I chose a career in public health because of its power to improve lives, as the field did in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by controlling infectious diseases such as cholera and tuberculosis. I was fortunate to begin my career as a program analyst at the National Institutes of Health working to streamline funding allocation decisions. Over the past few weeks, it has been painful to witness the White House issuing directives curtailing federal funding, communications disparaging public health leaders, and directives to fire staff at numerous federal public health agencies, including NIH. Like many public health professionals, I fear what will happen next.
These attacks on public health efforts — and the feelings of anger and frustration from Covid-19 policy failures — have sent me searching for how the field fell from its glory years over a century ago. Where exactly did we go wrong?
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