CDC chief poses framework for resolving future issues

Overcoming complacency is a first step toward resolving public health's mega-challenges.

By Susan J. Landers, AMNews staff. Oct. 2, 2006.

Washington -- When Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Julie Gerberding, MD, MPH, came to George Washington University's School of Public Health and Health Services in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 12, she told the students how she had spent her weekend -- and it wasn't lounging in the sun.

Her agency was dealing with a possible toxic dump from a ship off the African coast that had allegedly killed several people. A policy statement was in the works on an extremely drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis. Disease detectives were in the process of alerting 150,000 people who attended a Tennessee horse show of their possible exposure to a rabid horse. And preparations were under way for the first joint conference of health promotion, chronic disease prevention and birth defect experts.

In the background, ongoing West Nile virus concerns and planning for a pandemic flu outbreak were also on the to-do list.

Fortunately, no one ran screaming from the room. Dr. Gerberding was urging the students to "step up to the plate." Her speech was the first in George Washington University's new Public Health Grand Rounds series.

Dr. Gerberding provided an outline for tackling the seemingly overwhelming issues that face public health. She numbered among those challenges the conflicts that are ravaging the world and severe climate changes that hold the potential to trigger even more serious natural disasters than have been seen recently.