Profile: County Connections

Eric Benning wears a number of hats at the Fulton County Department of Health and Wellness, which well suits his broad training.

Eric Benning: The generalist specialist At the fulton County Department of Health and Wellness, Eric Benning, MD, 92MSPH, is officially a physician director specialist. But unofficially (because there‘s no such “officially” designated position), he functions as medical director of the department. The bottom line? Benning wears a number of public health, clinical, and administrative hats. It’s a situation that suits him well—thanks in large part, he says, to his training at Rollins School of Public Health (RSPH).

“My program at RSPH was structured to give me training in administration, health education, and occupational and environmental public health. It prepared me for my work in so many ways,” Benning says. “Even though I may not be an expert in those different areas, I had exposure to all of them. Virtually everyday I draw on some experience or training I had at RSPH and put it to practical use.”

Benning provides health services for the Fulton County workforce including pre-employment physicals, disability examinations, and fitness-for-duty tests, and he directs wellness and prevention activities. With an MD from Meharry Medical College in Nashville, he also oversees a variety of medical services for Fulton County residents, working closely with the Fulton County Travel Clinic and the Communicable Disease Branch, among others.

The people Benning met while a student at RSPH continue to be a part of his network at the health department. “RSPH gave me exposure to a community of people in public health with whom I now interact frequently. Some are at CDC, and others work for the state. We met as students and now we interact as professionals and colleagues,” he says.

Benning also retains other connections to the school. He recently was elected to the RSPH Alumni Board, and he has served as a student mentor. He welcomes students who want practical public health experience to observe activities in Fulton’s Department of Health and Wellness. He particularly encourages minority students to consider public health as a career. “When you think of a health care career, it doesn’t necessary have to be as a physician, nurse, or dentist,” Benning says. “We need to get the word out that public health careers can also be very rewarding—financially, spiritually, and in other ways.”

Paul Wiesner: Seasoned director

“From my point of view, for an academic public health institution not to have connections with public health departments would be like a medical school having no connections to a hospital and clinic—it wouldn’t make sense,” says Paul Wiesner, MD, director of the DeKalb County Board of Health.

Director Paul Wiesner welcomes RSPH students to the DeKalb County Board of Health, where the classroom is the real world.

The Rollins School of Public Health (RSPH) and the DeKalb County Board of Health have many connections, beginning with Wiesner’s appointment as an adjunct faculty member. RSPH students participate in internships and work study programs with DeKalb’s Board of Health, and the Student Outbreak Response Team—a group of a dozen Rollins students trained in communicable disease control—assist in outbreak investigations. Other students work in DeKalb’s Center for Public Health Preparedness—one of three local health departments in the nation that received a grant from the CDC to help prepare the community response to a bioterrorism event.

Wiesner deems these activities “very beneficial to both the students and to our staff. I think we are in the vanguard of knowing how to mobilize communities to form partnerships and coalitions, and that’s something students learn when they come to work with us,” he says. “It’s different from doing it in an academic classroom. When they work with the health department, the real world becomes their classroom.”

DeKalb’s health board also has an ongoing relationship with the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health. The department offers faculty experts as consultants for problems that arise in the occupational setting. RSPH occupational health residents rotate through the Dekalb County Occupational Health Clinic as part of their training.

In his work prior to l989, Wiesner spent 20 years at CDC running several national programs. The move to the DeKalb Board of Health allowed him “to put all the information and experience I’d acquired into practice on a community level.” He now manages a $30 million budget and some 500 employees who serve a culturally diverse population of approximately 700,000 people.

During his career at DeKalb, Wiesner has seen public health issues and strategies become more complex. “Previously, we focused almost exclusively on maternal and child health and immunizations, whereas now the breadth of our activities has expanded and our focus has shifted to populations—encompassing pedestrian injuries and fatalities, bioterrorism, SARS, West Nile virus, chronic diseases, health promotions, tobacco use, and more.”

Complicated public health issues require partners. “We stand ready to help as a place where connections can be made,” Wiesner says. “And we look forward to an increase in quantity and quality of relationships with RSPH.”

By Sherry Baker, director of public relations for the Emory Heart Center