A Fond Farewell: Postnatal Director, Linda Franck, Transitions

Dear Community,

It has been a privilege to serve the mission of PTBi-CA over the last five years, first as core faculty during the planning year, then as Co-Principal Investigator, and finally as Postnatal Research Director. While I will miss my PTBi-CA family, I am pleased to announce that I will be joining UCSF ACTIONS Founding Director, Monica McLemore, as Co-Director. 

I wish to give a special thank you to the incredibly talented and hardworking postnatal research team: Rebecca Kriz, Riya Jacob, Caryl Gay and former team members Nadia Tsado, Natasha Lare and Katie Millar as well as PCAB faculty lead, Dawn Gano. Their efforts to transform the culture of NICU care at the NICUs in San Francisco, Oakland and Fresno (and beyond) have created the awareness and infrastructure needed for the sites to be able to forge ahead on their own to make meaningful change to address structural racism and health inequities that harm preterm babies and their families. Their efforts also produced a unique and high-quality dataset for the mFICare study, upon which we will be very busy conducting analyses over the coming months.

I also wish to give a special thank you to Kim Coleman-Phox for making our work together in managing the RAP grants program so enjoyable and to the community engagement dynamic duo of Shanell Williams and Daphina Melbourne for all their work to bring the voices of those most affected by preterm birth as full partners in the strategy setting and delivery of all PTBi work.

I look forward to continuing to support PTBi's mission and future collaborations.

With gratitude and best wishes,
Linda Franck