Top news:
Final reminder: Monday, December 7 is SMPH’s deadline to receive your influenza vaccination and submit the proper documentation. If you received your vaccine at a campus (UHS) or UW Health flu shot clinic, then your information is automatically reported and you do not need to submit documentation. However, if you receive your shot through any other avenue, you must tell us.
In case you missed it: A recording is available of the highly engaging UW Now Livestream on SARS-CoV-2 vaccine development and distribution is available.
Reminder – safeguarding patient privacy: Throughout the pandemic and particularly during the current COVID-19 surge, public interest in the day-to-day experiences of health care professionals has been high. Nationally we have seen a trend of health care workers giving first-hand perspectives of their experiences on their personal social media accounts to emphasize the importance of COVID-19 health and safety measures. Safeguarding protected health information (PHI) is a shared responsibility of everyone in SMPH. Patient stories, images, video, and other PHI should never be shared on personal social media accounts. Please review SMPH policy 10.05 (Personal Social Media Use Policy) and UW Health Social Media Policy 1.47 available on U-Connect. Those who administer social media accounts on behalf of a unit of the school should also refer to SMPH policy 10.10 (Institutional Social Media Use Policy). Contact the UW-Madison HIPAA Privacy Officer or the SMPH HIPAA Privacy Coordinator with questions.
- Nominations are open for the UW–Madison Academic Staff Excellence Awards. All are encouraged to nominate deserving candidates. While nominations can be made directly, the Dean will support a small number of candidates for nomination. If you’d like to submit a nomination for consideration of the Dean’s support, please submit the nomination packet, as complete as possible, to the Office of the Dean (smphdean@med.wisc.edu) no later than January 4, 2021. Because clinician-teacher (CT) and clinical health sciences (CHS) faculty tracks are classified by campus as academic staff appointments, nominations of faculty in these tracks for these awards are welcome and encouraged as well.
- Information has been announced about the second round of campus-wide, intermittent furloughs is available. Read more
- Candidate visits for the position of Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer have ended. If you were unable to attend any of their presentations, the recordings and passwords may be found on the Leadership Search Candidate Visit webpage. If you attended the town halls or watch the recordings, you are encouraged to provide input to the search committee via a confidential survey. The survey will close on December 9.
- The UW–Madison Postdoctoral Association invites postdoctoral researchers to share personal narratives and campus policy recommendations about diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice issues and challenges faced by UW-Madison’s postdocs from underrepresented groups in a survey (deadline: December 16). Submissions will be shared anonymously in an upcoming forum (date TBA) with university leadership, subject matter experts, postdocs, and other stakeholders. Read more
- View this week’s Quick Links, with valuable information for all personnel including a list of recommended courses and resources about stress management and resilience, as well as information for researchers and clinicians.
Building an Anti-Racist SMPH
- The Justified Anger Coalition will offer an online event on December 8 from 7:00-8:00 p.m. titled “Lean Into Allyship: Have Yourself a Very Antiracist Holiday.” Read more and Register
- View upcoming events relating to anti-racism topics at UW–Madison and beyond.
Shout-outs:
Please send kudos about your colleagues. Honor someone at go.wisc.edu/shoutout and we’ll share the stories. Submit your thoughts and we’ll share them in a future issue.