My Sabbatical Report
A reflection of the past two years and a public commitment to "put the public back in public health"
As many of you know, I have been on a year-long sabbatical from my position as a professor at Allegheny College. I am planning to be back on campus and in the classroom in the fall (teaching a sophomore seminar in global health studies and Biostatistics). At the end of a sabbatical, the College requires that we complete a sabbatical report which should include — sabbatical/pre-tenure leave goals, activities, challenges, and outcomes. I found writing this report to be encouraging and something I am really proud of. For my academic friends, I hope this report inspires you to follow your passions and find the time to rest and care for yourselves. For my beloved community, this report provides the details of what is next and my plans to continue to educate and empower you. We are all public health.
Here’s to creating healthy communities together.
SABBATICAL REPORT – Dr. Becky Dawson
For AY 2021-22
Background: For the past two decades, I have worked/studied in the field of public health. I am a proud epidemiologist (aka a disease detective). And am passionate about preventing disease, conducting disease surveillance, and creating healthy communities.
I joined the faculty at Allegheny College in 2013 with a dual appointment in the Biology Department and (at the time new) Global Health Studies Program. Prior to coming to Allegheny, I was a part of the faculty at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA. My decision to leave George Mason University (a large research institution) was motivated by my desire to teach. My passion for teaching is rooted in my own positive experience as an undergraduate student. It also stems from my commitment to creating healthy communities and reducing health inequities.
In December 2019, I was approved to be on sabbatical during the 2020-21 academic year. When I put together my sabbatical proposal pre-pandemic, I planned to take a couple of online courses – Anatomy & Physiology and an Introduction to R. Additionally, I hoped to design a curriculum (and possibly write a textbook) for clinical epidemiology research for medical residents and their faculty. I dreamed of traveling, visiting friends, sleeping in Yosemite Valley, and spending time with my family. I had grand plans and a long to-do list.
And then my life was turned upside down by COVID.
On January 24, 2020, I completed my first TV interview where I answered several questions live during the evening news – what is a virus? what is this new virus? and when will this new virus arrive in northwestern PA? That first interview led to many more (during the first 6 months of the pandemic, I was averaging 10 TV interviews per week), culminating in my appointment as an Exclusive Contributor at Erie News Now. Additionally, I have been leading efforts in my community and beyond to return to school, return to work, create pandemic policies, start a wastewater surveillance program, and mitigate the spread of COVID. I have worked with and consulted for school districts, law firms, grocery stores, small businesses, colleges/universities, and local governments, among others; everyone loves an epidemiologist during a pandemic! For this work, I was selected as the 2020 Difference Maker of the Year by the Meadville Tribune and was awarded the Professional/Volunteer of the Year (in 2022) by the Crawford County Community Council (receiving citations from the State Senate & House of Representatives). Additionally, Erie News Now named me a “hometown hero” for my work as a news contributor during the early months of the pandemic.
Given my new responsibilities and the disruption caused by the pandemic, I decided to postpone my sabbatical to the 2021-22 academic year. I worked tirelessly throughout the 2020-2021 academic year as a teacher, researcher, consultant, communicator, community resource, case investigator/contact tracer, and public health leader.
When it was time for me to begin my sabbatical during the summer of 2021, I was exhausted, feeling beat up, depressed, and coming to the realization that my professional trajectory and purpose in life were shifting. As I began my time away from the college and the classroom, I was beginning to fully embrace my role as the epidemiologist mama for so many people needing up-to-date and actionable information related to the pandemic and public health. I desperately needed a year away from the daily grind of academia in order to attend to my own health, continue to support my community (as the pandemic has lasted two years longer than anyone anticipated), and chart my own path forward.
At the start of my sabbatical in August 2021, I declared that –
“The theme of my sabbatical was HEALTH —
healthy me, healthy communities, healthy relationships, writing about health, health research, and creating space to do the public health work I feel called to do.”
Challenges: I began my sabbatical coming to terms with the reality that if I am not fully, 100%, unapologetically me I cannot be a good mom, friend, epidemiologist, teacher, communicator, researcher, or human being. And if I am not taking care of myself physically, nutritionally, mentally, spiritually, or emotionally, I am a lousy mom, friend, teacher, researcher, writer, communicator, and human being. The safety lecture on airplanes — where they tell you to put your oxygen mask on first before helping others — has become my North Star throughout my sabbatical.
Sabbatical Accomplishments & Outcomes: In an effort to prioritize my own health, I started my sabbatical by cultivating a yoga and meditation practice. During my sabbatical, I attended 211 yoga classes as well as two meditation workshops. I am proud to say that I have worked super hard to complete a crow pose and can now touch my toes with ease (despite eternally tight hamstring muscles). Practicing yoga throughout my sabbatical has been amazing for both my physical and mental health; my blood pressure has decreased significantly and I am no longer carrying my stress/tension in my back. I have also learned a lot about myself as well as the importance of community, failure, balance, and the need to practice progress-not-perfection through yoga. A full reflection of my first year of yoga is available online.
I plan to prioritize my practice of yoga and medication throughout the 2022-23 academic year (and beyond).
On the first day of the fall 2021 semester, I completed an open water swim in Lake Erie (as a final practice swim before competing in a 1.2-mile race in September; YES!! – I completed a 1.2-mile open water race in September), went kayaking with my dad, and flew kites with my kids.
I also spent time reflecting on how the pandemic impacted me – personally & professionally.
Through this time of reflection, I have come to realize that my passion and calling in life is to create healthy communities. I am an epidemiologist mama, a scientist, and committed to preventive healthcare. I love research, advocate for vaccines, and have dedicated my career to educating the next generation of public health professionals. I am a proud public health professional.
And I want to put the public back in public health.
If I have learned anything over the past two years, it is that (as former US Surgeon General C. Everett Koop said) —
"Health care is vital to all of us some of the time, but public health is vital to all of us all of the time."
As an epidemiologist, I wake up each morning and work to create healthy communities. Sometimes this means I am teaching epidemiology (or biostatistics) to the next generation of public health leaders; other times I am evaluating public health policies or programs, providing guidance to local schools, dreaming of establishing a local board of health in my community, coordinating clinical research, developing a health needs assessment/survey for my community, setting up a wastewater surveillance system, analyzing data, or translating science into practice. I have become a blogger, an exclusive contributor at a local TV news station, and public health leader. Additionally, I have created an online community epidemiology course and have made it available online to anyone who wants to understand the science of epidemiology and how to use that science to make healthy decisions.
I am no longer publishing academic papers in journals to be read by other epidemiologists and public health officials. Instead, I am taking my work to and translating epidemiological research for the public.
I am putting the public back in public health.
During my sabbatical, my work as a public scholar and public health expert has had significant reach (more reach than I would have if I had published an article in a peer-reviewed journal). Through TV interviews, my blog, Facebook live Q&As, several podcast interviews, and my responses to community questions, I have shared accurate and up-to-date information about COVID-19 with a large audience.
Throughout the past two and a half years, I have been discussing and writing about the value of community health. All too often we (myself included) think about health as the absence of disease: I do not have COVID or flu or cancer - therefore, I am healthy. Health has come to be a very individualized concept; we have personal care providers (PCPs), not community health providers. Health is often talked about as something we can control or influence as an individual. A quick google search of “how to be healthy” results in steps we can take to be healthy as an individual — exercise, get enough sleep, eat a balanced diet, drink plenty of water, and the list goes on. All of these things are important (VERY important) components of being healthy.
However, being healthy is more than individual actions.
Being healthy must also include creating healthy communities.
As an epidemiologist, I have been trained to think about and conduct research related to community health, but the pandemic has made me realize that the foundational concepts of epidemiology need to be included in our understanding and work toward being healthy (read: how we define and think about our own health).
Just as we teach kids about the interconnections and relationships between organisms, populations, and communities that make up an ecosystem, we need to reframe our understanding of and conversations about being healthy to include individual health, the health of our friends and families, the health of our communities, and environmental health — our Health(eco)system.
I have shared these messages with my communities and will continue to do so.
I am committed to putting the public back in public health.
Additionally, (as mentioned previously) I have created a community Introduction to Epidemiology class that is available for free to anyone online (through Teachable). I am proud to offer this course to individuals in my community. My goal with the course is to introduce the fundamental concepts of epidemiology to the public and empower them to use that knowledge of epidemiology to make informed decisions about their health and the health of their communities.
And for undergraduate students in my Epidemiology classes and other undergraduate students across the country, I published the third edition of my epidemiology textbook Understanding Epidemiology: Concepts, Skills, and Applications in August of 2021 with my co-author (and sweet friend), Dr. Laura Wheeler Poms. The third edition was written as COVID was spreading globally and vaccines were being developed/trialed. As Laura and I wrote in the Preface –
“Revising this third edition in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic was both poetic and very much needed. Throughout the pandemic, epidemiologists implemented new strategies to mitigate the spread of disease and used predictive modeling to help guide public policy; they also were instrumental in designing clinical trials to test the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines. Key epidemiological concepts, such as epidemiological curves, case fatality, randomized controlled trials, and screening tests, were constantly discussed on the news, were the source of GIFs, and have been trending hashtags (#flattenthecurve) on a variety of social media platforms. We felt that students taking epidemiology courses in a COVID-19 world needed instruction and guidance on these topics as well as the foundational concepts of our first two editions. The COVID-19 pandemic clearly highlights the importance of epidemiology to daily life.”
During the past year, I also lead two research projects to improve the health of my community in Crawford County, PA. In May 2022 I conducted a community health needs assessment in collaboration with the Meadville Medical Center Health System (MMCHS). We have published preliminary results of the community survey and are working to collect additional data from under-represented groups in the county. A final report will be completed and shared with the community by the end of 2022. Additionally, I have partnered with a physician at MMCHS to begin an NIH-funded clinical trial at our local hospital. This trial will be done in collaboration with 11 other hospitals throughout the country. Together with our research partners, our small community hospital here in Meadville, PA, will be working to improve the implementation of evidence-based approaches and surveillance to prevent bacterial transmission of infections at surgical sites. We expect to begin enrolling the first patients in July 2022.
These research projects will help to improve community health and medical care locally and in other communities like ours.
I am proud to be leading this work and completing research that will directly improve my health, the health of my family, and the health of my community.
As my sabbatical comes to an end, I have decided that in order to live out my mission – to create healthy communities – I need to make the field of public health more accessible to the public. Therefore, I am committed to welcoming the public into the work of public health, building trust, and sharing my knowledge with the public.
I recognize that my strengths as an educator, my zone of genius, and my source of joy are in the public.
As an epidemiologist, professor, blogger, exclusive TV medical contributor, consultant, and community leader – I feel like I am bringing my truest, most authentic, and healthiest self to my work when I am working as a public scholar, educating the public, and empowering the public to create healthy communities using the science of epidemiology. I am excited to be in the classroom in the fall as a public scholar. And I look forward to sharing my authentic self with my students.
As my sabbatical comes to a close, I have been asked again and again if I accomplished what I set out to do during my sabbatical year. And I can enthusiastically say, YES! And so much more.
Though my sabbatical was disrupted by COVID and the trajectory of my career changed as opportunities to communicate science, educate and empower the public, and assume the roles of exclusive TV news contributor, blogger, community leader, and epidemiologist mama came my way, I am proud to say that I am healthy (physically and mentally), and I am fully committed to my work to create healthy communities.
Throughout my sabbatical, I focused my work on HEALTH. And I achieved a —
✅Healthy me – I am taking care of myself and prioritizing my physical and mental health. A lot of yoga and meditation are in my future. As are annual physicals and cancer screening tests. I am also managing my crazy-high cholesterol with medication.
✅Healthy communities – I am doing my best to educate my community and empower them to create healthy communities so that everyone can be healthy.
✅Healthy relationships – personally, I have developed deep and meaningful relationships throughout the pandemic with my chosen family (those friends who I consider my family), and our family (the four of us) has made wonderful memories throughout the pandemic and cultivated some meaningful traditions (Friday pizza dinners, walks/hikes, reading times). Professionally, I have established meaningful collaborations and expanded my public health partnerships. It feels so good to be living and working in a community with others.
✅Writing about health – check out my blog, my book, and my online course.
✅Health research – the community health needs assessment is underway, my NIH-funded clinical trial is getting started, and I presented the results of a COVID vaccine research study in Sept 2021.
✅Creating space to do my public health work – I have crafted a protocol to make decisions about what work I will say ‘yes’ to and what I will say ‘no’ to. And I am confident in the decisions I am making; proud of the work I am doing. I have also had the opportunity to work for the PA Dept of Health and CDC Foundation, and with amazing colleagues in Massachuttes. And I was able to travel to Israel in June 2022 (thank you, JNF-USA) where I met with other epidemiologists, staff at the Galilee Medical Center, and staff at the Arava Institute. It was a life-changing experience; one that has inspired me to be more collaborative, ask more questions, seek out new partnerships, and not shy away from conflict.
As my year of sabbatical comes to a close, I feel a sense of renewal and am excited about my future work to create healthy communities. I am committed to being HEALTHY, personally and professionally.
And my goal is to —
Educate and empower each of you to be healthy as individuals and to create safe and healthy communities for everyone.
We cannot all be healthy until every one of us is healthy.
Many thanks to the faculty and administration at Allegheny College who provided me with a sabbatical year.
~Becky Dawson, PhD MPH
Epidemiologist
Associate Professor, Biology | Global Health Studies
Wow! A sabbatical year to be proud of!