Maxwell Perspective: Smarter, Healthier Way to Go
July 7, 2012
From Maxwell Perspective...
Smarter, Healthier Way to Go
Maxwell’s new research center was founded by Syracuse University alumnus, ad man, and later-life fitness enthusiast Sid Lerner, who views good health as a product of good policy, enhanced with good PR.
Tom Dennison (far right) and Rebecca Bostwick, director and program director of the Lerner Center, in the University’s Archbold Gym fitness center, where Healthy Mondays and other pilot programs are under way.
Sid Lerner is fed up with what he calls “suicide eating,” the gluttonous diets that lead to obesity, diabetes, and so many other health problems in the United States. Lerner points to statistics that predict one in three children will develop diabetes in their lifetime, while other data ties poor diets to heart disease and high blood pressure.
"Look how great it would be to prevent the whole darn thing with a regimen of saner eating,” said Lerner, a 1953 Syracuse University alumnus (English and advertising). “I think prevention is the only way out of the health crisis.”
Lerner is not a doctor, but he has nonetheless charged himself with the task of preventing chronic disease and improving public health. After a bout with high cholesterol in the early 2000s, Lerner, a marketing guru who helped create the “Please Don’t Squeeze the Charmin” ad campaign, learned that the typical American consumes 15 percent more meat than recommended by the FDA and USDA. The discovery spurred Lerner to create, in 2003, the Healthy Mondays campaign, which promotes Monday as the day to establish healthy habits for the rest of the week. The Healthy Mondays campaign has spread across the United States and taken root in more than 20 countries.
Now, Lerner wants to expand his vision of a healthy society by using research and science to guide public health policy and community health initiatives. Lerner and his wife Helaine turned to the Maxwell School, creating and funding the Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion. In its inaugural year, it is directed by Tom Dennison, a professor of practice in public administration and international affairs who teaches and oversees Maxwell’s programs in health policy and management. He serves as advisor for the School’s certificate program in health services management and policy and is associate director of the Central New York Master of Public Health (MPH) program, a graduate degree program conducted with SUNY Upstate Medical University.
“I think prevention is the only way out of the health crisis.”
— Sid Lerner, center founder and benefactor Founded and funded by the Lerners, the new center will support research and academics in the field of public health. It will also reach out to the Central New York community to learn what types of public health programs can be supported and implemented in the region.
“The health promotion initiatives the Lerner Center is advancing are a part of a much larger national movement to begin to address the issues of chronic diseases,” says Dennison.
With the center, Lerner is also funding a new, full-time faculty position, the Lerner Chair for Public Health Promotion. The chairholder is expected to join the center next academic year, and will share responsibilities with Dennison. The two will work with junior faculty and graduate students on public health research and oversee the combination of research, academics, and outreach meant to address public health on campus and in the community.
Lerner chose Maxwell as the home for the center largely because of the School’s reputation as a top public policy institution, where theory and research translate into action. To help implement theory-informed community engagement at the Lerner Center, Dennison and the incoming chairholder are joined by Program Director Rebecca Bostwick (former deputy director for SU’s Center for Health and Behavior) and four graduate assistants, helping with the center’s work on public health. Students have already bought into the goal of uniting academics with action.
“Right now, medicine is more focused on curative measures, and preventive health and healthcare are taking a backseat to that,” says Matt MacDougall, an MPH student and one of the inaugural Lerner Fellows. “That’s really the goal of public health: to prevent disease.”
Before diving into preventive policy and action, however, the Lerner Center is working to identify the public health needs to which it should ultimately commit its resources. Dennison and his staff are assessing what the community wants and needs. This fall they hosted five community forums to generate ideas for improving public health in Onondaga County. By targeting business executives, nonprofit and healthcare leaders, parents, teens, teachers, and other members of the community, the Lerner Center hopes to let feedback guide upcoming work.
Meanwhile, pilot initiatives are under way on campus, where the Lerner Center has expanded the existing Healthy Mondays campaign by providing free fruit and classes at fitness facilities. Programs such as this will lead toward the center’s larger focus: improving health across Onondaga County.
While the community forums will foster ideas for public health projects, several efforts are already in progress. The Lerner Center has funded depression screenings for Syracuse University’s Faculty and Staff Assistance Program, educated local refugees about nutrition, and spoken with area restaurants about offering Meatless Monday menus.
As the Lerner Center’s research efforts grow, the center will continue to draw on its founder’s background, using creative marketing to spread the science behind healthy living. In Sid Lerner’s larger vision, research is a baseline.
“[Research] doesn’t always have a counterpart in promotion and education,” Lerner says. “It would be great if we could get more of that happening.”
— Greg Duggan