PresRelease

On November 5 I posted a message here asking all of our UConn staff to consider making a contribution to the Connecticut State Employees’ Charitable Campaign before the end of November. It’s important that we give back to the agencies in our towns and cities that support us, our jobs and our mission as Connecticut’s flagship public university. At a time like this, when our communities are at risk and our service agencies are stretched to their limits, we all need to step up to help our neighbors who face very challenging circumstances. This act of giving brings us together in common purpose, for a public good. Even a small contribution makes a difference, and shows that you care.

By now you should have received a campaign packet with information and a form that allows you to contribute by way of a regular deduction from your UConn paycheck. If you’ve misplaced your information or your form, you can download it from our website at http://www.csec.uconn.edu/.  If you have questions, you can contact our CSEC coordinator Stefanie Landsman or find your unit’s coordinator on our web page. Thanks to everyone in advance for making a contribution, and for making a real difference.

The Connecticut Department of Social Services has approved Pharmacy Professor Marie Smith’s proposal for the E-Prescribing Medication Info Exchange project.  The amount is $781,000 and the timeframe is Dec 2008-March 2010.  This is part of a CMS Medicaid Transformation Grant on Implementing Health Information Exchange and E-Prescribing for the Medicaid population.

Professor Smith, a UConn alum, came to our School of Pharmacy as Head of the Department of Pharmacy Practice in April 2006.  Her career has included academic appointments at Rutgers, Virginia Commonwealth, and Tennessee, a stint at Sanofi-Aventis Pharmaceuticals, and more than a decade at American Society of Health-System Pharmacists.  ASHP is the only national organization of hospital and health-system pharmacists and has a long history of improving medication use and enhancing patient safety.  Dr. Smith’s expertise is, as you might have guessed, in e-health.

I wondered if ‘e-health’ is actually a new term for computer checkups. But I found out that “e-health is an emerging field in the intersection of medical informatics, public health and business, referring to health services and information delivered or enhanced through the Internet and related technologies. In a broader sense, the term characterizes not only a technical development, but also a state-of-mind, a way of thinking, an attitude, and a commitment for networked, global thinking, to improve health care locally, regionally, and worldwide by using information and communication technology.” (G Eysenbach, “What is e-health?” J Med Internet Res 2001;3(2):e20.)

You may have seen the 1993 film, Six Degrees of Separation, that is based on the idea that any two living people are linked by at most five other individuals – hence, the six degrees of separation. I don’t know the scientific basis for this idea – assuming there really is one. In 2006 ABC’s Primetime reported on the validity of the idea with the help of Columbia’s Professor Duncan Watts, an expert in network theory.

But most of us stumble upon these coincidences surprisingly often. Like when I found out that Kevin Fahey in Student Affairs, Kathy Sanner in Student Health, Annie Noonan in the UCPEA office, and myself – are all related, at least if you trace our histories back a few degrees. It’s surprising how much we all look alike.
And a very handsome family it is, too.

Prof. McBride   Prof. Woodward

Kevin McBride, an Associate Professor of Anthropology in CLAS, is working with the State Archaeologist, the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center, and the State Historian Walter Woodward (UConn Assoc Prof of History) on identifying and preserving battlefields and historical sites related to the 1636-1638 war between the Pequot tribe and English settlers. The major battle in the war is known as the Massacre at Mystic Fort, in May/June, 1637. Professor McBride explains that the English campaign against the Pequot was the first instance of a policy of cultural genocide perpetrated upon a native people in North America. The project is funded by the National Park Service’s American Battlefield Protection Program. You can read more about it in the November 10 issue of the UConn Advance.

Here’s a woodcut print of the Mystic Massacre battle, from the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center:

And here’s a map of the Pequot War region from Charles Orr, ed. The History of The Pequot War (Cleveland, 1897) that’s in the Barnard College Library:

If I’m reading this right, present-day Storrs is northwest of Mason’s Grave (number 4 on the map). And Chuck and Augie Storrs weren’t even a gleam in anyone’s eye at the time of the Pequot War.

Someone sent me the link to a well-known youTube video of a software problem resolution at a medieval help desk. I’d not seen it before. It was a comedy sketch on Norwegian television in 2001, on the show “Øystein og jeg”. Øystein Backe is the ‘helper’ who enlightens the ‘user.’