Former CDC Director honors Phi Theta Kappa Society

Dr. William Foege, 2018. Courtesy of Foege

by WILLOW SYMONDS
Staff Writer

The Phi Theta Kappa Honors Society welcomed former Center for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. William Foege (pronounced fay-gee). The Zoom took place during early January and was hosted by Veronica Capraru, the Honor Society advisor.

Dr. Foege graduated with a B.A. from a small Lutheran college in 1957, then attended medical school at the University of Washington, and, once he got his M.D. in 1961, went to Harvard for his M.P.H. He graduated from his third university in 1965.

Dr. Foege told of his early years at the CDC and began with, “Maybe these [stories] will help change your philosophy on life.” In the early 1960s, he worked in Africa as Chief of the Smallpox Eradication Program.

“We didn’t have enough equipment, we didn’t have enough vaccines, and here we were faced with an outbreak,” Foege said. “Instead of mass vaccination and protecting a lot of people who would not be exposed, we [decided to] protect the people exposed immediately.”

This is called the ‘vaccination ring,’ which the doctors used to find the most at-risk villages. It worked so well that the CDC used this strategy for other Smallpox-infected countries. They accomplished their mission and were out of work in six months.

Dr. Foege became the Director of CDC in 1977 and served for six years. He was the tenth Director and served under Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.

He described his time at the CDC, “As if every week were testing week. So much information is flooding over you that it’s hard to stay afloat. But it was still great though. Everyone is so much smarter than you, that you don’t really have to know anything,” he jokes.

The CDC’s big three objectives were – and still are – reducing premature mortality, stopping unnecessary suffering, and improving the quality of life, according to him. He also stressed the dangers of misinformation.

“The truth is essential,” Dr. Foege said. “The very first week [as Director], I told my employees, ‘You are free to talk to journalists, because I want journalists to have information from the person that best knows that subject.’ […] Now we had the best of both worlds: Journalists had the right information and we knew what our best people were saying.”

During the Q&A, a WCC student asked for Dr. Foege’s opinion on how the government handled the current pandemic.

“Think about the coronavirus in our cause and effect world,” he answered. “We were told by our president that this will disappear like magic. I watched those early press conferences, where the scientists would say one thing, the White House would say the opposite thing. People didn’t know what the truth was.”

Dr. Foege believes that COVID-19 should have been solved with a national plan.

“Instead states were told, ‘Figure this out yourself and compete for resources.’ We learned in the past that the best decisions are based on the best science, but the best results are based on the best management.”

He summed up, “Almost every lesson that we’ve learned over 150 years on infectious disease control was violated and so it’s no wonder that we ended up with such a mess.”

Many WCC students plan on transferring to earn degrees in health sciences. Choosing the right university is a daunting task and some students took this opportunity to ask the former director’s advice.

“For most of history, people did not have choices,” Dr. Foege said. “Yes, it’s difficult to make some of these decisions, but be happy you get to make these decisions.”

Then he stated that students might not believe this at the moment, but the most important thing about “how you end up turns out to be on you, not the school,” he said. “People are able to get a good education if they’re curious, no matter where they go.”

“I just expected that the teachers would get better at every level,” he said. “And it wasn’t true. The best teachers I had were [at] that small college. Be careful about going to a big-name school […] when that just might increase the distance between you and the faculty.”

What he recommends is for students to find a school where they resonate with its values and get the correct resources themselves.

Dr. Foege ended his speech with, “Thank you, and have a wonderful future.”

Afterwards, Phi Theta Kappa officer Audrey Barsch said that, “[Dr. William Foege] gave back to his community and showed that it was important to do so.” A piece of advice that stood out to her was, “Be curious about a lot of things because you never know when you will get an opportunity. Also, to remain open minded.”

Another PTK officer, Leylan Kazi, said over email, “A quote Dr. Foege that stood out to me was, ‘We will spend so much time during our life trying to get financial security. Why not spend time on the things that you’ve already decided are more important and that’s relationships, using your skills, having your freedom and so forth.’ That quote to me solidifies the importance of a healthy balance between school, work, and home. [I also learned that] curiosity is the willingness to want to learn, and in today’s day and age, with the vast digital information at our fingertips, there are many resources to educate yourself if you have curiosity.”

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