About Lecture

The Ann Dial McMillan Endowed Lectureship in Family and Child Health is a unique interdisciplinary lectureship designed to tap into and promote public health breakthroughs relevant to family and children’s health. Lectures address challenges and innovations in maternal and child health with a special focus on issues that affect everyday life such as nutrition, diabetes, cancer, obesity, substance abuse, and other salient topics. The goal of the lecture is to promote the health of children, their families, and the community as a whole by educating the academic community about new discoveries in family and children’s health practices.

About the Ann Dial McMillan

Ann Dial McMillan was raised in the example of her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Roper and Louise Dial, who believed in giving back to the community. As the wife of former Alabama Lieutenant Governor George McMillan, Jr., she is keenly aware of the public health challenges facing families across Alabama. Ann is an enthusiastic champion of the School of Public Health’s programs, particularly contributions to childhood immunizations and healthcare advances within the state. Her father, who lost both parents to tuberculosis when he was a child, was the inspiration for her commitment to the establishment of the Ann Dial McMillan Lecture on Family Health.

Generous with her donations of time, energy, and money, Ann is and has been active on numerous community and civic boards, including Children’s Health System and the Birmingham Area Chapter of the American Red Cross, both of which she was board chair, and the Women’s Fund. As Vice President for Community Affairs at SouthTrust/Wachovia, she managed charitable contributions until her retirement in 2005, and now she continues that tradition with leadership positions in such community organizations as Leadership Birmingham and Leadership Alabama as well as the UAB Leadership Cabinet and the Dean’s Advisory Committee for the UAB School of Public Health.

Ann has received awards from, among others, the Junior League of Birmingham, the Metropolitan YMCA, the Girl Scouts of Cahaba Council, and the Southern Women’s Committee of Fifty in recognition of her commitment to volunteerism and service. 

Upcoming Lectures

Topic: “On the fetal origins of adult disease – Are we asking the wrong questions?”

Allen Wilcox is an epidemiologist at NIEHS/NIH in Durham NC, and editor-in-chief of EPIDEMIOLOGY. He holds an MD from the University of Michigan, a PhD in epidemiology from the University of North Carolina, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Bergen (Norway). His research has explored topics from fertility and early pregnancy loss to fetal growth and birth defects. His textbook (Fertility and Pregnancy: An Epidemiologic Perspective) was published in 2010 by Oxford.

Dr. Wilcox will discuss research on fetal vulnerability, which has focused mostly on the links between fetal nutrition and subsequent adult health. This focus on fetal growth may be distracting us from other aspects of fetal exposures that may constitute much more worrisome threats to adult health – and also be much harder to detect.

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