We are very excited that William H. Foege, MD, MPH, has been awarded the nation's highest civilian honor. Dr. Foege, former director of the CDC, former senior fellow at The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, key architect of polio eradication, and author of "House on Fire: The Fight to Eradicate Smallpox," is also the head of the Department's External Advisory Board and the namesake for our chair in Global Health.
When asked at an External Advisory Board meeting what keeps him up at night, he replied, "The need for good politics because there's no public health decision without a political decision."
Dr. Foege is a true visionary who inspires us every day. Here is how he ended the Department's first External Advisory Board Meeting: "In the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, the Tanzanian runner, John Stephen Ahkwari, was the last runner in the marathon. (He came in about an hour-and-a-half after the winner, practically caryying his leg because it was so bloodied and bandaged. Film Director Bud Greenspan asked him, "Why did you keep going? He said, 'You don't understand. My country did not send me 5,000 miles away to start a race, they sent me to finish it.' Four hundred years from now people will thank us not for starting a program to solve health disparities but for really solving them."