Kristine Gebbie
Kristine Gebbie, DrPH, RN, died on May 17th in Adelaide, Australia. She was as an exceptional public health advocate, leader, and policy expert. Most important was her support and constant encouragement of her colleagues in the work that we do. She and I both joined the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) at the same time in 1978 when she was SHO for Oregon and then later for Washington State. As president of ASTHO, she was a forceful leader and pioneered AIDS activities with CDC. Dr. Gebbie, a nurse, was recruited by President Bill Clinton in June 1993 as the first AIDS Policy Coordinator to fulfill his campaign promise that he would make this disease a public health priority. When JPHMP was founded in 1995, she was on our inaugural editorial board contributing articles and serving as a tireless reviewer. After her governmental work, she made important contributions to public health systems research, workforce analysis, and preparedness at Columbia University. She produced the Enumeration2000, and a suite of emergency preparedness competencies and associated trainings. With Jackie Merrill, she trained New York City Public Health nurses in the emergency response including running of shelters just three weeks before 9/11. She ran the Columbia University Center for Health Policy and was very active in the first CDC-funded Center for Public Health Preparedness at the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health. While at Columbia, she was involved in research and advocacy in support of the public health workforce including documenting and comparing legal authority, advising the Department of Labor and Bureau of Labor Statistics on occupational codes, and certification for PH workers and organizations. Public health was a family business for Kristine Gebbie. She met her husband Les Wright, who sadly passed away in April, when he was a State Health Official. Les was also a longstanding member of our editorial board. Her son, Eric Gebbie, DrPH worked with her in New York in public health preparedness and now directs that effort for Oregon.
F. Douglas Scutchfield, MD
F. Douglas Scutchfield, MD, known to most as "Scutch," passed away on May 22, 2022, at age 80. He was a first-generation leader of public health systems and services research. His accomplishments in this field set the path for many that followed benefiting from his mentorship and wisdom. Over the years, we were pleased to publish a number of his articles in the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice. These articles were followed by many submissions from the second generation of public health systems and services researchers that he had influenced. He was one of the founders of the College of Community Health Science at the University of Alabama and also founded the Graduate School of Public Health at San Diego State University. He returned to the University of Kentucky as the inaugural Peter P. Bosomworth Professor of Health Services Research and Founding Director of the School of Public Health. He served for many years as Associate Editor for the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. He had been a president of the Association of Prevention Teaching and Research (APTR). I was honored to present him with the APTR Duncan Clark Award in 2007.
Lloyd F. Novick, MD, MPH
Editor, Journal of Public Health Management and Practice