>> I think probably when I really decided I didn't want to be a scientist
was when I was visiting Mount Moosilauke,
which is Dartmouth College's,
they have a big lodge up in the middle of the mountains.
And one of their leading red spruce researchers came to talk to us about what was then
very timely research on whether acid rain was
causing the death of red spruce in New Hampshire and New England.
And he said,you know I'm 90 percent sure that it is,
but there's no way in hell you'll catch me saying that in a court of law
because it will destroy my reputation as a scientist.
So here, the Bush administration was putting off any effort to
control sulfur and reduce acid rain because there wasn't good scientific knowledge.
When there was perfectly good scientific knowledge,
but it didn't meet that very high standard for
what we consider acceptable knowledge to be brought into the policy process,
and decided I wanted to help fix that.
We've worked very closely with the media
over time to make sure that we're getting a sense of
what the problems are here in Rochester and trying to look at other cities
and other studies that have been done elsewhere to inform them,
working closely with journalists here to try to get that information out.
Pretty much everything I do is trying to get information out to the public.
Almost all of my work is done in partnership with community groups.
So, I don't drive the questions,
the community groups do, and you know,
trying to figure out what is it that they
need to know in order to try to solve this problem.
And then we often have back and forth about that,
what is the question,
why do you think it's important,
will we be able to answer it,
what if we can answer
this slightly different question because we don't exactly have that data.
And so we're always in partnership with people who are asking
those real questions for real reasons and they are very much
involved in making sure that that information gets to
either individuals or community groups or government agencies that need it.
So for example, I work very closely with
the Lead Coalition and they have a very active website.
The research summaries that I
mentioned in it initially would be shared through
their website if there are new studies that,
as I mentioned you know, new research coming out of the University of Rochester that
will keep people's interest and remind them of how important this issue is,
they will distribute it that way.
When we were closing the Healthy Home because it was grant-funded
and I didn't want to be writing grants to support it forever,
the partners who were involved in it really didn't want it to close.
They wanted to keep meeting and they certainly didn't want to
lose all the information that we pulled together.
So we partnered with WXXI to make
very short Healthy Home videos that different people could
use when they're interacting with patients or in
a community setting or when they're doing their own sort of trainings,
and then we also facilitate
a Healthy Home partnership that continues meeting to this day.
So, whenever we can,
we get grants to replicate that as as a DVD.
So for example, about three years ago,
we got a grant to add ASL to it so that it's
certainly all available on a DVD but also on YouTube in English,
Spanish and ASL so that even though it's specific to Rochester,
we get requests for it from all over the region in the country.
I think a lot of people who do the kind of work I do,
they come from a lot of different kinds of backgrounds and they share that interest in
doing practical applied studies to answer
real questions instead of generating knowledge for knowledge's sake.
And so a lot of times,
professional programs like MPH or a Masters in Public Administration
or sometimes even management degrees
are useful for people who want to do that kind of work.
When I meet people with hard science Ph.D.s who want to do that kind of work,
that's sometimes the biggest challenge because they're really good
at formulating research questions and answering them,
but the idea of the kind of
flexibility that you need to have and the humility to reach out to
different disciplines because it's quite likely
that the community group that you're trying to help,
has a problem that your skills really aren't particularly well suited to solve.
It means you have to be humble and creative about reaching out to
other disciplines and trying to bring
their knowledge and to bear on the problem that you're looking at.
So, in that sense,
learning to be a knowledge facilitator,
I think that skills like anthropology and
policy analysis and really
understanding the processes of making decisions within communities,
those can be really helpful skills.
But I wouldn't say that there's a particular degree in mind,
in fact, political science would probably be one of the worst.
The big problem we're all dealing with is climate change,
and if we don't solve that,
there's no point in doing anything else.
And since it's not really likely that we're going to get a lot of
action at the federal level having to do to climate change,
trying to figure out what are local steps and local things
that people need to be doing differently, is really important.
And I think that in the health sector,
one of the key things that we can contribute is showing how climate change is
a public health issue and looking at all the decisions that
we make with those kinds of health impacts in mind,
particularly with their impacts on health disparities.
So, I'm very involved in working on
health impact assessments and what we call health in all policies.
So, looking at decisions that are made in all sectors,
not the health sector,
but in terms of environment, economy,
development, even criminal justice and education, to say,
what are the health impacts of those policies,
particularly on our most vulnerable populations?
And then if you overlay that with the kinds of
changes in our climate, in our environment,
in our economy, that generates a whole different way of
looking at problems that I think sets a really important agenda.
So personally, I'm taking that approach first to housing policy
in Rochester because I've seen how important the housing quality is to people's lives.
But as we, in the health sector,
gain an appreciation for transitional housing and supportive housing and
how important housing affordability and stability
is to people being able to live healthy,
secure lives, the health sector has no control over housing,
so the health sector to learn how to interface
better with the kinds of policy systems that do shape our built-in environment,
I think it is really important.
And one way to look at this is,
I'm involved with the URBEST program and trying to
help people who are getting Ph.D.s in all kinds of areas.
They want to make the world a better place
and they really want their research to be used.
And I think that the most obvious logical way
is to try to influence policy at the federal level,
and that's, first of all, very hard and second of all,
not necessarily very effective.
So, I think that for researchers in any field,
understanding what are some of the levers that drive
the kinds of problems that they're concerned about and the research
they do is really important and then being willing to interface certainly at
the federal level if that opportunity comes up but also looking closer to home.
So, even if your research isn't
directly relevant to decisions that are being made at the local level,
your training is going to prepare you better
to comment on technical issues more than a lot of other people.
And because you have scientific training,
you have credibility and respect for that knowledge.
So even when our researchers do science cafes and talk to
a group of residents who are just curious and interested in the process of science,
they help build up capacity in understanding of the importance of science.
And when they comment on something that is a relevant issue in the community,
even if it isn't directly relevant to their specialty,
that can have a really big impact as well.
So I think that there are certainly roles
for all kinds of researchers in translational science of the T4 variety,
but it isn't always where you first think to look.
>>I hope you've enjoyed Dr. Korfmacher's discussion of her work.
One of the things that I'd really like to emphasize is that this is team science as well,
not just a team of scientists,
but partnerships focused on improving environmental health in our community.
Dr. Korfmacher is involved with a variety of community groups as part of her science,
the Coalition to Prevent Lead Poisoning,
the Rochester Healthy Homes Partnership,
the Water Education Collaborative,
and the Center for Environmental information.
This is a great segue into our next segment,
translation to population health,
where we move from the community and policy level to the population level.
I hope you've enjoyed this segment,
and we'll see you in the next one.
