New York City’s top health official visited a Columbia classroom yesterday to discuss the city’s past and present public health issues.
Health Commissioner Thomas Farley told the Fundamentals of Global Health class, taught by Mailman School of Public Health professors Alastair Ager and Marni Sommer, that he wanted to “talk about the way in which we think about public health in New York City.”
“I’m biased in this, but I think it is a way which can help around the globe,” he said.
Farley walked the class through the history of public health in New York, describing the shift from infectious diseases, which were the leading causes of death in the 19th and early 20th centuries, to chronic diseases, such as heart disease and lung cancer, which are now the leading causes of death throughout the country.
Farley cited smoking, obesity, high blood pressure, alcohol use, and physical inactivity as a few of the most important individual risk factors for those diseases, saying they are the “key things we want to be focusing on.”
“These are our priority health problems—or to put it this way, my to-do list as public health commissioner of New York City,” he said.
Farley said that in order to combat modern chronic diseases, which are rooted in particular behaviors like smoking and bad eating habits, it is necessary to look to the “solution of the era of infectious diseases and epidemics.”
The solutions in that era, Farley said, were based in environmental changes. Those solutions included more sanitary workplaces and living spaces, and an increased effort to make safe water, safe food, and solid waste disposal available throughout the city.
Farley cited recent legal efforts and social media messaging by the city’s Health Commission—aimed at reducing smoking and unhealthy eating—as similarly concrete environmental changes that will impact individuals’ behaviors.
Farley asked students in the class to discuss smoking and obesity, as well as ethical issues related to public health, choosing students at random from the class roster to answer questions.
He also answered students’ questions about local health issues. In response to a question about a proposed campus-wide smoking ban at Columbia, Farley said that he would favor such a ban over the current policy, which stipulates that no smoking is allowed within 20 feet of campus buildings.
Students said that they appreciated the opportunity to hear Farley speak.
“It was really interesting to hear a lecture in a global health class about New York City, because I think that it is easy to forget that the United States, despite the health advances it has made, still faces vast public health challenges,” Nicole Dussault, CC ’14, said.
Kainee Aguilar, CC ’15, said she left the lecture with a better understanding of public health beyond the academic context.
“When he came in, it was one of those moments when you realize that all of the reading you’ve been doing, all of the homework, the quizzes, and the projects, mean something,” Aguilar said. “At the end, I was glad to know that everything I’ve learned is being applied for the greater good in a place close to home.”
Comments