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Frances D. Butterfoss,
Ph.D. |
Frances D. Butterfoss, Ph.D.
Frances D. Butterfoss, Ph.D.,
received the 2002 Society for Public Health Education (SOPHE) Mentor
Award – a coveted honor traditionally bestowed only on retiring
departmental chairs before Fran Butterfoss earned the recognition.
Seven letters of nomination brought Butterfoss’ mentoring skills to
the forefront of the national organization, which she led as its
president in 1999-2000; she received their Program Excellence Award
for the CINCH (Consortium for Infant and Child Health) project in
1996.
Of all her accolades, she holds most
dear the mentoring award. It was the “affirmation that what I am doing
is worthwhile,” she said.
She attributes her life’s work to two
mentors – her high school French teacher and doctoral graduate
advisor. The French teacher encouraged her to set higher goals and
apply for a full scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania, which
she won. Her graduate advisor directed her to apply coalition theories
to public health issues, drawing from the disciplines of
organizational psychology and social work. He presented this approach
as an “opportunity” that was “transferable” to any public health focus
- advice on which Butterfoss built her career.
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As a mentor, Butterfoss
looks at the “strengths and unique gifts” of her mentees: “Are
they making the most of their gifts? How do they use their
strengths to get to where they want to be?” |
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Butterfoss’ mother, her inspiration
and role model, emerged from the Great Depression with a strong
belief that adversity and obstacles could not stop anyone from
accomplishing anything they wished as long as they had a goal. In
1975, three years after Butterfoss married her husband, Tom, they
mapped on poster board their ideas of what they would like to be doing
at age 40. Tucking the paper in the back of a filing cabinet, they did
not discover it again until they were 40. Amazingly, the couple was on
target with their plans. Butterfoss wanted the challenge of a
doctorate program and hoped that by age 40, she would be in such a
program. Although they had not reviewed their plan for 17 years, they
were “amazed” that by writing their goals, they had accomplished them.
The invaluable mentoring she received
led her to mentor others. As a mentor, Butterfoss looks at the
“strengths and unique gifts” of her mentees: “Are they making the most
of their gifts? How do they use their strengths to get to where they
want to be?”
The mentoring process is three-fold,
she says. First, she asks “What is your goal for the current year in
your job?” Second, “What is your professional plan that will help you
reach your long-term goal – getting another degree, taking a computer
course, learning to market yourself?” Third, “What is your personal
goal? – beginning a regular exercise program, volunteering for a
charity?” At the end of each year, she encourages her mentees to
“access what you wanted to accomplish and how far you have
progressed.” Butterfoss firmly believes that “each one of us makes our
own happiness and success.” She advises to “use adversity to grow.”
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“[Dr. Butterfoss] was so
‘down-to-earth,’ ” said Nasca[, Butterfoss' mentee]. “She wanted
to know what I had done and what I wanted to accomplish. (Dr.
Butterfoss) as the director of the Project Immunize Virginia
coalition saw a way to utilize my skills and help me grow.” |
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One of her mentees is Sarah Nasca,
MPH. “Dr. Butterfoss took ownership of my career,” said Nasca. “She
taught me what you don’t learn in school (about career development).”
As a Master of Public Health (MPH)
student at the University of Tennessee, Nasca needed to pursue an
internship outside Tennessee. An advisor gave her a national SOPHE
directory to initiate her search. Nasca called the national president,
Fran Butterfoss, in hopes of leaving a message asking for some
recommendations and networking advice.
To Nasca’s surprise, Dr. Butterfoss
answered her own telephone, a phenomenon she never experienced before
when trying to reach other nationally known members of the medical
community. Within 20 minutes, the two were planning a summer’s
internship at CHKD’s Center for Pediatric Research with Butterfoss.
“She was so ‘down-to-earth,’” said
Nasca. “She wanted to know what I had done and what I wanted to
accomplish. (Dr. Butterfoss) as the director of the Project Immunize
Virginia coalition saw a way to utilize my skills and help me grow.”
The summer internship led to a
permanent position for Nasca. “She (Butterfoss) is so busy; she truly
does not have extra time to advise and promote my career, yet she
always makes the time. In the beginning, we met formally each week.
Slowly, she weaned me to come up with my own strategies. Now, I go to
her as I need advice. I couldn’t have found a better mentor or
internship.” To use Butterfoss’ favorite word, it was “serendipity.”
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Dr.
Butterfoss' 10 steps for building healthy communities:
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Envision a
healthy community.
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Assess
community assets and challenges.
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Teach the
value of collaboration.
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Bring
diverse interests together to build linkages.
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Identify
and develop community leaders.
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Listen to
community voices.
-
Plan for
success.
-
Implement
your plan.
-
Evaluate
your efforts.
-
Share your
successes.
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For 15 years, Butterfoss traveled
around the world with her husband who was a military dentist, now an
orthodontist in Yorktown. Throughout this time, she worked as a public
health nurse and high school biology and health science teacher while
caring for three children. Teaching was then and is still one of her
favorite tasks; it almost kept her from returning to school to work on
her doctorate, but unhappiness created by an adverse situation
launched the next phase of her career.
As a high school science teacher, she
learned that all funds for supplies went to the honors science
program; there was no money left for the majority of the science
students Butterfoss taught. She thought the program unjust. Realizing
that she was helpless in changing the system, she made the decision to
return to school and retool.
She has been working through
coalitions to change systems ever since. Her advice to her mentees:
“Get as much education as possible, then get a grant and work on what
interests you and generate change.”
Butterfoss takes her own advice. She
currently is the principal or co-investigator on more that $2.5
million in grant funding, covering such areas at Child Health
Insurance, Hope VI Initiative, Community Asthma Prevention programs,
and Asthmas Practice Guidelines. Following her mentor’s advice,
Butterfoss’ expertise is building community coalitions to promote
public health.
By gaining the commitment of several
organizations, she focuses on the common mission and enhances the
success of a project by encouraging each party to share risks,
responsibilities, and rewards. She seeks and develops community
leaders to listen to community voices, exchange information, and
identify common values. The processes, structures, and quantifiable
outcomes are essential to a coalition’s success. The key to success is
measuring results, she says.
When Dr. Butterfoss spoke to the
Women in Medicine and Science program in 2001, she said there are 10
steps for building healthy communities:
- Envision a healthy community.
- Assess community assets and
challenges.
- Teach the value of collaboration.
- Bring diverse interests together
to build linkages.
- Identify and develop community
leaders.
- Listen to community voices.
- Plan for success.
- Implement your plan.
- Evaluate your efforts.
- Share your successes.
She has taken her message of
community building throughout the country conducting over four dozen
workshops, making 100 presentations, and writing 60 abstracts, book
chapters, and editorials. Whether she is discussing at-risk youth,
chronic disease or substance abuse prevention, promoting childhood
safety or planning an immunization program, she utilizes her key
principles for success. Her philosophy works, making her a respected
consultant, speaker, and writer.
As a public health educator,
Butterfoss is head of the Health Promotion/Disease Prevention Section
of the Center for Pediatric Research, Children’s Hospital of The
Kings’ Daughters, and an associate professor of pediatrics at the
Eastern Virginia Medical School. Since 1998, she has taught in the
joint EVMS and Old Dominion University graduate program in Public
Health.
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Career decisions parallel
family priorities, too. She espouses the philosophy that balancing
one’s professional and personal lives is essential for happiness.
Butterfoss focuses more on her career now that her children are
older. |
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She earned her BS in Nursing and MS
in Education from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, where
she was senior class president and cum laude graduate. She received
graduate assistantships to complete her PhD in Health Promotion and
Education from the School of Public Health at the University of South
Carolina. In 1992, she came to the Center for Pediatric Research to
work on the CINCH project.
As a community builder, Butterfoss
practices what she preaches. She serves on the Minority Health
Research Consortium of Hampton Roads; the Virginia Association for the
Preservation of Antiquities, Jamestown-Yorktown Chapter; the Minority
Health Research Consortium of South Hampton Roads; the
Yorktown-Jamestown Foundation; National Partnership for Immunizations;
American Legacy Foundation, Youth Empowerment Board; and the National
Immunization Coalition Conference Planning Committee (Chairperson in
1997). She chairs the CPR Work Life committee, is a reviewer of Health
Education and Behavior for the American Journal of Community
Psychology and is a member of the editorial review board of Family and
Community Health, where she was the 1999 guest editor of two Child
Health issues. Since 1993, she has been a member of the Delta Omega
Honorary Society in Public Health, serving at president of the Alpha
Kappa Chapter in 2001.
Career decisions parallel family
priorities, too. She espouses the philosophy that balancing one’s
professional and personal lives is essential for happiness. Butterfoss
focuses more on her career now that her children are older. Her
daughter, Jennifer, is an orthodontic resident at the University of
Louisville; son Ryan is a video game designer in San Francisco, and
son Adam is a student at James Madison University majoring in
integrated science and technology.
Dr. Butterfoss’ commitment to
community coalitions, her mentoring, and her life’s work can be
summarized in a quote by another woman of conviction, Margaret Mead:
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can
change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
Frances Butterfoss, PhD, would add a
note to Mead’s quote: … and change can come through community
coalitions and mentoring others to carry forth one’s passion to
improve the public’s health.
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