Dora Anne Mills authors chapter in new book

Dora Mills

Dora Anne Mills, M.D., M.P.H., has authored a chapter in a recently published book titled, Health and Freedom in the Balance: Exploring the Tensions among Public Health, Individual Liberty, and Governmental Authority

Her chapter is based on the annual Saul O. Sidore Lecture she delivered at the University of New Hampshire (UNH) in 2013. Mills focused on challenges and lessons learned from her dual roles as Maine’s State Health Officer and State Epidemiologist during the 2009 pandemic with H1N1 influenza.

These included: balancing patients’ privacy with the need for people to know the extent of the pandemic's spread, such as the location of local outbreaks; addressing challenges related to vaccine shortages and providing access to the limited supply to those at highest risk for severe infection (while denying it from others); and coordinating the responses and striking the right balance of authority among the various levels of government – federal, state, and municipal. She also drew on some lessons from the 1918 pandemic, and their implications in 2009 and in future pandemics. 

The book is edited by two UNH faculty members from the history and public health fields, and is published by Nova Science Publications.

Read more about the book.

To apply, visit www.une.edu/admissions