Formerly director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Rosenberg built a strong research network by establishing national injury control research centers and effective partnerships in injury prevention with states, federal agencies, business, voluntary organizations, and the World Health Organization.

At CCCW, Rosenberg will oversee a team of scientists who are organizing the rapidly growing body of scientific information about child well-being into easily understood and accessible frameworks. The center seeks to identify the positive characteristic s that parents, families, and communities should foster. Its goal is to identify the best ways of communicating with these groups and ensuring they have access to information.

The CCCW is affiliated with the Task Force for Child Survival and Development. Presidential Distinguished Professor of International Health William Foege serves as executive director of the Task Force and the CCCW.

Stevens drew on data from the Grady Woman's Study, which included interviews from 400 women seen at Grady Memorial Hospital, half of whom had attempted suicide. The information gathered included their abuse history, demographics, and medical histories.

From this base, Stevens wanted to determine how physical and sexual abuse had affected the women in six areas: general distress, hopelessness, post-traumatic stress disorder, drug-related problems, family strengths, and social support.

Using the Multivariate Analysis of Covariance (MANCOVA), he measured the independent effects (controlling for shared effects) of these outcomes in four groups: those who had never experienced abuse, those abused in childhood, those abused in adulthood, and those abused both as children and adults.

His findings indicated that women abused both as children and adults experienced the most negative outcomes, with higher levels of general distress, post-traumatic stress disorder, and drug-related problems. "These revictimized women had the most negat ive outcomes due to the cumulative effects of abuse in childhood and adulthood," Stevens says. By contrast, the women who had never been abused experienced the least negative outcomes.

Dean James Curran received the Atlanta Business Chronicle's 1999 Lifetime Achievement Award as part of the publication's annual recognition of Health Care Heroes. "For two decades, Curran's name has been virtually sy nonymous with the fight against AIDS, from it being an unknown to prevention to looking for cures and treatments," wrote Director of the Robert W. Woodruff Health Sciences Center Michael M. E. Johns, who nominated Curran for the honor.

In June, Good Housekeeping magazine presented its Women in Government Award to ten recipients whose work exemplifies how government at all levels can improve people's lives. Joyce Essien, director of the Center for Public Health Practice, was one of the honorees, receiving recognition for her contributions in initiating and implementing the ZAP Asthma program in Atlanta. ZAP Asthma - a partnership of academic, government, community, and health care members who use a partic ipatory research strategy to tackle the disease in children - has become a model for communities across the nation.

William E. Foege, Presidential Distinguished Professor of International Health, has been named to the global health program team of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. As Senior Adviser, he will work in a key role to help develop lo ng-term strategy, evaluate grant-making priorities, review and recommend proposals, act as liaison for foundation projects, and serve as an ambassador among international and national global health organizations. "I look forward to helping the founders an d the staff direct their grants in effective, groundbreaking ways and in reaching out to new partners and new solutions."

An apple a year: Each year Emory University presents the Crystal Apple Award for Graduate Teaching to a faculty member who demonstrates excellence in teaching. This year Candler Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Richard Levinson won the honor. At commencement ceremonies in the spring, Levinson received the apple following remarks by the students who nominated him for superior teaching.

The 1999 recipient of the Charles Hatcher Jr. Award for Excellence in Public Health is Glen F. Maberly of the Department of International Health. With expertise in endocrinology and public health, Maberly is the founder and director of the Program Against Micronutrient Malnutrition, an organization with the goal of eliminating "hidden hunger" in dozens of countries worldwide. The Hatcher award, established in 1997, honors the man whose 30-year career at Emory included leadership roles in cardiac surgery, The Emory Clinic, and the Woodruff Health Sciences Center.

The American Society for Nutritional Sciences has awarded Reynaldo Martorell, Woodruff Professor of International Nutrition and chair of the Department of International Health, the E.V. McCollum Award in international nutrition. During more than 30 years of research, Martorell has shown that improving nutrition during pregnancy and the first three years of life in settings of poverty and malnutrition leads to long-term benefits in adults, including larger body size, enhanced work capac ity, and increased intellectual performance. His current work is assessing the effects of improving nutrition in girls during early childhood on the later health and well-being of their own children.

Closing that gap is the passion of Kreuter, the associate director for Health Promotion, Policy, and Programs in the Division of Adult and Community Health at the National Center for Chronic Diseases Prevention and Health Promotion. During his career a t the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), he has overseen the establishment of the Division of Chronic Disease Control and Community Intervention as well as PATCH: the Planned Approach to Community Health -- one of the division's programs th at has become a national health priority. In the early 1990s, he founded and served as president of Health 2000, a public health consulting firm. The last several decades of his career have followed great shifts in the emphasis placed on health promotion, evidenced clearly in the titles to three quintessential books he has co-authored: Health Education Planning: A Diagnostic Approach (1980), Health Promotion Planning: An Environmental and Educational Approach (2nd ed., 1991), and Health Promotion Planning: An Educational and Ecological Approach (3rd ed., 1999).

"The time is right, plus the technology is right to address the social determinants associated with health disparity," Kreuter told the DeHaan lecture audience. Currently, he is leading a new CDC initiative called REACH: Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health. The program supports research on social factors associated with infant mortality, HIV/AIDS, breast and cervical cancer screening, child and adult immunizations, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.

During the lecture, Kreuter listed some of the social factors associated with drug abuse that show why treating the drug problem in isolation provides only a Band-Aid solution. Poverty, social indifference, low self-esteem, hopelessness, indifferent pa renting, lack of respect, loss of spiritual values, and adverse childhood events are frequent risk factors for the disease of addiction.

Although Kreuter finds it "embarrassing for a civilized society, a democracy, to have the kinds of disparities we do," he finds it hopeful that today more communities from the federal government to foundations and business are asking the childish quest ion: "but why?"

-- Lorri Preston

The Water We Drink: Water Quality and Its Effects on Health, Rutgers University Press, 1999, by Joshua I. Barzilay, Winkler Weinberg, and William J. Eley

n the introduction to The Water We Drink, the authors elucidate their reasons for writing a book about drinking water, most importantly because of its major effects on health.

"There are very few things in life that are so common to mankind as drinking water. Fifty percent to 60 percent of our body weight consists of water. We all drink water and water-based fluids daily to replenish ourselves. What is not well appreciated i s the fact that any small amounts of contaminants found in drinking water - as small as they might be - may, over a lifetime, have a cumulative and deleterious effect on health. This is especially true of factors that underlie many of the chronic illnesse s that are becoming increasingly prevalent in our society as the population ages. ... What is more, pollution of one drinking water source is ultimately connected to drinking water sources elsewhere, and the effect is magnified many times. Enhancing aware ness of these facts is another purpose of this book."

Written for the educated consumer, The Water We Drink examines the history of water, disease, and sanitation as well as how drinking water is regulated today. The central portion examines health issues related to drinking water, and the co ncluding chapters discuss bottled water and methods of water purification.

William J. Eley is associate professor of epidemiology research.

Fast Lives: Women Who Use Crack Cocaine, Temple University Press, 1999, by Claire Sterk

lice, a slender African-American woman, started using drugs at age 16. At the beginning of Fast Lives, Claire Sterk tells us how Alice became a drug user.

"She thought a lot about running away from home, but instead she often stayed over at friends' places or slept outside when the weather was nice. She came and went at will. Her sisters began to distance themselves from her, treating her as if she was n o longer one of them. Shortly before she turned eighteen, Alice fell in love with Bill and soon moved in with him. She knew that Bill used heroin. Through him, she developed contacts with other drug users. At first she didn't use heroin, initially because she had no interest and later because she was pregnant with their son. On the boy's first birthday, Alice persuaded Bill to give her some heroin. Within six months, he was injecting her with heroin several times a week." Her drug use eventually led to cr ack cocaine.

In Fast Lives, Sterk describes the complicated lives of women who use crack cocaine, often in the women's own words. Her ethnographic research, based on participant observation, interviews, and focus groups, places the use of crack cocaine by women in larger contexts, including gender, class, and race. She argues for a harm reduction approach and gives a thorough profile of these women, including their risk of HIV and AIDS, their conflicted roles as mothers, their encounters with violence, and their future aspirations. "The stories of these women suggest that their drug use can only be understood when placed in a larger societal context," Sterk argues.

Claire Sterk is associate professor of behavioral sciences and health education.

Critical Challenges for Health Care Reform in Europe, Open University Press, 1998, edited by Richard B. Saltman, Josep Figueras, and Constantino Sakellarides

ach year the European Healthcare Management Association presents the Baxter Award for the publication and the project it considers will have the most potential influence on health across Europe. Cri tical Challenges for Health Care Reform in Europe, edited by the School of Public Health's Richard Saltman, is the winner of the 1999 Baxter Award for excellence in the field of management and health policy.

The statement of the judges characterized the study as "a highly practical publication, which addresses issues that are relevant to so many aspects of a health care manager's daily activities. While there have been many publications on health care refo rm, this book is of a particular high standard, effectively drawing together the many complex strands that confront health sector decision-makers."

The volume explores the central issues driving the present process of health care reform in Europe. With essays by 30 scholars and policy makers, the book provides evidence-based health policy to help many European countries resolve dilemmas as they re view and restructure their health care systems. It draws together available evidence from epidemiology and public health, economics, public policy, organizational behavior, and management theory, as well as real world policy-making experience, to lay out the options that health sector decision-makers confront. Through its cross-disciplinary, cross-national approach, the book highlights the underlying trends that now influence health policy formulation across Europe.

In a section on the context of reforms, contributors explore two key health care reform issues: the macroeconomic environment and the changing health needs of the population, analyzing the implication of these issues on health care reform. Parts II and III of the volume discuss demand-side and supply-side strategies. The fourth section continues with an analysis of the role of the state, the citizen, and broad societal values in determining the shape of the reforms. The book's final chapters look at th e actual implementation of change, including a review of some of the attributes of the more successful governments in implementing reform.

According to the authors, "All 17 chapters in this volume seek to incorporate both theory and evidence in the pursuit of a wiser and more flexible and more equitable health reform process."

Critical Challenges is the companion volume to European Health Care Reform, which was published by the WHO Regional Office for Europe in 1997.

Richard Saltman is professor of health policy and management at the Rollins School of Public Health as well as a research director in the European Observatory on Health Care Systems, based in Copenhagen.