Active agenda: Promoting better health through policy and personal example

Incoming AMA President Ron Davis, MD, brings vast experience in preventive medicine and public health to his new position.

By Damon Adams, AMNews staff. June 11, 2007.

The photo is one of many on his laptop, tucked away with images of his family wakeboarding on a lake and taking a raucous roller coaster ride at Universal Studios.

It was taken more than 30 years ago when Ron Davis, MD, was a high school student. The lanky teen from Illinois is pictured in Ecuador giving a shot to a girl, one of 500 children he vaccinated against measles through a program in the South American country.

"I was interested in Spanish and I was also interested in medicine. My mother had talked to me about becoming a doctor for a long time, so that seemed like a great opportunity," Dr. Davis said over coffee recently in his East Lansing, Mich., home.

"We vaccinated kids in very poor areas of the country, and I remember some of the towns we traveled to, we could only get to by mule. We stayed with local families in these shack huts. It was a really unique sort of experience, which I think helped shape me as a person in recognizing that most of the people in the world do not enjoy the wealth and the material goods that we do."

The 1973 Ecuador trip was early inspiration for what would become a career devoted to preventive medicine and public health. In public- and private-sector jobs, Dr. Davis has promoted immunizations, tackled smoking, fought obesity and pressed for healthy living.

When the Michigan physician takes over as president of the American Medical Association this month, he will lead an organization whose advocacy agenda includes promoting healthy lifestyles, expanding health insurance coverage for the uninsured and preparing for and responding to public health emergencies.