APHA Annual Meeting Reflection by K. Keenan

My Reflection on the APHAAnnual Meeting by Kevin Keenan, MPH ‘18

The American Public Health Association Meeting in Denver, Colorado covered every aspect of public health that you can think of!  Environmental and Occupational Health to infectious disease to health education strategies and interventions and everything in-between.  One of the more intriguing discussions/events that I attended was the General Session on Monday.  The four past/present directors of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention held a round table discussion and gave there insight on what it’s like to guide and shift the focus on the extraordinary work at this organization. 

It was interesting to see the shift in the major diseases and topics that each director faced.  Thomas Frieden, the current director used the Ebola epidemic, which is still fresh in all of our minds, and stated that the summer of 2014 was one of the toughest of his life.  He was staring at a disease that has been around for 35+ years, and suddenly overnight took the sight of a global epidemic.  His biggest struggle was deciding how many CDC personnel to put in the field in Western Africa when the epidemic was jumping from location to location every 3 weeks.  He finally decided to put 4,000 personnel in the field over that summer and luckily did not have any of them become infected. 

Julie Gerberding stated that her biggest dilemma during her time at the CDC wasn’t any infectious disease or new public health issue, it was politics.  She stated that she did not have much political support with her budget constantly being slashed.  She loosely attributed the handling (or mishandling depending who you talk to) of the SARS outbreak to the lack of research and personnel available to her.  The outbreak originated in South China in 2002, gaining much of exposure to the general public in November of 2002.  The outbreak did not spread widely in the United States, but she stated that the general public in the United States was inadequately informed about SARS due to political “red tape” and it put a massive strain on her and her tenure. 

To piggy back on Julie Gerberding’s biggest dilemma, David Satcher stated that his biggest hurdle during his time at the CDC turned out to be Congressman Tom Coplin.  David Satcher wanted to conduct more research on HIV/AIDS, however the senator was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal stating that the research they were conducting, in some convoluted way, actually was causing more of a spread of HIV/AIDS.  David Satcher started to see his budget become slashed and the public opinion on his research was unfavorable, all because one senator had his own point of view.  Dr. Satcher invited the senator to take a tour of the CDC in Atlanta and see first-hand the research that was conducted and get a better understanding of the crucial work that the CDC conducts.  Needless to say the congressman changed his stance on the HIV/AIDS research going on at the CDC and made sure to revamp their budget. 

It was interesting to hear the former CDC directors state how the government was often a hurdle in doing their jobs.  It leads to the question on what is an appropriate governmental role in public health action?  Here we have a federal government agency tasked to protect public health and safety, and its very own jurisdiction is creating hurdles for them to do their jobs.