New book offers management lessons to public health professionals

Pictured (l-r) are co-authors Anne Menkens, PhD; Ed Baker, MD; and Janet Porter, PhD.

Drs. Ed Baker, Anne Menkens and Janet Porter debuted their new collaboration, Managing the Public Health Enterprise, with a book-signing event on May 19 at the Paul J. Rizzo Conference Center at Meadowmont, in Chapel Hill, N.C.

Baker, director of the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health’s North Carolina Institute for Public Health; Menkens, the Institute’s program director for executive education; and Porter, former UNC Gillings School of Public Health faculty member and now executive vice president and chief operating officer of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, in Boston, wrote most of the chapters.

Other authors include public health, health care, business, and fundraising professionals and educators from UNC-Chapel Hill and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Managing the Public Health Enterprise describes how to maximize team performance, develop effective partnerships, create and sustain successful public health initiatives using business skills, and how to run meetings and manage electronic correspondence.

Much of the book first appeared as columns in the popular “Management Moment” series in the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice.

“The ‘Management Moment’ column has been immensely popular with our readers from across the spectrum of public health practice,” said Journal editor Lloyd F. Novick, MD, director of East Carolina University’s Department of Public Health in the Brody School of Medicine. “Having a book with the columns organized around commonly encountered themes makes this a highly useful reference for public health professionals interested in demonstrating leadership and improving management within their organizations.”

Practicality is the authors’ goal. Baker says, “This is a practical guide. We want new managers to use it as a resource when a problem arises–‘I wonder what Managing the Public Health Enterprise says about this?'”
For the experienced manager, the book is designed as a refresher for managing people, partnerships, communication, and business.

“Today’s public health manager must keep both big picture and the details in mind to envision new projects and run longstanding ones,” notes William Roper, MD, chief executive officer of UNC Healthcare Systems, dean of the UNC School of Medicine and vice chancellor for medical affairs, in the book’s foreword.

“While looking out for the next SARS or avian flu outbreak, the next hurricane, or terrorist attack, while testing well water and immunizing babies, the public health manager must balance budgets, hire personnel, run meetings, communicate with staff and partners, learn to use new technology, and find funding, all within the context of turbulent economic times, new and re-emerging health and safety threats, and a growing burden of chronic disease,” Roper says. “Managing the Public Health Enterprise contains concrete advice for these management challenges.”

Managing the Public Health Enterprise may be ordered through the Jones and Bartlett Publishers website at www.jbpub.com or by phone at (800) 832-0034.

UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health contact: Ramona DuBose, director of communications, (919) 966-7467 or ramona_dubose@unc.edu.