{"id":300,"date":"2018-04-12T12:45:14","date_gmt":"2018-04-12T11:45:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/publichealth\/?p=300"},"modified":"2018-04-12T12:47:30","modified_gmt":"2018-04-12T11:47:30","slug":"dr-sarah-walters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/publichealth\/2018\/04\/12\/dr-sarah-walters\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr Sarah Walters"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>Dear Colleagues,<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>With great sadness we learned of that our former colleague Dr Sarah Walters died on Sunday 8th April.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Sarah was a remarkable woman. Nobody could meet her without being impressed by her energy, her intelligence and her dedication. She graduated from St. George\u2019s Medical School in 1985 and followed a career in clinical academic public health. In 1994 she created the University of Birmingham Master of Public Health programme. Sarah led the programme for over 10 years, before her retirement in 2006. Her former students include public health specialists, directors and professors of public health across the world. Every Birmingham MPH graduate is a part of her legacy. Sarah was awarded on OBE for services to medicine in 2004.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Sarah lived life to the full. She was a motorbike enthusiast and had the injuries to prove it. She was also a keen skier and a ski instructor. When she retired she bought an 11 acre woodland and along with her husband managed it as a wildlife reserve and amenity. She took up photography and documented the wildlife and seasonal changes in her wood. Sarah did not do anything by halves. By 2014 Alvecote Wood had won the Royal Forestry Society award for best small woodland in England. She also qualified as a personal trainer and joked that since retirement she was doing more for public health than when she was working.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>These are achievements that anyone would be proud of but Sarah also suffered from cystic fibrosis. At the age of 12 she was told she might have two years to live. But Sarah had other plans. She decided to study medicine. Initially she was not allowed because of her condition and it was doubted whether she would complete her medical degree. But she persisted and funded by the CF society, became the first person with cystic fibrosis to graduate in medicine. She went on to be the first person with cystic fibrosis to work as a public health consultant and as a clinical academic. She identified life\u2019s most important lessons as never to give up. This was literally true. Staying healthy required her to devote as much time and energy to physical training as a professional athlete. Once asked how she would like to be remembered and Sarah said as somebody who made a difference, not only to the lives of people, but to the planet too. You did Sarah.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Regards,<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #808080\"><strong>K K Cheng FMedSci<\/strong><br \/>\nDirector, Institute of Applied Health Research; Professor of Public Health and Primary Care<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #808080\">University of Birmingham<br \/>\nLearning Centre<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #808080\">Birmingham B15 2TT<br \/>\nUK<br \/>\nTel: +44 121 414 6757<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dear Colleagues, With great sadness we learned of that our former colleague Dr Sarah Walters died on Sunday 8th April. Sarah was a remarkable woman. Nobody could meet her without being impressed by her energy, her intelligence and her dedication. She graduated from St. George\u2019s Medical School in 1985 and followed a career in clinical &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/publichealth\/2018\/04\/12\/dr-sarah-walters\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Dr Sarah Walters&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":223,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/publichealth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/publichealth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/publichealth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/publichealth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/223"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/publichealth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/publichealth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":330,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/publichealth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300\/revisions\/330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/publichealth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/publichealth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/publichealth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}