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GUEST VIEW
Chancellor’s charge make UI a ‘global leader’ in health innovation CHAMPAIGN – Chancellor Robert Jones sees greater potential in the University of Illinois’ collection of health-related assets and institutions. That’s why he’s assigned a new task force to figure out how to make the UI a “national and global leader in health innovation.” “This team will propose the future role of Illinois as a pioneer in establishing a new technology-driven academic health research and education model that makes a significant, visible and sustained impact on human health,” Jones wrote in a mass email. The new Health Innovation Visioning Committee will be chaired by Stephen Boppart, a 23-year UI engineering professor. Boppart’s field concerns the intersection between engineering and medicine. He’s currently the executive association dean and chief diversity officer for the Carle Illinois College of Medicine and the director of optical molecular imaging at Beckman Institute. The UI “is really poised to be this epicenter for technology and technol-
ogy-inspired health and wellness,” Boppart said. “I think the impact this university can make by applying innovation and its prowess in technology can make a difference for humanity and the human condition, in a very broad sense.” Jones and Boppart both held up the UI’s SHIELD saliva testing program in response to the COVID-19 pandemic as a prime example of campus innovation solving a “perplexing” health problem. The hope, Jones said, is for the university to generate “many more examples like SHIELD that improve the human condition.” The committee will be relatively small – with 15 official members and six more in ex-officio roles – but the work is “meant to be comprehensive.” The committee has from July 1 of this year through Jan. 15, 2023, to create a seminal reporter for the chancellor detailing health assets and priorities. A progress presentation is expected by September, Jones wrote in the charge letter. Here were the long-term charges for the committee listed by Jones in
his announcement: • Inventory the UI’s health assets and strengths. • Define key research themes “that position Illinois to pioneer breakthrough[s]” and “profound social advances.” • Propose innovation-focused changes to the UI’s health academic models. • Identify infrastructure, equipment, faculty and research personnel worth investing in for the cause. • Identify “key stakeholders” for health innovation partnerships in the community. • “Review program statements for the Research Park’s Graduation Facility [including EnterpriseWorks] and the Translational Research Facility” and make a plan to integrate them with the health innovation mission. Boppart will become the interim director of the Interdisciplinary Health Sciences Institute in August, taking over for Professor Neal Cohen, who has led the institute since its founding in 2019. “The plan that emerges from their
work” should “complement and support” the goals of existing health institutions, like the health sciences institute, the Carle Illinois College of Medicine, the Cancer Center at Illinois, the College of Applied Health Sciences, the Carle-Illinois Strategic Affiliation Steering Committee, the Mayo Clinic and Illinois Alliance, JUMP-ARCHES, the Beckman Institute and the Center for Social and Behavioral Sciences, Jones said. “I am encouraging them to think comprehensively, including not only direct allied health professions and medicine, but more broadly mental and physical health; public and rural health; agricultural technologies that improve the production, nutrition and safety of our food resources; environmental health for the betterment and protection of our planet and global health, for sustaining the life, health and wellness in all communities, societies and populations around the world,” Jones said.
• Ethan Simmons writes for the Champaign News-Gazette, esimmons@news-gazette.com
ANOTHER VIEW
Slowing, halting sale of single-use plastics at parks is long overdue Environmental protection measures are so politicized these days that it’s difficult to make consistent progress on any front, even when the solution to a problem is so plainly simple. Yet in recent days, we’ve seen some encouraging signs. Sixteen months ago, Julie Morrison, a state senator from Lake Forest, proposed the state change its procurement policy to require state agencies contract solely with vendors that don’t use single-use plastics for food service at state parks and natural areas. Gov. JB Pritzker finally signed that into law this week. It goes into effect in January ... 2024. Better late than never, we say. Instead of plastic bottles, cups, sand-
wich boxes, bags and the like, vendors will have to use materials that are either recyclable or compostable. If you must have a plastic straw, you may ask for one. “We must work together to do all we can to keep our parks clean,” Morrison said in a news release. “By implementing more biodegradable and reusable alternatives to plastic, we can put our communities on a path toward sustainability.” Days earlier, the federal Department of the Interior pledged to halt the sale of such products in national parks and forests by 2032. Meantime, it will phase out the use of such materials while the department identifies alternatives.
“As the steward of the nation’s public lands, including national parks and national wildlife refuges, and as the agency responsible for the conservation and management of fish, wildlife, plants and their habitats,” the Interior Department is “uniquely positioned to do better for our Earth,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement. So, why would the federal government take a decade to fix this and the state a little more than a year? There is a significant difference in scale. The Department of Interior oversees 480 million acres, a great percentage of it in the western states. The Illinois Department of Natural Resources manages 309 state parks and recreational sites on less than a half
million acres. Consider that Americans buy about 50 billion water bottles and throw away about 25 billion Styrofoam cups each year. Only 10% of single use plastic is recycled. Because it doesn’t magically disappear, almost all of those water bottles we’ve thrown away all our lives still exist – in some form – today, whether it be in a glob of plastic in the ocean or in microparticles that poison our water and soil. If all of these things don’t trouble you, think of how the absence of plastic in our nation’s and state’s parks and forest will make for a more pleasant walk in the woods. The Daily Herald
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OPINIONS
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