New Leaders, Shared Mission: Alumni Event Spotlights Columbia Mailman–NYC Health Department Partnership

New York City Health Commissioner Alister Martin and Columbia Mailman School Dean Jonathan Mermin each began their leadership roles earlier this year. Almost immediately, they connected, extending a long tradition of partnership between the School and the City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

Their conversation continued at a recent event organized by the School’s Alumni Board and moderated by Perri Peltz, DrPH, ’23, MPH ’84, a broadcast journalist and award-winning documentary filmmaker who also serves on the School’s Board of Advisors. Alumni Board Chair Dorcas Adedoja, MPH ‘20, introduced the distinguished trio to an audience of alumni and friends gathered at the Italian Academy on Columbia’s Morningside Campus.

Discussion ranged from the two leaders’ shared sense of purpose in the face of challenges, new ways to practice and communicate about public health, and what makes New York City so special. Dean Mermin and Commissioner Martin both called for new collaborations and career opportunities for alumni and students.

Peltz herself benefited from an internship at the Department of Health while she earned her Columbia Mailman MPH. In fact, she credits the experience with her start in journalism. “There was a television program in California, and they wanted my boss to be on the program. He got sick, and they sent me. I went on this program in San Francisco, and it was this ‘aha moment.’ All of a sudden, I thought, you can communicate public health, not just in writing about it academically,” she recalled. A few years later, Peltz was working as an anchor for NBC News.

Resolute in the Face of Crisis

Dean Mermin, a physician and infectious disease specialist who served for nearly 30 years at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said he learned early on that he is drawn to crisis situations. Shortly after he joined the CDC in the 1990s, he faced an unprecedented outbreak of E.coli O157:H7 responsible for illnesses in two states. A rigorous investigation traced the outbreak to a small farm in California where lettuce had been contaminated by cow feces. “What struck me was how useful epidemiologic science can be to understand the world around us and then be used to make the world a better place,” he said.

Since then, he hasn’t shied away from challenging situations, whether investigating a multi-drug resistant typhoid fever epidemic in Tajikistan during that country’s civil war,  working in Sierra Leone during an Ebola outbreak, or leading CDC’s HIV response in the U.S. Acknowledging that Columbia Mailman has been challenged by changes in federal research funding, the Dean said he is buoyed by the fact that everybody at Columbia Mailman “wants to do well and wants the School to grow in a way that’s effective.”

Commissioner Martin, an emergency room physician and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School who previously served as senior advisor in the office of Vice President Kamala Harris, opened up about feeling dispirited after the 2024 election. A year later, the election of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani inspired him to “get back in the ring and to help get this country back on track.”

Rebuilding Trust in Public Health

Even as public health professionals prevent illness at scale, their work often goes unnoticed. Case in point: the Commissioner observed that when New Yorkers think of the Health Department, they often think only of signs posted in restaurants indicating adherence to sanitary practices. Of course, those signs are just a small fraction of the Department's work. “When something is invisible, it’s taken for granted,” he said. One potential solution: placing a greater emphasis on interventions such as food and housing. “We have to be more directly involved in people’s lives,” he said.

In recent years, this situation has compounded as misinformation about vaccine safety and other public health concerns has proliferated on social media. So far, little scientific work has been done to identify avenues to combat the problem. “We can address this,” Dean Mermin asserted, adding a call for collaboration on the subject between researchers at Columbia Mailman and the Department of Health. “This is one area where we need to come together and learn together,” he said.

Stronger Together

Ties between Columbia Mailman and the New York City Department of Health stretch back to the early 20th Century. The School’s founding dean, Haven Emerson, was the first of 10 faculty and alumni to serve as New York City Commissioner of Health, and scores of alumni have served in other key roles. Today, James Colgrove, ’04 PhD, ’01 MPH, professor and interim chair of sociomedical sciences, and Sami Jarrah, vice dean for finance and administration and executive director for public partnerships, are advising the New York City Board of Health, which acts as the policymaking and rule-making body for public health in the city. The School and the Department also regularly collaborate on research, such as a recent study examining the value of support services for children with disabilities.

Commissioner Martin said the Department of Health is seeking to forge new research partnerships with the School to "leverage the incredible analytic capability and precise methodologic capability" available through its scholars and scientists. He added that he is also looking to "identify ways that we can work with the incredibly exceptionally talented students of this school." And take note, job seekers: the Department of Health is recruiting talented staff. “We are hiring,” the Commissioner said.

Working in partnership with communities across the diverse metropolis gives scientists and practitioners at all levels a unique opportunity to learn from one another and achieve maximum impact, Dean Mermin observed. “Working with the city—with a part of the city whose mandate is to take care of the health of everybody—is exactly where we can [make a difference] and get the job done,” he concluded.