Health in Performance

Hitting the Right Notes

For these School of Public Health faculty members and students, the University of Michigan’s Life Sciences Orchestra “is a great break from our professional lives,” says Edward Norton, professor of health management and policy and French hornist. With final exams and grades looming, Norton and his colleagues took time out last April to perform works by Beethoven, Dvořák, Ravel, and others in a glorious Hill Auditorium concert. Pictured above: (top row, left to right):

Concertmaster Linnea Johansen, second-year health management and policy student;
Clementine Fu, first-year epidemiology student;
Ellen Mozurkewich, MS ’01, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology, UM Medical School;
Edward Norton, professor of health management and policy;
David Aaby, PhD student in biostatistics;

(second row, l-r):

Andrea Knittel, MD/PhD candidate in health behavior and health education, Medical Scientist Training Program;
Sonja Capracotta, postdoctoral researcher, environmental health sciences;
Betsy Foxman, Hunein F. and Hilda Maassab Endowed Professor of Epidemiology;

(bottom row):

Adrienne Cheng, LSO Concerto Competition winner and first-year student in environmental health sciences.

Photo by Peter Smith

Discover the Life Sciences Orchestra with SPH student blogger Tasha Edwards (April 2011):

More SPH student blogs.

Actress Sarah Jones: Our Right to Health

Before the lights had dimmed, a stooped woman in a gray blanket emerged from the shadows at the back of Rackham Auditorium and began making her way toward the stage. The audience of more than 500—who had gathered to celebrate both the 25th anniversary of the SPH Summer Enrichment Program in Health Management and Policy (SEP) and the 25th annual Minority Health Conference—stopped chattering, and by the time the woman had heaved herself onto the stage and limped to the podium, the room was silent. In a gravelly drawl the stranger introduced herself. “I’m a P.H.D.,” she said. “Poor, homeless, and disabled.” Later she told the crowd, “We might not look the same, but I am your mirror.”

The homeless woman was one of ten characters who took the stage during the next hour—all of them brought to life by Sarah Jones, a Tony award–winning playwright and actress whose ability to impersonate others is nothing short of spooky. Jones has performed at the White House and Off-Broadway and is working on a commission for Lincoln Center Theater. The one-woman, multi-character show she brought to Ann Arbor in March, A Right to Care, was commissioned by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and offered a riveting look at the ways that ethnic, racial, and economic inequities wreak havoc in the lives of Americans—especially immigrants.
jones

While in Ann Arbor, Jones received a King-Chavez-Parks Visiting Professorship from UM. In awarding Jones the professorship—which brings guest faculty “with diverse points of view and experiences” to campus—SPH Associate Professor and SEP Director Rich Lichtenstein said, “You have certainly contributed a diverse point of view to the university—ten times over.”

Three hundred graduates and preceptors marked the 25th anniversary of SEP, which provides summer internships to undergraduates interested in working to eliminate health disparities. To date the program has helped shepherd more than 200 young people into the public health profession. The SEP anniversary coincided with the 25th year of the Minority Health Conference, sponsored by the Public Health Students of African Descent.