NEWS

Foard Day offers diverse events; keynote will highlight covering the uninsured

CHAPEL HILL -- "Making Every Week ‘Cover the Uninsured’ Week" will be the focus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health’s 35^th annual Fred T. Foard Jr. Memorial Lecture and Symposia, set for March 26.

Foard Day activities begin at 3:30 p.m. with a variety of events running concurrently and hosted by the school’s departments of nutrition, biostatistics, health behavior and health education, maternal and child health, and the public health leadership program. An evening address by Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, president and chief executive officer of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, caps the day’s events.

Established in 1972, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, based in Princeton, N.J., is the largest philanthropy devoted exclusively to national health and health care. Lavizzo-Mourey oversees all grant-making and programs related to the foundation’s mission of advancing national health and health care.

Foard Day events are open to the public, but registration is requested. Activities will take place at the McColl Building and Kenan Center, both part of the Kenan-Flagler Business School.

A schoolwide reception will be held at 6 p.m. The evening’s program begins at 7 p.m. with the presentation of the 2003 Bernard G. Greenberg Alumni Endowment Award and the 2003 Harriet Hylton Barr Distinguished Alumnus Award, and recognition of inductees to the Delta Omega public health honorary society.

Immediately following these presentations, Lavizzo-Mourey will deliver the annual Fred T. Foard Jr. Memorial Lecture. Before joining the foundation, Lavizzo-Mourey served as the Sylvan Eisman professor of medicine and health care systems at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as director of the Institute on Aging, chief of the Division of Geriatric Medicine and associate chief of staff for geriatrics and extended care, all at the Philadelphia Veterans Administration Medical Center.

The annual Foard Memorial Lecture was established in 1969 by Foard’s widow, Elsie who wanted to honor her husband, a public health practitioner whose career spanned more than a half-century.

Highlights of Foard’s tenure include the development and strengthening of organized public health services in Alaska, Hawaii, and the Rocky Mountain and Pacific Coast regions. His efforts led to major improvements in health services for American Indians and the transfer of the Indian Health Program from the U.S. Department of Interior to the U.S. Public Health Service. After retiring from the U.S. Public Health Service in 1952, Foard served until 1964 as director of the division of epidemiology for the N.C. Board of Health.

Past Foard lecturers include then-U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Joycelyn Elders; Dr. Jerry Linenger, retired NASA astronaut and School of Public Health alumnus; Dr. Jeffrey P. Koplan, then-director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Dr. George A.O. Alleyne, then director of the Pan American Health Organization; Thomas A. Scully, administrator of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services; and Carmen Hooker Odom, secretary of the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services.

A complete listing of events, speakers and room assignments is accessible on the school’s Web site at www.sph.unc.edu/awards/Foard.

For more information on the day’s events or to register, contact Trisha Morecraft at (919) 966-0219 or trisha_morecraft@unc.edu.

- 30 -

School of Public Health contact: Lisa Katz, (919) 966-7467 or lisa_katz@unc.edu

ews Services contact: Deb Saine, (919) 962-8415