In 1937, Everett Stonequist wrote a book which presented the marginal man concept. Marginal men are individuals who have one foot in one culture and the other foot in another culture. These individuals have a history related to these two cultures. If you picture a vend diagram with two circles with each circle representing a culture, the overlap creates a partial synthesis between these two cultures. I spent the first part of my career working in a practice setting in a state department of mental health and developmental disabilities. For the past forty years, I have worked as a professor in a school of public health. My personal experiences make a strong pitch for academics and practitioners working together. Having worked in both environments, I believe that academics and practitioners can work together in many ways of benefit to both cultures. When the two cultures come together leadership becomes important in making the partnership work.
Public health practice is about collaboration with people about important and relevant health concerns in real time and space. Space is about where we live, our neighborhoods, our communities, and our culture. When academics come out of their classrooms, they do so in order to better understand the health concerns and practices of the public. They gain this understanding through research. Faculty give back to the community through training and service. Practitioners want to serve through evidence-based practices and interventions which the academics help them to implement. In many instances, collaboration between educators and public health practitioners has led to advances in improvements in the health of the service populations. Examples include smoking cessation initiatives and improvements in the problems associated with HIV/AIDS. On the negative side, such events as academics leaving a community after a study is done has left bad feelings among practitioners. Academics have sometimes been disturbed by all the limits the community and its workers put on a research project carried out by the academic researchers. On the whole, these academic and practice partnerships have been more beneficial than harmful.
Over the last twenty years, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC) has funded a number of these academic and practice partnerships through the Prevention Centers, Preparedness research and training initiatives, the national and regional leadership development programs, the environmental educational training programs, and many others. These programs have had many successes. Over the past twenty years, these initiatives have helped build trust between many academic public health programs and the practice community. Many of these CDC programs are now in danger of being abolished due to cutbacks in federal funding Because of major deficits at the national and we could add deficits at the state level. This is a major mistake that may obliterate many of the public health successes of the past twenty years. Without continuation of these programs, collaboration will be difficult to maintain and all Americans will lose as a result. It is important for our academic leaders and our practice leaders to fight to maintain and expand these academic and practice partnerships.
Rowitz On Leadership 