Holden Thorp, provost at Washington University in St. Louis, will leave his position effective July 15, according to Chancellor Andrew D. Martin. Thorp, who has served in his current role since 2013, plans to take a one-year sabbatical and then return to the university in a newly created leadership role in the drug discovery and innovation space, with details to be shared at a future date.
“We owe a significant debt of gratitude to Holden Thorp for lending his considerable talents to Washington University during his six years as provost,” Martin said. “Thanks in large part to his outstanding leadership, we are poised to take the university into its next era of excellence in research, scholarship, teaching and learning. We have benefited greatly from his expertise, particularly in the transformation of our student body and faculty into a more diverse, innovative and academically gifted community. On a personal level, I am grateful to Holden for his support and friendship during the transition as I assume the role of chancellor. He is a trusted adviser and colleague, and I look forward to continuing our work together when he returns to the university to pursue his future endeavors.”
“These six years as Washington University provost will always be a highlight of my career,” Thorp said. “Our students, faculty and staff are among the very best in higher education. Working with Mark Wrighton and our remarkable team has been a joy every day. Leading the extraordinary Washington University faculty into the Quad at Commencement has been a highlight every year, and I look forward to joining my faculty colleagues when I return to the university. Chancellor Martin has bold ideas for the future of the university, and I look forward to being part of our continued ascent.”
Appointed provost and executive vice chancellor for academic affairs at Washington University on July 1, 2013, Thorp also is the Rita Levi-Montalcini Distinguished University Professor and holds faculty appointments in both chemistry and medicine.
During his tenure, Thorp has led the university’s academic enterprise through a period of tremendous growth in several key areas. Among his chief priorities has been increasing socioeconomic diversity within the Washington University student body, a cause he championed vigorously with significant results. As one indicator, the percentage of Pell grant-eligible students in the entering first-year class increased from 6% in 2013-14 to 14% in the 2018-19 academic year.
He also has been a driving force in changes to the undergraduate admissions process, which has led to incoming classes becoming not only stronger academically during each of his years as provost, but also more racially diverse. In addition, the university has seen a significant increase in the percentage of yield – students who choose Washington University over other schools to which they have been accepted. Thorp also has been instrumental in bringing about the university’s rise in prominence as an institution that drives innovation and entrepreneurship, particularly in the St. Louis region.
“During his years here, Holden has created quite a legacy, not only for himself, but for the university under his leadership of the academic enterprise,” said Mark S. Wrighton, who concluded his term as Washington University’s chancellor on May 31 after serving in the role for 24 years, and during whose tenure Thorp joined the university. “He is a brilliant scientist and entrepreneur, a talented teacher and a skilled administrator, and we are indebted to him for his significant contributions not only to our faculty and students, but also to the character of our institution. I thank him for all he has done for Washington University, and for me personally, and I wish him all the success in the world as he embarks on this next chapter of his remarkable career.”
Thorp joined the university after spending three decades at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), where he served as the 10th chancellor from 2008 through 2013. A North Carolina native, he started at UNC as an undergraduate student and earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry with highest honors in 1986. He earned a doctorate in chemistry in 1989 at the California Institute of Technology and completed postdoctoral work at Yale University. He holds an honorary doctor of laws degree from North Carolina Wesleyan College and is a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.
“It has been Washington University’s good fortune to have Holden Thorp as our provost,” said Barbara A. Schaal, dean of the faculty of Arts & Sciences and the Mary-Dell Chilton Distinguished Professor of Biology. “He has led us to think differently about our mission as scholars and educators. With the benefit of his vision, experience and guidance, we have made great strides in our ability to recruit, retain and support the best and brightest students and faculty from diverse backgrounds. It has truly been a pleasure to serve the academy in partnership with Holden – especially given our shared love of the sciences – and Washington University is a better place for having him here as provost.”
“Washington University is well known for providing an exceptional student experience and, under Holden’s leadership, we have strengthened it even further,” said Lori S. White, vice chancellor for student affairs. “We have maintained laser focus over the last six years on diversity and inclusion, increasing access and support for students from underresourced and first-generation backgrounds, campus resources and, of course, academic excellence. One of Holden’s great strengths is his accessibility to students to hear and respond to their concerns. We are a stronger and more diverse community today because of him, and I want to express my deep gratitude to him, both as a leader and a friend.”
In his research career, Thorp developed technology for electronic DNA chips and co-founded Viamet Pharmaceuticals. Viamet developed oteseconazole, which is now in Phase 3 clinical trials for fungal disease. An active and engaged leader in the St. Louis community, he currently serves as a member of the boards of the College Advising Corps, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Barnes-Jewish Hospital.
Two Brown School researchers contributed their scholarship and expertise to the recently published Lancet Series on Gender Equality, Norms, and Health — a collection of six papers that provides new analysis and insights into the impact of gender inequalities and norms on health, and the opportunities that exist within health systems, programs, policies, and research to decrease inequalities and transform restrictive norms.
The series calls the global health community to action, stressing the critical need to recognize and take effective actions to address gender inequalities and restrictive gender norms, and their intersections with other social disparities, in order to improve health for all.
Jessica Levy, associate professor of practice, co-authored the study, “Improving Health with Programmatic, Legal, and Policy Approaches to Reduce Gender Inequality and Change Restrictive Gender Norms,” which investigates three key ways of reducing gender disparities: gender transformative health programming (which are programs that actively seek to transform norms and improve health); large-scale laws and policies; and actions related to governance. The authors found that high-quality gender-transformative programs that impacted multiple health outcomes and were sustainable and scalable:
- Involved multiple stakeholders across multiple levels
- Used multisectoral action, recognizing the importance of reaching beyond the health sector
- Employed diversified programming, strategically combining activities that reinforce one another and address issues from multiple perspectives
- Fostered critical awareness and participation among affected community members, encouraging participants to become active agents in shaping their own health
Furthermore, through examination of data and outcomes from nearly 100 countries, the authors found that policy approaches such as tuition-free primary education and paid parental leave both transform norms and improve community health. When these programs successfully promote gender equality, they are seen to extend average life expectancy by approximately two years for women and one year for men.
“Increasing gender equality in political representation by, for example, having more women and gender minorities at the table and giving them voice, makes all of this possible,” Levy said.
Lindsay Stark, associate professor, co-authored another article in the Series: “Gender Norms and Health: Insights from Global Survey Data.” The case study she co-led compared Nigerian communities where working outside of the home was, and was not, a norm for women. They found that women who defied communal norms by working outside of the home faced higher rates of intimate partner violence than did women workers in less restrictive communities, which highlights that those who transgress social gendered norms may face serious health repercussions.
“This finding has important implications for processes of empowerment,” Stark said. “Acknowledging the complexity of the relationships between individual behavior and social norms, and understanding how discordance between the two might give rise to unintended negative outcomes for women and girls, is critical for developing truly gender-equitable policies and programs.”
Overall, the six case studies in the Series demonstrate that gender norms are complex, and can have multiple differing and context-specific health consequences for people over the course of their lives. Gender nonconformity or transgression is particularly harmful to health when it triggers negative sanctions. These truths mean that effective gender-transformative policies must be designed with cultural sensitivity.
Nebraska’s legislature today unanimously approved a universal Child Development Account (CDA) policy that will cover every resident born in the state on or after January 1, 2020.
Championed by Nebraska Treasurer John Murante and a bipartisan coalition of senators, the policy features automatic, universal enrollment in the new Meadowlark Program, which will provide a Nebraska 529 college savings account with a deposit for all newborn Cornhuskers.
Approximately 26,600 Nebraskans are born each year, and the deposits for these infants will grow until they later access the funds for college, trade school, or other postsecondary education in Nebraska. If not spent before the recipient turns 30, earmarked Meadowlark assets will be used for future Nebraska children.
Funded equally through private contributions and state sources (not general fund dollars), Meadowlark is designed to broaden access to postsecondary education. “State legislators are creating a structure and paving the way for all Nebraska children to succeed, perhaps particularly those from disadvantaged families,” said Margaret Clancy, policy director for the Center for Social Development (CSD) at Washington University’s Brown School. Clancy advised Treasurer Murante on desirable CDA policy features, provided research results from the SEED for Oklahoma Kids CDA experiment, and testified on the Meadowlark provisions.
The approved legislation, which Gov. Pete Ricketts is expected to sign, includes several other noteworthy provisions for Nebraska’s 529 plan. The Employer Matching Contribution Incentive Program offers incentives for matching workers’ contributions, and the Low-Income Matching Scholarship Program allows families with income below 200% of the federal poverty level to apply for $2 for every $1 contributed. Families making between 200% and 250% of the poverty level could receive a dollar-for-dollar match.
Provisions of a pending bill would shield Nebraska 529 assets from state determinations of student aid eligibility. This bill also would protect employers’ 529 plan-matching contributions from state decisions about eligibility for need-based state benefits.
In comments to the Unicameral Update, Sen. Lou Ann Linehan, sponsor of the Meadowlark provisions, said, “529 accounts are in wide use among the wealthy but not among low-income Nebraskans.”
Linehan sees Meadowlark as a way to “give more Nebraska children hope for their future.”
“Nebraska’s legislation provides enormous potential to engage corporations, nonprofits, educators, communities, and state resident families in building assets for children’s education,” Clancy said. Nebraska is one of several states that she and others at CSD have advised on CDA policy. Statewide CDAs have been implemented in Pennsylvania, Maine, Nevada, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, and legislation is pending in several other states, including Illinois and California.
A provision of the Affordable Care Act has increased health insurance coverage in young-adult cancer patients, but its effects on cancer diagnosis and survival are less clear, according to new research from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.
Cancer is diagnosed in 21,000 adults aged 20-29 each year in the U.S., with more than 2,300 deaths annually. Young adult cancer survival improvement has lagged behind other age groups in recent decades, which may be due in part to a lower percentage of young adults with insurance coverage.
Researchers studied data from 129,000 cancer patients aged 19-25 years from 2010 to 2014. The information was gathered from two national databases and covered a period after September 23, 2010, the effective date of a provision of the Affordable Care Act that required insurers to maintain coverage for dependents until age 26.
The results provided strong evidence that the provision had increased insurance coverage in patients aged 19-25 at diagnosis or initial treatment. Less apparent were improvements in diagnosis and survivorship, with the strongest evidence for a positive impact on patients with colorectal cancer.
“Further research should continue to monitor the impact of insurance coverage on cancer stage diagnosis and survival in young adults with cancer,” wrote the study’s senior author, Dr. Kimberly Johnson, associate professor at the Brown School.
The study was published in the May issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
A transdisciplinary laboratory at the Brown School is undertaking research across the world to address “hidden hunger”— poverty-related nutritional deficiencies in mothers and young children.
The founder and director of the E3 Nutrition Lab is Lora Iannotti, associate professor and associate dean for public health. The three “E”s represent the lab’s principles for nutrition interventions: environmentally sustainable, economically affordable, and evolutionarily appropriate.
“Our group comprises faculty, staff, and students from across campus and even across the globe working together to prevent malnutrition from different disciplinary perspectives,” Iannotti said. The lab includes faculty from Washington University’s schools of Medicine, Arts & Sciences, and McKelvey School of Engineering, as well as doctoral and master’s students in both public health and social work.
“We involve these disciplines to better understand and work to solve biological and societal determinants of nutrition and health,” she said.
A good example of the transdisciplinary focus is the lab’s main current project, a three-year nutrition intervention in Ecuador funded by the Children’s Discovery Institute, a collaboration between the Brown School, the Washington University School of Medicine, and Universidad San Franscisco de Quito in Ecuador. The teams include faculty from pediatric radiology, neurology, engineering, and the metabolomics facility at the School of Medicine.
Researchers will be studying fetal growth and brain development during pregnancy. During the intervention, 100 pregnant women will be given a diet based on the evolutionary past as well as those identified to be environmentally sustainable and affordable in Ecuador (e.g., fish, eggs, potatoes, berries and nuts). Importantly, the women will also be encouraged to avoid ultra-processed food like cookies, crackers or soda. Researchers will measure brain development of the fetus during pregnancy, along with nutrient biomarkers from the mothers’ blood samples. At birth, the newborns will be measured and weighed and ultrasound images will be taken of different brain regions. The results will be compared to another 100 women in the control group.
Stunted growth in children is important because it can precipitate infectious disease and even death in the short term; in the long term, it has developmental consequences that can affect generations.
Jennifer Nicholas, MD, a pediatric radiologist and assistant professor at the School of Medicine, is looking at new ways to measure fetal brain development and leading the effort to train staff in Ecuador to acquire the images that will measure the intervention’s results.
“We’re trying to take a deeper dive into brain structure and development,” she said. “This project has allowed me to bring my skillset to the table and provide potential new biomarkers for the work that Lora does.”
“Our project demonstrates the power of collaboration,” she said. “It’s been inspiring for me.”
The lab launched in January 2018 with the arrival of Melissa Chapnick, the lab manager, and the emergence of more nutrition-related projects. “I followed Lora’s work for several years before having the opportunity to work with her,” said Chapnick, a dietitian working in nutrition and public health. Chapnick became involved in Iannotti’s Lulun Project in Ecuador through the Summer Research Program at the Institute for Public Health.
“I’ve become more mindful of solutions that are appropriate globally, and the importance of contextual differences across our research sites,” Chapnick said. For example, while animal-source foods like eggs, fish, and milk are frequently consumed in the U.S., that’s not the case in other parts of the world. “These foods are good sources of several micronutrients that are very important for young children, and they are renewable, making them more environmentally sustainable,” she said. “A question that is central to our research is how to feed people in a way that does not cause harm to the environment.”
Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Fish
The lab recently received two grants from the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Fish, which supports sustainable and resilient aquaculture and fisheries systems to enhance food safety and nutrition, improve fish production and increase trade to improve nutrition and bolster small-scale producers in developing countries. Funded by the Unites States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Fish Innovation Lab is led by Mississippi State University and several partner institutions, including Washington University. Iannotti is part of the management team and serves as the nutrition director for the lab.
The first project is in Kenya, involving inventory and market analysis of coastal marine fish for food. Researchers will interview fishers, market women, and households in and near fishing villages, asking about things like how often they eat fish, what kinds, and whether they feed it to children. At the same time, they’ll be working with a fisheries ecologist.
“What we’re trying to do is link environmental practices of fisheries and the ecosystem functioning and how that relates to food security,” Iannotti said. The one-year project will inform a larger study and help provide policy and program recommendations in a collaboration between environmentalists and food nutrition and safety.
Austin Humphries, an assistant professor at the University of Rhode Island, is a fisheries ecologist on the research team. “My role is thinking about the fish that are being caught, sold and consumed and the effects that has on the health of the ecosystem,” he said. Parrotfish, for example, eat seaweed that can harm coral reefs. He’ll be looking at the extent to which those fish are being caught and consumed to explore the linkage of people’s health with fisheries and resource management.
“This is my first time working with nutritionists,” he said. “I’ve worked a lot in fisheries, but we usually stop our studies when the fish hit the household. Now, we’re taking it one step further, to explore the linkage of people’s health with resource management. It’s why I’m working with the E3 Lab.”
A second grant from the Fish Innovation Lab will fund a project in Nigeria, where Joe Steensma, professor of practice at the Brown School, will be studying fish farming.
“We’re trying to understand where value is added and where value is lost after a fish is harvested,” Steensma said. The value they’ll be looking at is nutrition, economic development and sustainability of the aquaculture industry that is relatively new to Nigeria, a nation with both nutrition and economic problems.
The project will be conducted alongside a WorldFish project, supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Together, the projects will assess markets, households and consumption in 10 states of Nigeria. The goal is to improve the capacity of the fisheries to feed people in a sustainable way.
Next, the team will work on interventions to reduce post-harvest loss and help increase production to an exportable scale. “If we can help them become more efficient, the aquaculture sector can not only provide fish for people in Nigeria, but grow to become an exporter of fish to other parts of the world, improving Nigeria’s overall economy to increase wealth and economic activity,” Steensma said. “It’s a real opportunity to promote economic development in a sustainable way.”
On May 16, 2019, more than 300 Brown School graduates—focused on impact in social work, public health and social policy—were honored at the School’s recognition ceremony.
The graduates and their guests were addressed by three speakers, national radio personality and civil rights activist, Joe Madison; MPH candidate, Aishwarya Nagar; and Missouri State Representative and MPH alumna, Cora Faith Walker.
Joe Madison hosts a weekday morning radio program on Sirius XM’s Urban View, and is an alumnus of Washington University. In his remarks, he acknowledged the 400th anniversary of Black people arriving on the shores of the United States. Graduates were given buttons to honor this anniversary and the university’s trilogy of “400 Years Plus” reflective events that continue through November.
He also told graduates that they must always remember those who have gone before them.
“May they always inspire you with their vision and their valor, may their lives continuously remind each and every one of you that service is more important that success, that people are more important than possessions, and most important of all, that principle is more important than power.”
Graduate Aishwarya Nagar was selected to address her peers due to her sense of community and powerful commitment to her public health scholarship. The theme of her speech, “Four Reasons Why the Brown School is Worth It,” reflected her time as an Office of Admissions Student Ambassador, and the questions she would field from unsure prospective students.
Aishwarya told the crowd that the Brown School had allowed her to bring her whole self to the table, to learn and think outside the box, to understand what advocacy looks like, and had provided transformative mentors and friendships.
“If you had told me that I would leave the Brown School with amazing mentors … I would not have believed you,” said Aishwarya, referencing faculty members Lora Iannotti and Jessica Levy, and Assistant Dean of Academic Affairs Danielle Bristow.
“It has been an honor to have friends here to fight for you and help you see your own worth when you don’t see it yourself.”
The remarks of Missouri State Representative Cora Faith Walker, a member of the first MPH cohort speaking at the ceremony, were particularly poignant as the MPH program celebrated its 10th anniversary this year and saw its 500th graduate walk across the stage.
She gave graduates some advice for tackling the world’s challenges: Be bold. Be fearless. Be you.
She spoke about one of her idols, the first Black congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, who said: “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring in a folding chair.”
But Walker went a step further, telling grads “many of those challenges that you are trying to tackle don’t just require you to just bring in a folding chair, they require you to dismantle the table entirely.”
The event’s closing speaker, Neidorff Family and Centene Corporation Dean Mary M. McKay, referenced her own status as a first generation college student, and acknowledged that many students might have at one point asked themselves: “What have I done? Do I belong here? What difference can I make?”
She told the graduates:
“I want to express my complete confidence in you. You have every strength, skill and tool needed to sort out how to make this world a better place by bringing who you are, what you know, and guided by the values of justice you can repair and advance us.”
“You are going to muster the courage to do the daily work — to try to do what’s right, to strive to make decisions, to advance equity, to listen to those who powerfully dissent, to be open to learning, growing, making small and large mistakes to get to where you, and this world, need to be.”
View the Brown School Recognition Ceremony here.
View the album of Commencement images via Facebook.