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As a young nursing student attending her required community health nursing class, Betty Bekemeier experienced firsthand the power of a positive role model.
Before he earned his MD, Joel Kaufman was a best-selling author — for a week, at least.
In 1982, he took a year off from his studies to work for the consumer advocacy Public Citizen Health Research Group in Washington, D.C. The result was a book, Over the Counter Pills That Don’t Work.
Devastating floods had just hit Mozambique when Kenny Sherr first arrived in March 2000. Rivers had overflown from heavy rains, killing hundreds and destroying cattle and crops.
“A woman gave birth in a tree,” says Sherr, now an associate professor of global health at the University of Washington School of Public Health. “Rosita, the baby, made international news. Everybody knew about it.”
It was Irene Njuguna’s dream to save children from the agonies of childhood disease. But as a pediatric resident in Nairobi, she felt powerless standing by the bedside. She saw gaps in the health care system, from a critical shortage of hospital beds and intravenous lines to low testing rates for HIV.
Heather Fowler grew up with dogs, reptiles, hedgehogs and a guinea pig named Mr. Guinea. She worked with exotic birds in Hawaii during college and trained to treat small pets in vet school. After meeting an officer from the Epidemic Intelligence Service of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Fowler, then a veterinary student, started to think seriously about how public health and animal health converge.
After more than 30 years working on legal issues related to the delivery of health care services, Jeff Sconyers is now using his vast experience and knowledge to make policy and ethics come to life for students at the University of Washington School of Public Health.