Dr. Kathleen Brady is no stranger to the classroom. But she is a stranger to the class she’s teaching today.
Brady, University of South Carolina Upstate’s vice chancellor for community-based research, engagement and planning, and director of Metropolitan Studies Institute, is a one-day guest-lecturer for a master’s level health-administration course at Georgetown University.
Brady was invited by Dr. Gregg Downing, a physician and Director of Health Innovation for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, who also teaches the health-administration course. Brady said she was invited because of her role with Spartanburg’s Way to Wellville, one of only five prototype programs nationwide that aim to develop new and innovative solutions to improve overall community health.
Brady said Downing was familiar with her because of her work with the data that was used to help create the local Way to Wellville program.
“They remembered my name as the data person for the Wellville initiative, and Gregg was very interested in data-informed interventions – communities that actually use data to shape and guide all of their population-health interventions,” she said prior to leaving for Washington, D.C. “So he contacted the guy in student medicine and said ‘Spartanburg is the community in the United States that does this.’ So he just reached out.”
Along with Brady, Alexander Billioux, a White House Fellow at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, will be presenting to the class of 36 “mid-career” students.
“These guys – Gregg Downing and Alex Billioux – are rock stars in the field,” Brady said. “These are guys whose papers I read. They’re highly innovative; Gregg was the founder of Health Datapalooza – that’s like my Mecca. I feel very honored to be in the same room with these guys. And they want me to talk about little old Spartanburg. It’s kind of cool.”
Brady said she will discuss how data was used and continues to be used to drive the innovative community-health solutions that are at the core of the Way to Wellville program. She said she expected her trip to be only one day long.
(Prepared by USC Upstate.)