A Public Health of Consequence: Shifting the Cultural Narrative From Churning Grants to a Scholarship of Consequence.
Colleen M McBride, Dawn L Comeau, Ashley E Mastin, Hannah L F Cooper
Author Information
Colleen M McBride: All authors are with the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Health Education, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, Atlanta, GA.
Dawn L Comeau: All authors are with the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Health Education, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, Atlanta, GA.
Ashley E Mastin: All authors are with the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Health Education, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, Atlanta, GA.
Hannah L F Cooper: All authors are with the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Health Education, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, Atlanta, GA.
A confluence of challenges is impeding faculty members' ability to prioritize research with the goal of achieving a public health of consequence: research designed to improve conditions to produce a healthier society. Together, these challenges create a "churn" culture in which faculty focus on generating new business (i.e., grant funding and associated incentives) to replace lost revenue (i.e., expiring grants); this culture can relegate public health impact to a back seat.We share three strategies and related insights from our efforts to shift our department's cultural narrative from churn to a "scholarship of consequence": crafting research proposals of consequence, fostering thought leadership through collaborative writing, and mentoring faculty with a view to a scholarship of consequence.We describe each of the strategies and interim progress. Although they are a work in progress, we conclude that despite initial concerns, our evaluation metrics indicate improvement.
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