School Of Public

An anonymous donor has committed $5 million to the Johns Hopkins University for an addition to the university's School of Public Health in East Baltimore.The university announced yesterday that the gift from an alumnus of the Hopkins School of Medicine will pay for the bulk of a $6.2 million expansion of the public health school's Wolfe Street headquarters. The addition will nearly double the size of the Monument Street wing, which opened in 1996.Hopkins officials said construction will begin in April.

Flora M. Rees, former administrative assistant to the dean of what was then the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, died Sept. 25 of heart failure at Atrium Village in Owings Mills. She was 89. The daughter of a barber who owned Miller's Beauty Parlor and a homemaker, Flora Miller was born in Baltimore and raised in Forest Park. A graduate of Forest Park High School, Mrs. Rees worked for the U.S. Post Office during World War II. In 1944, she married Harold B. Rees, an executive for Commercial Credit Corp., which later became Control Data Corp.

The University of Maryland, Baltimore, long a leader in epidemiology and preventive medicine, will open a school of public health - the first new professional school on the city campus in 45 years. At its annual meeting yesterday in Frostburg, the state Board of Regents approved plans to draw on existing resources at the university - including the master of public health degree now offered by the School of Medicine - to create the seventh professional school on the Baltimore campus. "Public health is clearly one of our areas of expertise at the university," board Chairman David H. Nevins said.

Dr. Barbara Starfield, a professor and health services researcher at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health whose work in the field of primary care and health policy brought her international acclaim, died June 10 while swimming at her home in Menlo Park, Calif. The former Mount Washington resident was 78. "She was found floating in the pool and may have died of an apparent heart attack. We are waiting for the autopsy report from the coroner," said her husband of 56 years, Dr. Neil A. Holtzman, a pediatrician and a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is awarding $40 million to the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health to expand a program to improve reproductive health around the globe. The 10-year-grant - which officials called the sixth largest in Hopkins' history - will go to the school's Institute for Population and Reproductive Health. The institute trains leaders of reproductive health programs in the developing world, where complications from pregnancy and childbirth are a major cause of disease and death.

KHANDSARI, Nepal -- On the 16th day of her life, the baby awoke with a choking cry in the pre-dawn darkness of her family's mud hut. Bhikhari Pasman fumbled to light an oil lamp and saw foam on his daughter's lips. His wife, Rampati, clutched the baby to her breast but found her too weak to nurse. So the father ran across the sleeping village to wake the shaman, who listened to his panicky words and chanted some magic over a jar of mustard oil. He rushed home and, as instructed, dripped the oil in the ears of the now-unconscious baby.

Armed with point-and-shoot digital cameras, a group of Baltimore teens set out to define love in their lives. The resulting exhibit was displayed at the rotunda in City Hall. The project, sponsored by the Center for Adolescent Health at Johns Hopkins' Bloomberg School of Public Health, was designed to teach youths to express themselves through photography. See more photos at www.baltimoresun.com/photovoice.

An article in Tuesday's Maryland section incorrectly reported that researchers at Johns Hopkins Hospital proposed a study to determine whether heroin should be given to addicts to help prevent crime. The proposal was made by researchers at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.The Sun regrets the error.Pub Date: 7/22/98

Dr. Donald A. Cornely, a former chairman of the Maternal and Child Health Department at what was then the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, died of cancer Wednesday at his home in Mount Pleasant, S.C. He was 79. A native of Philadelphia, Dr. Cornely graduated from West Catholic High School, La Salle University and Jefferson Medical University. In 1958, he earned a master's degree in public health from the Johns Hopkins University. Before moving to Baltimore, Dr. Cornely taught at the University of Pennsylvania and University of Pittsburgh.

The dean of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health endorsed a state bill yesterday that would force businesses to offer health insurance to their employees or pay toward a fund for the uninsured. Bloomberg School of Public Health Dean Alfred Sommer said later, It is extraordinarily embarrassing for me, personally, to go to almost any meeting in the world where there are people from other developed market economies because we are the only country which does not guarantee access to health care.

Dr. Melvyn C. Thorne, a semiretired professor at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health who was interested in maternal child care and family planning in developing countries, died Aug. 16 of a heart attack at his Roland Park home. He was 77. The son of a mechanic and a homemaker, Dr. Thorne was born and raised in San Francisco. After graduation in 1950 from Lowell High School, he worked his way to Europe aboard a freighter. "He had decided not to go to college and spent time bicycling and traveling throughout Europe," said his wife of 52 years, the former Dorothy Richardson, an educator he met when both were students at the University of California at Berkeley.

Paul D. Imre, a retired Baltimore County public health official and decorated World War II veteran, died of a heart attack Saturday at his Columbia home. He was 83. Born in New York City, he enlisted in the Army immediately after his graduation from the Bronx High School of Science. He became an infantry paratrooper in World War II. He parachuted into Carentan, France, two days after the Allied invasion began and fought his way through the country until he reached Belgium. During heavy fighting in the Battle of Bulge in January 1945, he was wounded in the back by shrapnel near Mande St. Etienne.

Under glowing neon signs, amid strippers, barkers and a nervous parade of humanity, something unprecedented is happening on The Block in Baltimore. It's called public health. Maria Slechter, 22, totes a bag of clean hypodermic needles she provides to dancers and patrons, who turn in used ones. "They're shooting heroin and cocaine, I guarantee they are," says Slechter, wearing a black off-the-shoulder dress that helps her blend into the crowd. She is part of a group of outreach workers who since early May have descended on the region's densest concentration of nude dance clubs.

Loretta Paul Permutt, a retired Johns Hopkins School of Public Health administrator, died of pancreatic cancer Sunday at her Mount Washington home. She was 89. Born Loretta Paul in Pittsburgh, she served in Army intelligence in the Pacific during World War II. She left the service as a staff sergeant. She then attended Bryn Mawr College and the University of Chicago. She moved to Baltimore in the 1950s and, after raising her family, she became a Johns Hopkins School of Public Health clerk.

Dr. Thomas Burke, professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, was awarded the inaugural 2007 Faculty Award for Excellence in Academic Public Health Practice from the Association of Schools of Public Health and Pfizer Inc.'s Public Health and Government Group. The $10,000 award recognizes graduate public health faculty for their teaching and practice excellence. Dr. Robert A. Barish has been selected as the University of Maryland, Baltimore's Public Servant of the Year.

The University of Maryland, College Park will formally launch the state's first publicly funded school of public health today, pledging to train students to confront regional health issues ranging from HIV infection to morbid obesity. Though the state already is home to one of the largest and most prestigious public health schools in the world at the Johns Hopkins University, UM officials say that a public program with lower tuition will enable more low-income and minority students to learn to address problems that disproportionately affect their populations.

Don't mock this president. He got the better of Congress on spending and taxes, same as Bill used to do. The big auction houses know too much about competitive bidding to want to have to do it themselves. The chairman of the Johns Hopkins trustees is running for mayor of New York and might give the Bloomberg School of Public Health to CUNY. The economy is beating expectations. We in it are not.

Our nation faces daunting health challenges that call for new public health strategies. A 2003 report from the Institute of Medicine, "Who Will Keep the Public Healthy?" concludes, "We are now facing problems that no one has seen before." It predicts that all cities and states in the 21st century will face changing disease patterns linked to climate change. The toll of poor lifestyle choices will mount. Alarming statistics on obesity, especially childhood obesity, Type 2 diabetes and mental health problems, along with the aging of the baby boomers, point to an even greater load for our health care delivery systems.