Healthy Spaces

Why a   Professor Becomes a Health Officer David Bishai, MD, MPH, PhD On January 1, 2021 I left my job as a tenured public health professor to become a full time health officer for Harford County Maryland.  I did this to help save lives and ultimately to help rescue a discipline that is in disrepair and disarray. There is no way to spin 2020 as a success story for American public health. Professionals must be judged by their results.    Architects whose buildings collapse, coaches who lose, doctors whose patients die, must all re-examine their approach. Americans  have been dying. Public health must avoid the temptation to just blame politicians and skimpy budgets.  We must soul search and recommit to all of our discipline. Public health is the practice of science in a value rich environment. Historically, public health has helped transform foul, dank, sewage strewn communities into clean healthy human habitats. Public health conquered, TB, cholera, malaria, typhoid and has moved on