Kirk Smith and Art Reingold • To the public health graduates of 2020

It would be understandable if you feel unlucky and disadvantaged by having had to struggle to finish during the COVID-19 pandemic and to try to find jobs afterwards.  

In reality, however, you may be the most advantaged graduating class in public health history.

Why?  Because unlike all who have gone before, you may never have to explain what public health is.  Everyone now knows, including the media and the politicians.  And even your curmudgeon Uncle Frank at Thanksgiving dinner may now respect the choice you made in your career. 

And epidemiology, something that you all took but may once have had a hard time describing to your grandmother.  She, too, now understands at least the basics of what it is and certainly has a far better inkling of why it is important.

And inequities in health that are so critical to our field today.  No one who pays even the smallest attention to the news can fail to have heard how this pandemic has hit the poor and disadvantaged among us so much harder than others.

And, one hopes, the value of science will receive a substantial boost in the public’s mind as well.  Polls show that most people have now hold strongly positive views about public health science and trust it more than most politicians or the press.  It is becoming clear, perhaps, who the unbiased professionals are, with the public’s interest at heart.

We can also hope that this may translate into other realms.  Perhaps US society as a whole will begin to more seriously consider what science says and what the models estimate will happen to health from a climate now burdened by unfettered human activities.  In addition to being willing to change behavior to help flatten the coronavirus curve, perhaps Americans will become more willing to help flatten the climate change curve that also threatens us all.

Perhaps too, it will help re-ignite belief in good government, which is essential to maintaining reliable public health services among many other important features of healthy societies. We have all been witnessing what Warren Buffet warned, “When the tide goes out, it is apparent who has been swimming naked.”  

More aptly, “Without good government, nothing works.”

As at the start of many wars, you were the last generation of recruits that were entirely volunteers.  Many more may join later, but you came already knowing in advance what was important about our field and were not drawn indirectly by lurid accounts of battle.  In Adlai’s Stevenson’s words, “Most cannot see the handwriting on the wall, until their backs are up against it.”  But not you.

Indeed, you may find yourself the vanguard of a new cohort, the post-pandemic cohort of modern public health professionals.  Those of you who take up teaching may find that you may need to rethink what you just learned so that you can help your students apply appropriate skills to the new public health challenges ahead.  Including, it seems likely, new pandemics, the COVID-27 or COVID-36, that wait for us.  With your leadership, the public may be willing to work with you to be ready next time.

We envy you these advantages. Congratulations and best of luck with this new world.

Kirk R. Smith and Art Reingold