2007/2008 CPH Magazine - College of Public Health - University of ...

Alumni Spotlight:Ud dionsequis nisessit augue feugaitalis nit ip eratet lorsendre eum zzriuremvel ut irit iuremagnaDenise & Lauren FlookMother and Daughter Graduate from the College of Public HealthDenise Flook had already had a successful careeras a nurse. She’d worked more than 20 yearswith increasing responsibilities, culminating withbeing named the chief nursing officer at NorthlakeMedical Center in Atlanta. But there was morework to be done.“My goal was always to get my master’s degree,”she says. And so, in 2003, she enrolled inthe College of Public Health’s Department ofHealth Promotion and Behavior—the very samedepartment where her oldest daughter, Lauren,was studying as an undergraduate. Lauren receivedher bachelor’s degree in 2004. Last spring,Denise got her long-awaited MPH.The mother-daughter pair occasionallyshared professors (for different courses) andwould cross paths on campus. “Sometimes I’dhave a late class so I’d spend the night at herplace,” she says.Denise admits sharing a campus took somegetting used to by lauren’s high school friendswho had come to UGA, but the Flooks to it allin stride.Denise Flook’s path to a graduate degreestarted in 1976 from the University of Maryland.Immediately after graduation, she joinedVolunteers in Service to America, a now-defunctdomestic version of the Peace Corps and forerunnerto today’s AmeriCorps. Through VISTA, shecame to Georgia to work with the Department ofHuman Resources and lived in Athens, where sheworked on teen pregnancy prevention.“I was ahead of Jane Fonda.” she says, with alaugh, referring to Fonda’s Georgia Campaign forAdolescent Pregnancy Prevention (GCAPP).Working with those nurses piqued her interestin the profession, and she followed her futurehusband to Albany, Ga., to study nursing at DartonCollege. In 1980, she got her nursing degreeand the Flooks moved to Atlanta, where sheworked in the telemetry unit at Northside Hospitaland treated Atlanta’s first AIDS patients at theformer Georgia Baptist Hospital (now the AtlantaMedical Center). Although they didn’t know thedisease by name then, it still carried an immensestigma. The AIDS patients were often abandonedby families and partners, and “the nurses reallybecame their families,” Flook recalls.After the birth of her two daughters, Flookwas later recruited to the newly opened NorthlakeMedical Center to develop their infectioncontrol program.When she decided the time was right forgraduate school, she took a flexible position as anursing consultant for the Georgia Hospital Associationin Marietta and commuted to UGA.In graduate school, she studied workforcedevelopment and its effect on the state’s nursingshortage. In addition to researching healthyworkplace environments, she returned to familiarterritory: infection prevention. Last year, the federalSurgical Care Improvement Program (SCIP)was launched to help prevent healthcare-associatedinfections, and through her work with thehospital association, Flook helped state hospitalsimplement the SCIP initiatives.“I got to see a lot of my old friends in infectioncontrol,” she said.Since graduating, she’s taken a permanentposition with the Hospital Association, and willcontinue to work in infection prevention andworkplace environments. She also keeps an eyeon future teaching opportunities.And her influence has rubbed off once againon both her daugters. Lauren and her youngersister, Katherine are both studying to becomenurses.20 College of Public Health