The University of Iowa College of Public Health recently honored three Iowa public health leaders whose work is helping to promote better health, prevent disease, and build stronger communities throughout the state.

The 2023 Iowa Public Health Heroes Awards were presented to Joy Harris, director of education services for Iowa’s Public Health Accreditation Board; Michelle Lewis, health promotions and planning coordinator for the Siouxland District Health Department; and Peter Teahen, funeral director, author, mental health professional, and traumatologist from Cedar Rapids.

The award recipients were honored Tuesday, March 28, during a reception and awards ceremony at the Public Health Conference of Iowa in Ames.

Since 2012, the College of Public Health’s Iowa Public Health Heroes Award program has recognized exceptional efforts by individuals from diverse career paths whose work improves health and wellness throughout Iowa. Award recipients are nominated by their peers in the Iowa public health practice community.

“The health of all Iowans is enhanced through the leadership and service of so many dedicated professionals working in the public health sector,” says Edith Parker, dean of the College of Public Health. “We are proud to honor these three individuals and to recognize their outstanding work in the communities they serve.”

About the Recipients

Joy Harris

Joy built an outstanding career with the Iowa Department of Public Health for 20 years and is currently serving as the Director of Education Services for Iowa’s Public Health Accreditation Board.

She was nominated for this award by Bonnie Butler and Tricia Kitzmann, as well as colleagues and partners from public health departments and organizations around the state. She is described as “an extraordinary leader, innovator, and collaborator.”

Her nominators note that throughout her career, Joy demonstrated significant leadership skills and shared innovations and best practices with others throughout the state. She worked to transform the governmental public health system and was instrumental in creating and deploying a local public health system survey which was imperative to understanding our current public health system in order to make meaningful changes to prepare for the future.

Joy’s nominators also described her depth of knowledge of standards, quality management and improvement principles and guidelines. They write that Joy is very professional, thoughtful, and willing to listen to all input to develop the best possible processes and policies to assure our state and local public health departments operate at the highest level of service and quality.

Finally, Joy’s nominators commended her work with the Public Health Accreditation Board. They wrote; “Joy’s passion for quality improvement was evident when she provided QI trainings across the state. This allowed all counties the opportunity to learn to use tools for improving our processes. Joy’s enthusiasm made the trainings fun, productive, and accessible to everyone, regardless of their previous level of QI knowledge, the size of their county, or the budget of their local health department.”

Michelle Lewis

Michelle serves as the Health Promotions and Planning Coordinator for the Siouxland District Health Department where she works to evaluate data, plan, and implement community-level strategies and initiatives for health promotion and disease prevention. 

Michelle’s nominator, Kevin Grieme, noted several examples of her leadership including her recommendation to utilize the Mobilizing for Action Through Planning and Partnership process. According to Kevin, “This is a much more involved process for all planning partners, but Michelle structured the implementation of this over the course of three planning cycles, which allowed our partners to adapt to this change. Additionally, she added our Federally Qualified Health Center and Dunes Surgical Hospital to the planning process. This was all completed while maintaining the involvement of over 50 community partner organizations.” 

Through data collection and evaluation efforts, Michelle and several community partners saw the need to create an educational forum to address an uptick in STI’s. The result was the initial Public Health Roundtable event focused on Syphilis that was attended by 32 local health professionals. Response was overwhelmingly positive and a roundtable focusing on TB is already in the planning stages.

In her role, Michelle has also strengthened the SDHD’s tradition of community collaboration by helping to establish the Source for Siouxland, a collaborative, strategic community planning initiative designed to address the challenges of increasingly scarce resources and changing demographics. One outcome of this collaboration was the “Prime Age to Engage” campaign that ties academic success to individual lifetime health. This campaign engaged multiple community partners, including medical providers, to collect books and distribute them to children when they visit their healthcare provider, resulting in the distribution of 7,000 – 10,000 books per year.

 Additionally, Michelle is heavily involved in SDHD’s strategic planning, accreditation, workforce development, and grant writing process. She is a leader and a partner who’s forward-thinking and community ties have positioned SDHD for future success. 

Peter Teahen

Peter is a Funeral Director, author, and a mental health professional and Traumatologist. He is a founder of the International Mass Fatalities Center and AmericaReady, a disaster supply company. 

According to his nominators, Rima Afifi and colleagues in the UI College of Public Health, Peter embodies all the criteria for this award. He came into public health by way of his profession as a funeral director and his work across the globe in mass fatalities and supporting persons experiencing trauma. He is not a public health practitioner in the traditional sense, but has been a national and international leader in emergency preparedness.

His preparedness work began on July 19, 1989, responding to the crash landing of United Airlines flight 232 in Sioux City, Iowa. 112 died in the crash and 184 people survived. Since then he has responded to over forty-five major disasters throughout the United States and globally, managing mass casualties and fatalities. These responses included the attack on the World Trade Center, Hurricane Katrina, the Haiti Earthquake in 2010, and the Oklahoma City Bombing. In addition to his emergency response work, Peter has done extensive work in critical incident stress management, and psychological and social impact of disasters.

His nominators wrote that they became acquainted with Peter early in the COVID-19 pandemic when he reached out to them with the thought that COVID-19 was akin to a mass fatality situation and felt that no one was considering the impact of COVID-19 on ‘last responders;’ an occupational category that includes all those that are involved in the postmortem care of deceased persons and their families.

With his guidance and support, researchers fielded a national survey of last responders, established a community advisory group, and conducted interviews to gain in-depth knowledge of the challenges faced by last responders during COVID. This work continues and interventions will be developed to support and help last responders cope with the stresses and stigma of their jobs, which intensify during infectious disease outbreaks. Peter remains a steadfast partner in this work, and an advocate for his colleagues.  

His nominators concluded by writing, “Peter Teahen clearly demonstrates a commitment to the values of public health including community-based approaches to health, engagement across communities and countries, a deeply collaborative spirit, advocacy for environments conducive to wellbeing, uplifting work of the unseen, among others.”