Working Toward a Healthier World

In 2010, we launched Adelphi University’s Center for Health Innovation (CHI) as part of a comprehensive strategic plan. The intent was to leverage Adelphi’s outstanding health-related academic programs and outreach initiatives. Now in its fifth year, CHI is thriving—creating opportunities for transdisciplinary and translational research, addressing community health needs and fostering collaborative faculty scholarship. Erudition magazine is one of the many initiatives undertaken by CHI. Our goal in this annual publication is to share how Adelphi faculty members are impacting our collective health and the welfare of our local, national and global communities.

Elizabeth Cohn, Ph.D., R.N., the director of CHI, has written, “At CHI, health is more than physical well-being or the absence of disease, illness or injury. It is a constellation of factors—economic, social, political, psychological, ecological, cultural and physical—that comprise high quality lives for individuals and communities.”

Erudition highlights research and creative activity by faculty scholars and artists from departments throughout Adelphi. The diverse articles form a mosaic that reveals how interconnected and interdisciplinary health research can be. Most of the endeavors described in this issue have obvious connections to health. In other cases, the connections are more nuanced.

Improving treatment for people who struggle with substance abuse has become a national priority, especially given the research showing how cost-effective treatment is compared to the alternatives, such as crime and incarceration.

Since 2002, Denise Hien, Ph.D., a professor at the Gordon F. Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies, has been a co-principal investigator with the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) Clinical Trials Network Greater New York Node. With significant grant support, she and her colleagues find ways to link leading research on substance abuse and trauma treatment with the community-based clinics that serve those most in need.

So often, we hear about the hardships of our retail economy—of wholesalers slashing prices and wages to meet the demands of large retailers, for example. Using game theory, Susan Li, Ph.D., a professor at the Robert B. Willumstad School of Business, and her colleagues have determined that collaboration, rather than competition, among wholesalers and retailers can boost the profits of both groups. Might wages rise—and, with them, worker satisfaction and well-being—from this approach? It seems a promising prospect.

Toward the end of the issue, you will find the Faculty Highlights section—a compilation of the work presented, published and performed by Adelphi faculty members in 2014. The listing is voluminous and impressive.

As ever, I am grateful to work with such talented and dedicated scholars, teachers, artists and leaders and invite you to learn about their important work in this issue of Erudition.

Gayle D. Insler, Ph.D.
Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs