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Harris Pastides' three-month sabbatical in Cyprus this summer offered a temporary return to his academic roots--cancer epidemiology--and an opportunity to reflect on larger issues of education, immigration, and war.
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| Harris Pastides |
Pastides, USC's vice president for research and health sciences, was invited earlier this year by the Cyprus Institute for Environmental and Public Health to develop a cancer plan for the island-nation inhabited by 750,000 Greek and Turkish Cypriots. His sabbatical there began in May, and he returned to USC in mid August.
"Cyprus is about the size of Connecticut with a population that's about one-fourth the size of South Carolina. It gave me a lot of gratification to know that the changes we implemented would have a real impact on the island," Pastides said.
As part of his duties, Pastides reviewed Cyprus' cancer registry and, after consulting with hospitals and physicians, suggested improvements in automation to make the registry more up to date and accessible.
He also helped develop a protocol for investigation of cancer clusters by the Cypriot Ministry of Health. "They are inundated with calls from concerned citizens about what are perceived to be areas with high concentrations of cancer," Pastides said. "We developed a protocol on how to respond to these calls in a systematic manner."
Pastides then worked with colleagues from Harvard University, which operates the Institute for Environmental and Public Health with the Cypriot government, to propose a cancer prevention and control program. Their proposal includes provisions for more cancer education and screening programs, as well as comprehensive, personal cancer evaluations.
Along with his duties with the institute, which allowed the luxury of "improving my Greek and working in an open collar, shirt-sleeve environment," Pastides also worked on the second edition of his textbook, Foundations of Cancer Epidemiology (Jones & Bartlett), due for 2007 release.
The summer-long sabbatical in Cyprus also provided an opportunity to revisit his parents' homeland; they immigrated to the United States from Cyprus in 1948 with Pastides' sister.
"I was confronted with the positive power of immigration and the knowledge that education is the biggest difference between what my life would have been--had my parents remained there--and what it is now," he said. "That renews my commitment to keeping higher education accessible and affordable."
Israel's brief war with Hezbollah in Lebanon transformed Cyprus from an idyllic Mediterranean island to a haven for war refugees and gave Pastides a new appreciation for the basic value of safety and life in a society free of war zones.
Back in the saddle at USC, Pastides said his experiences in Cyprus have spurred his interests in the possibilities of academic collaborations in the eastern Mediterranean, a portal to Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Several meetings with engineering faculty at the University of Cyprus suggest possibilities for collaborations with USC, he said.
8/06
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