Meet Magda Peck

    Magda Peck, Sc.D., is the founding dean of the Joseph J. Zilber School of Public Health at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

   Prior to coming to Milwaukee in March 2012, Peck was the associate dean at the College of Public Health at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and an active member of Congregation Israel in Omaha. She and her husband, Dr. James Anderson, are the parents of two sons, David, 22, and Sam, 24.

   Recently, she met with freelance writer Amy Waldman. Selected and edited excerpts of that conversation follow.

   How did your family’s observance of Judaism growing up inform your adult choices regarding Jewish involvement?

   I grew up in suburban Philadelphia. My parents were secular Jews, very socially conscious but not observant. [After moving to Omaha in 1989,] I discovered that smaller Jewish communities require of us a clarity about who we are and how we engage with the world.

   We wanted to raise our kids Jewishly, and so we became affiliated. I never would have done that if we’d lived in the east. I got involved in the social justice committee, chaired the social action committee, became a member of the [Reform movement’s national] Commission on Social Action and the Religious Action Center, and moved into the role of chair of the Task Force on Economic Justice for Women, Children and Families — and that never would have happened if I hadn’t moved to Omaha.

   Have you joined a synagogue in Milwaukee?

   I decided I would take an opportunity over my first year and visit [area synagogues]. And then I will affiliate, but I haven’t decided yet.

   Talk a bit about the path that led you from high school to where you are now.

   I’ve been somewhat unconventional and pioneering in a persistent pattern. I challenged my high school to let me graduate after 11th grade, and went to Chile for a year because I wanted to be bilingual. I [then] went to New College in Sarasota, Fla., and had some opportunities to take time off, and that took me to San Francisco and Mexico.

   I became one of the first physician assistants in the country. I wanted to be in health and health care, but not in medical school, and I found this new profession that would allow me to practice primary care medicine in underserved communities. That led me to the National Health Service Corps, so I had a chance to serve in rural California, and then to Brownsville, Texas, which let me serve migrant communities and led me to be further trained. After primary care, I went to Hartford, Conn., and worked in a neonatal intensive care unit, which led to my passion for women’s health care.

   I discovered public health in my mid-20s and decided that I would apply to only one school of public health. It would make up for my having meandered as an undergraduate.

   A week after the rejection letter arrived [from Harvard University], I got a call from Dr. Isabelle Valadian, one of the few tenured women professors at Harvard and legendary in maternal and child health. She said I had a very interesting background, she agreed to admit me as a special student, and, if I proved myself, I could stay in the program.

   After graduation, I worked in Boston on maternal and child health. While there, because there was no way to find out directly what really works in terms of public health practice and policies, I wondered what other cities were doing, and I started a national project that became an organization.

   CityMatCH is a network dedicated to improving the health and well being of urban women and children by strengthening the public health organizations and leaders in their communities. It took 15 years to grow it up and have it become part of the practice landscape for public health in this country, and by then, my husband (whom I met at Harvard) was recruited to Nebraska to start a Department of Preventative Medicine, so I grew CityMatCH as a professor.

   Nebraska is a place that appreciates pioneers, as long as you have a great idea and a way to see it through. In 2000, I founded a Masters of Public Health degree program and then started the School of Public Health there.

   When I got the call that Milwaukee was interested in the possibility of my becoming the founding dean, I initially didn’t take it very seriously. But then I looked at it a little more. There are 50 schools of public health in this country and you don’t often get a chance to be a founding dean.

   So what attracted you to the job?

   We get to address, from a non-medical perspective, the determinants of health, the issues of equity and fairness, who lives and who dies.

   I can’t think of a better city to be in than Milwaukee. It’s a sentinel city, because the challenges here are as great and complex as any American city, but it is of a size that makes it manageable to make things happen. New York is too big. Omaha is too small.

   In Milwaukee, between 10,000 and 11,000 babies are born each year, and 100 don’t live to their first year. We can do something about 100 babies.

   How do you keep healthy?

   I’m trying to live an intentionally healthy life. I’m an avid bicycler, I walk and walk and walk, and at least once a week I do a structured workout for strength training. I eat as well as I can to bring fitness and wellness into our school.

   As a public health professional, if you had the ability to wave a wand and make one global change, what would it be?

   I would create the conditions for every woman, at the moment she conceives, to be at her healthiest. For the last 10 years, I have been working on a national initiative around pre-conception health care and on preventative care services for women, particularly before and between pregnancies.

   So if I could wave a wand and make one change, it would be that every woman in every community entered pregnancy ready, willing and able to partner well and parent well. That is our window of opportunity.

   So often we focus on when the baby is born, on infant mortality. I’ve learned that things to prevent a baby from being born too small too soon – which is the number one driver of who lives until their first birthday – have to be done sooner. It’s another way of talking about preparedness. We prepare for hurricanes and we prepare to go to college, but we have not yet figured out how we can focus on helping a woman prepare [for that moment].

   Is there one simple change every person could make to impact the health of Earth and its creatures?

   Do something. We get so bungled and overwhelmed by having to do everything that we don’t do anything. So whatever something you decide to do first is dayenu, and it’s a great step.

   Set one goal and fulfill it. Make a conscious choice to change your behavior and stick with it for six weeks, and then do the second thing and the third thing. Take it a day at a time and get it done. Give yourself credit for every step and intention.

   And don’t ever do it alone. You need structure, company and accountability. Whether it’s going to a class or writing it down, you need structure. The second is company. We’re tribal. We’ll do better if we do our change with other people. Doing it alone makes it less likely to stick. The last is accountability. Make a wager for coffee with one of your friends, or keep a diary.

   Amy Waldman is a Milwaukee-based freelance writer and coordinator of the ACCESS Program for Displaced Homemakers at Milwaukee Area Technical College.