Family doctor/medical researcher/forester/conservationist, Roger Rosenblatt, MD, MPH, MFS, will reprise one of the most popular lectures from past courses, updated for this year. Dr. Rosenblatt will present "The Sociology of the Rural Northwest (and other smallish places)" at the Rural Class this year on May 9, 2009. He will give his talk at the Public Utilities District office in Okanogan, outside Omak.
"Dr. Rosenblatt is an amazing individual and this unique lecture, combined with his engaging style of delivery, helps to explain the present diversity and complexity of rural culture and subcultures in an understandable and cohesive way. Somehow he brings thousand of years of in- and out-migration of different populations into rural communities into clear focus, and sets aside the myth of rural America as a homogenous cultural 'melting pot', replacing that notion with a different analogy of rural places as a hegemonic sociological 'layer cake,'" commented a public health student who participated in the course in 2004.
Dr. Rosenblatt is a graduate of Harvard College, Harvard Medical School, and the Harvard School of Public Health. He received his postgraduate training in internal medicine and family medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine, finishing with the first class of family medicine residents in 1974.
Then he went rural.
From 1974 through 1977, Roger worked with the National Health Service Corps program of the United States Public Health Service establishing rural clinics throughout the Northwest. He then joined the faculty University of Washington, where he has remained. Dr. Rosenblatt is Professor and Vice Chair of the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine and directs the Rural/Underserved Opportunities Program (RUOP), a month-long summer rotation with a rural family physician for first-year medical students. RUOP is an innovative community-based training program that matches more than one hundred predoctoral medical students with rural practitioners throughout the WWAMI region for an immersion in rural practice life.
Dr. Rosenblatt’s research is centered around four major topics: health workforce issues; rural health care; the integration of primary health care and public health; and the intersection of environmental change and human health. He has authored over 100 publications in peer-reviewed journals and many other publications, including books and book chapters. He has been active as a consultant to a variety of organizations, foundations, and local, regional, and national governments He was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 1987 and is a recipient of the 1996 Hames Research Award and the 1997 Primary Care Achievement Award of the Pew Charitable Trusts.Dr. Rosenbatt holds faculty appointments in the School of Medicine, the School of Public Health and Community Medicine, and the College of Forest Resources, and is a member of the Graduate School faculty.