SAVIR Member Spotlight: Carol Runyan, MPH, PhD

After earning my MPH, I focused on reproductive health among adolescents. One of the teen clients I was serving in a free clinic where I volunteered proclaimed, “I might as well be pregnant, there’s nothing else I can do,” I was taken aback and started thinking about the possibility that work experience might give youth a better sense of the future that would mitigate against teen unintended pregnancy. This was my intended pathway as I entered my doctoral program. But, during a class in my first year I was exposed to injury as an important issue for adolescents. I planned to take some courses in the Epidemiology Summer Session at U of Minnesota and there was a course on injury epidemiology. I contacted my professor and asked if she knew any of the three instructors of the injury course: William Haddon, Leon Robertson, and Susan Baker. She just laughed and said, “take the course!” That was 1980 and I had no idea they were the major leaders in the field at the time. I was immediately hooked. All three instructors were so enthusiastic and encouraging. For my class project I invested ten cents in a phone call and collected data on teen worker injuries from the Minnesota Labor Department while standing in a phone booth. It was my first research project. I have worked on teen worker injury as well as numerous other topics, including home safety and suicide prevention.

How long have you been a member of SAVIR? What has been your favorite part about being involved with SAVIR?

I was one of the founders of SAVIR as it evolved from our prior organization, National Association of Injury Control Research Centers (NAICRC). We wanted to broaden the organization to include the growing number of injury scholars who were in varied places, not just at ICRCs.

What has been the most rewarding aspect of your career so far?

I am retired now, but the most rewarding aspect of my career was always teaching graduate students in public health, medical students, and practicing professionals. I was pleased to create the first distance education course on injury called VINCENT (Violence and INjury Control Through Education, Networking and Training) with a $60,000 grant from ASPH. It was a live, six-hour course via satellite feed in 1997 for which more than 2000 people dialed in from 180 sites in 40 states and Canada. It was cutting-edge technology at the time, well before everyone had internet access or telecommunications on our laptops. Later, a team from NAICRC and STIPDA (the precursor to Safe States Alliance) created the National Training Initiative (NTI) that created core competencies for the field. As an outgrowth, our team at UNC was funded by CDC for four years then by the Doris Duke Foundation for three more years. We trained more than 900 violence prevention practitioners in 44 states in the principles of injury control and program and policy development. I am also very proud of my work over 22 years as leader of the UNC IPRC, helping launch the careers of multiple junior scholars who are now leaders in the field.

What do you like to do in your free time?

I love to write and am working on several projects now, including a book about early leaders in the injury field based on oral history interviews I did via zoom during COVID. I also have tried my hand at children’s books, personal essays and a memoir. I read both novels (particularly historical fiction), biographies, memoirs, and history. I am fascinated by the history of the Progressive era in the US and the women who were changemakers during that time. I also am an avid golfer. I have played for more than 60 years and find a good round to be a thrill every time (bad rounds, not so much).