Allegheny County Health Director Iulia Vann, MD, MPH, has been appointed adjunct associate professor of health policy and management at Pitt’s School of Public Health. The appointment is part of the formal partnership between the Allegheny County Health Department (ACHD) and the school, announced in April, that creates an academic public health department, aligning Pitt’s academic strength with ACHD’s frontline community service.
Vann says the idea of an academic public health department was first brought forward by Pitt Public Health Dean Maureen Lichtveld when she was at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, adding that the framework has been developed across the country for years, leading to several partnerships like this one that Pitt and ACHD can use as examples to be successful.
“A partnership like this brings public health out of the textbook. We can combine all of the academic strengths that Pitt Public Health has and all of the valuable insights from the lived realities and the public health infrastructure that the Allegheny County Health Department has to offer and create a loop of innovation, data and direct service,” said Vann, who adds that one potential benefit of the partnership is an accelerated timeline between research publication and the implementation of new policies and practice.
“There’s a lot of research at Pitt Public Health being done in a variety of areas. We don’t want to wait two or three years before the research finds its way into an academic journal, and then we read it and take it back to figure out how to put it into practice. [ACHD] can bring in the voice of the community to the research and help make better decisions from the beginning.”
Vann joined Allegheny County from Guilford County, North Carolina, whose biggest city is Greensboro, with a countywide population about half of Allegheny's. She says she’s always understood the value and potential of these collaborations, but circumstances haven’t allowed the opportunity until now.
“In North Carolina, I took the top leadership position in my jurisdiction in March 2020,” said Vann. “At the time, we really weren’t thinking about academic health departments; we were figuring out how to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.” She adds that the health department maintained close collaboration with partners such as the University of North Carolina Greensboro and UNC-Chapel Hill, but these were not formal partnerships. “When I came to ACHD, I met with Dean Lichtveld to brainstorm ideas on how we could work together, and this was one of the first things that came to light.”
In addition to the research and service benefits the partnership holds, Vann says she is excited to join the Department of Health Policy and Management and contribute to the students’ education. “My mom has been a high school biology teacher for 20-plus years,” she said. “I grew up with lesson plans and objectives and experiments and labs, and I've always found it incredibly interesting, and I've seen how rewarding it has been for her. Being able to give back to students some of the experience I have built over the last 13 years in governmental public health is very exciting to me.”
Vann has already been a guest lecturer in several Public Health classes and chairs the school's Partner Advisory Board, committed to enhancing the school's educational, professional practice, service and research curriculum, and the career readiness of our students by fostering a collaborative partnership between the school, employers, and community stakeholders. The board's mission is to provide expanded and actionable insights that inform and improve curricular effectiveness, ensuring our graduates are well-prepared to meet the evolving demands of the public health workforce and contribute meaningfully to their communities.
In her guest lectures, Vann focused on the importance of leadership and management, drawing on real-world experience. “Of course, I talked about COVID, but I’ve had other experiences too, some of them very positive and great examples of successful partnerships or projects, and then some of them that were not that great.” She’s also discussed working with different leaders and learning to navigate the role's politics and politics around certain issues, something she hadn’t faced much until becoming health director. “I can allow student to use their textbooks, their professors and all of the theoretical information, which is very important, and pair it with ‘What does it look like in real life,’” she said.
It's not just about what she can offer students, Vann says, but also about how they can benefit from the Health Department's offerings. She says since her guest lecture, students have reached out with questions or started conversations about their interests, and she has been able to connect them with others in the field.
“It’s not just about getting them to people who can answer questions but to help the students grow their network,” she said. “When I was in my MPH program, everybody was saying ‘just network,’ but if you don’t have people willing to connect you with their contacts, it's tough to do. We have so many connections with nonprofit organizations, with leaders in the healthcare systems, with elected officials, with a variety of different categories of partners that we will be able to connect them with.”
In addition to more traditional public health roles, the department's leadership is developing new positions and building projects that may appeal to students pursuing different paths. “We’re thinking about things in the space of public health communications, community engagement, and how to do that appropriately. We have someone working on policy. There are so many areas in the department where students can learn and build skills and provide a career path.”
As someone who wanted to be a doctor since she was five, Vann says she realized her future was in public health while practicing family medicine and repeatedly encountering the same issues in patients. “I went into public health, and that's when I was a deer in the headlights, because there are so many directions that you can go, public health is just so broad. So, how do you determine your career path? And that's what we can provide for the students.
The partnership isn’t a one-way street either, and Vann says there are numerous ways that the University can help the Health Department and benefit the community.
“Pitt can help us sharpen our public health response, help create evidence-based practices,” she said. “It can also help train the next generation of public health professionals. One of the core competencies of local health departments is ensuring a knowledgeable, sound, and strong public health workforce. Well, that starts in the academic realm.”
While there are benefits for both Pitt and ACHD, Vann says the community will benefit most from the work underway.
“Public health is really a collective art, and I think this partnership is not only about Pitt Public Health and ACHD; it is really the opportunity for residents of our county to see their voices reflected in policy. Students seeing their impact in real time,” she said. “What can be more satisfying and motivating than you as a student seeing your research and your work being taken seriously by public health professionals who have been doing this for years, and what can be more satisfying to researchers and academic professionals than seeing the outcomes of their work on community indicators?”
- Mike Friend