating in casual conversations over lunch, the students also learned this important lesson: Tomorrow’s publichealth leaders need to understand the private sector, and the private sector looks to public-health leaders on issues of preparedness.

“Public health can be an important player at the national and international level,” says Osterholm. “It's not enough to learn it [and] to preach it. You must practice it.”

The summit was attended by more than 300 people from nearly 200 organizations—and half of those in attendance were from senior management. CIDRAP delivered some big names, too: Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organization, spoke via videotape on the inherent global nature of “pan flu.” Julie Gerberding, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, challenged business to stay focused on the “marathon” of preparing. Albright called the summit “a true national service” and argued that “hope is not a strategy” when dealing with potential catastrophes.

Albright met with the University students before her keynote address and encouraged them to consider a new career option. “If ever there was an issue that is transnational and global, it’s public health,” she said. “Think about a career in diplomacy—we need experts.”

Nick Kelley, a first-year graduate student in environmental health sciences, was thrilled to meet someone at the summit who had already influenced his career choice: author John Barry. As a student at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, Kelley was inspired to write a paper (outside of his regular coursework) after reading Barry’s book about the devastating flu epidemic of 1918: The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History. Kelley’s paper on the dangers of pandemic influenza was distributed to local leaders and published in the local newspaper.

Today, Kelley is a research assistant for CIDRAP, where he works on the CIDRAP Business Source (www.cidrapsource.com) and hustles to complete “need-to-knowby- the-end-of-the-day” assignments from Osterholm, such as estimating the number of people who crossed international borders in 2006.

The summit, he says, proved what he already suspected: “The field I’m going into is constantly changing.”

Such summits, Osterholm says, are a vital experience for the next generation of public-health leaders. “It’s a critical connection and experience that goes beyond the books,” he says. “It’s important for students to see this firsthand. It shows them that the possibilities for their future really are endless.”

To see photos, hear student comments, and read the student blog about the summit, go to: http://blog.lib.umn.edu/sphpod/panflu/.