Answering A Call To Service

When President John F. Kennedy issued his famous guidance, “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country,” many people across the United States internalized the call to service. For Lu Ann Aday, PhD, this directive reinforced her family’s values and became a guiding principle.

“We are all given talents, and we are asked to use them to hopefully make the world a little better,” says Aday, Professor Emeritus and the former Lorne Bain Distinguished Professor at UTHealth Houston School of Public Health.

Most recently, her service has manifested as a generous contribution to augment the Lu Ann Aday Scholarship in Management, Policy, and Community Health at the School of Public Health. Her former students established the fund in 2007 to honor her role in their education and their lives.

“I really hope this contribution provides students with the support and validation they might need to continue their education and have a little more ease in doing that. Hopefully, this scholarship will give them a boost to know others believe in them,” Aday says. “Once you get a degree, it’s yours, and no one can take it from you. Having the degree opens many windows of opportunity.”

Before retiring in 2007, Aday’s career focused on improving access to health care. She conducted major national and community surveys to understand the use of health services and where health needs were not being met.

She won many awards for her teaching and research, including the John P. McGovern Outstanding Teacher Award, Distinguished Professional Woman Award, and President’s Award for Mentoring Women from UTHealth Houston. In addition, she received the Pfizer Award for Teaching Excellence from the Association of Schools of Public Health.

Working at UTHealth Houston provided her with the opportunity to obtain multidisciplinary input into her research. She worked with doctors, nurses, dentists, and biomedical scientists, and she especially appreciated the diversity of knowledge and interdisciplinary focus within the School of Public Health.

“I like my world to be wide. I grew up on a farm in a small town, so it’s always been a part of me to make my world wider and incorporate a lot into it. We can achieve greater excellence in whatever we’re doing if we are receptive to diverse input and ideas.”

Aday was elected to the National Academy of Medicine and served on multinational, federal, and state boards, commissions, and committees, including the National Cancer Institute and Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

The author of 16 books, including second, third, and fourth editions that became defining texts in her field, she donates the royalties from her book Reinventing Public Health: Policies and Practices for a Healthy Nation to the UTHealth Houston scholarship endowment in her name.

Aday made her recent contribution through a Charitable Remainder Unitrust, an estate planning vehicle that provides income during the donor’s lifetime with the remainder going to charity.

“This trust was a wonderful opportunity, given my goals,” Aday says. “I knew I had these charitable intents in mind, and the trust facilitated their being achieved.”