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News/Event Item
An Interview with William Foege
Mary Woodard Lasker Award for Public Service, 2001
Interview by Allan Rosenfield
Allan Rosenfield, Dean of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University interviews William Foege, whose courageous leadership improved global health and led to the erradication of smallpox, on 20 September 2001.
Following is an excerpt from the interview. Links to the full transcript and video are at the bottom of this page.
Rosenfield: Hi. I'm Alan Rosenfield, Dean of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. With me today is William Foege. Bill, it's an honor to be with you on this occasion. I wonder, as we start, whether you'd like to say something about the horrific events of the past week and the public health implications.
Foege: Well, I'm impressed that even ten days later, there's such a depression in any group that one meets with. And it's a time where you really need optimists. But it strikes me that this is a little bit like what global health is about. That if you concentrate on it, you absolutely get depressed. I often times tell students that every day, 30,000 children die before the age of five. And I've never had a real mental concept of what that was. And suddenly on September 11th, you get the feeling of what that means. The problem with the 30,000 children, they're so diffused geographically that there's no way to put them on a television screen. And therefore it's very difficult to get the kind of response that's needed. And the AR is, when you look at ten days and the response of, not just New York and Washington, but the entire United States, and the millions of acts, of good acts, how could you get that kind of response in global health?
Rosenfield: That's very interesting. Let's go back in your career. You started with the Epidemiologic Intelligence Service at CDC. Could you tell us how you got started there after medical school?
Foege: In medical school, I worked after school and on Saturdays for Ray Ravenholt. Ray Ravenholt was the epidemiologist for Seattle, King County Health Department. One of these people who is energetic, interested in everything, makes things exciting. And I had never even thought of public health and epidemiology until I worked for him. But he was working on everything, steph infections, what happens at swimming pools. Recently he published an article on what was the real cause of death of Merriweather Lewis. I mean he's just interested in everything. And so he kept telling me about the Epidemic Intelligence Service at CDC. When I finished my internship, he continued to push me in that direction. And so I went to CDC and I've never been sorry.
Copyright Lasker Medical Research Network
 Dr. William Foege is a member of the Board of Directors of the Global Health Council.
To read the full transcript or download the video interview, go to:
http://www.laskerfoundation.org/awards/library/2001public.shtml
Click here for a related article, "Dr. William Foege to Receive Lasker Award for Public Service"
For more on Dr. Foege and the Award for Public Service, go to:
http://www.laskerfoundation.org/awards/library/2001public.shtml
category: News from Other Sources : General Health News
contributed by Andrea Welch on 24 January 2002
North America : United States
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