RSPH Alumni Association awards

David Westfall 09CMPH, the health director for Georgia District 2, received the RSPH 2013 Distinguished Achievement Award. Westfall oversees 13 county boards of health in north Georgia. Since graduating from Rollins, where he was a Georgia Health Foundation Scholar, he has advocated for coalitions among health departments, free clinics, and primary care providers to improve community health care access. For example, the Hall County Health Department and the Longstreet Clinic have started an obstetrics service for low-income pregnant women. He also secured a grant from the Healthcare Georgia Foundation to increase primary care services for HIV patients.

Westfall has made employee development a priority. He began a "public health 101" session at each county board of health meeting, during which he presents a short education segment on an aspect of public health. He also instituted an employee development program for district staff and an employee assistance program.

He is a board member of a number of public health organizations, such as the Edmondson-Telford Center for Children, the Foothills Area Health Education Center, the Regional EMS Advisory Council, and the Appalachian Nurse Practitioner Clinic. He teaches in Emory’s Executive MPH program and is the current chair of the Emory and Georgia Public Health Training Centers’ Joint Advisory Board.

Robyn Kay 03MPH, a clinical epidemiologist with the Baptist Medical Center in Jacksonville, Fla., was awarded RSPH’s Matthew Lee Girvin Award, given to a recent alumnus who is making significant contributions to the public health field.

Kay previously served as a field epidemiologist with the Florida Department of Health, where she assisted staff in 20 counties, "continuously helping local staff solve problems and improve the quality of their work," says Richard Hopkins, who was her supervisor and one of four people who nominated Kay for the award. "She developed a well-earned reputation for clear, direct, and tactful communication."

Additionally, Kay routinely headed up epidemiological investigations of bacterial infection outbreaks across Florida. "Her strength on investigation teams has been as the person who takes the scientific plan...and makes it actually happen on the ground, without losing any of its rigor," Hopkins says.

She also doesn’t hesitate to share her knowledge with her colleagues. "Ms. Kay possesses a wealth of epidemiologic knowledge and has the gift of knowing how to share this expertise in a way that constantly challenged me to figure out the solution myself," says a former employee of Kay’s. "She is able to help build a framework of learning but always allowed me to take the final step myself, ensuring that I owned the knowledge and could apply it in the future."