‘Space race’ level attack on future public health crises

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PITTSBURGH —  Maureen Lichtveld’s nearly 40 years in environmental public health has focused on a central principle: how to prepare for the next big crisis. Her “aha” moment came early, in her mid-20s as she worked to increase vaccination rates among children in the Amazon jungle. The effort called for a public health solution that focused on the whole community, its culture, its environmental factors, long-standing inequities and health impacts. Now dean of the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, she’s aiming to position the Pittsburgh university — already an engine of health research — at the forefront of this deeper bureaucratic soul-searching that experts say is long overdue.