Lydia Ogden is a 20-year CDC employee currently working on prevention in health reform at Emory University, where she is the chief of staff for the Center for Entitlement Reform (http://entitlementreform.emory.edu/) and the Institute for Advanced Policy Solutions (http://www.emory.edu/policysolutions/).
The summary of my education is as good a place to start as any, but does not begin to explain how life and work added critical public health competencies. I’m the English major your parents warned you about. My undergraduate degree is in both education and English, and I was certified to teach grades K through 12. I have a master’s in literature – specifically Anglo-Saxon and Medieval British Lit. (If we run into any Vikings, I can talk to them about safer sex.) A decade-plus later, I picked up another master’s degree, in public policy, with concentrations in strategic management and press, politics and policy. As I type, I’m on the downhill run to a doctorate in health policy, a multidisciplinary curriculum including health economics, health services research, statistics, evaluation, and political science. (It’s astounding to me, the reader of untranslated Beowulf and The Canterbury Tales, that I know how to run SAS, STATA, and SPSS and what the outputs mean.)
A list of the jobs I had before I ever got to the government includes teacher of 8th grade grammar and composition as well as special ed; media relations for a large teaching hospital and research institution; health care reporter covering everything from hospital malpractice risk management to fears of GRID (gay-related immune disorder, as AIDS was known then); public relations-advertising-marketing executive (worst client: a toss-up between a trucking company and a potato chip bag manufacturer); soup kitchen manager; freelance corporate communications consultant.
Every one of those jobs taught me something I have used in public health, in one way or another. I learned how to make a comma splice interesting to 13-year-old boys and how to make Moby Dick exciting to adolescent girls who only cared about those goofy boys – useful skills when presenting dry-as-dust surveillance information to the media. At the teaching hospital, I wrote a piece on Tennessee fainting goats, which have a condition called myotonia congenita. When startled, they “faint” – though they remain conscious, they fall over and cannot move. Researchers were studying the goats to learn about muscle conditions (MS, MD) in humans. I learned about turning over lots of rocks for information and moving research into practice from that story and others. I learned to translate science, ask questions and really listen to answers, and write clearly and concisely on tight deadlines as a reporter. I became skilled at creating communications pieces to appeal to different audiences – from the public to policy-makers – in the marketing and PR world. At soup kitchens, I found I had an affinity for the guys thought to be unreachable, so deeply sunk inside their paranoia or addiction that they were typically uncommunicative. No doubt, my ability to connect with them drew on my SpEd days (and my life with a profoundly developmentally delayed younger sister). As a kid, I spent time in the Bronx in 1968 (after the riots, it looked like a war zone, and it was, in many ways) and, as an adult, lived in marginal parts of Atlanta, where drug dealers and users and gunfire were the norm. I’ve seen the ravages of meth and oxycontin in Appalachia, where my family lives. From all these experiences, I learned the differences between us are small indeed, but can have profound and deeply troubling consequences.
I joined the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), a sister agency to CDC, in 1989 following a freelance contract to help scientists prepare a report for Congress on medical waste in the environment, prompted by fears of HIV and other diseases. I started the community involvement program after asking who was working with people living around waste sites, to allay fears and inform them about the government’s activities and how to protect themselves from toxins. (“You are.”) I moved to CDC’s domestic HIV/AIDS in 1993, just in time to help launch the first-ever condom public service announcements on national TV and cope with the policy and practice implications of the advent of AZT to interrupt mother-to-child HIV transmission. One of my main responsibilities was to be the point of contact for the public and advocates seeking a way into the government bureaucracy. The marginalized populations at waste sites, at risk for HIV and living with AIDS, under-educated, drug-addicted, unemployed, and often overlooked, were not strangers to me. I had worked and lived with them for years. Later, I helped launch the Global AIDS Program and implement the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), probably the job I’m most proud of, and that drew on all my education and every life and work experience.
That brings me to the advice portion of this little piece. The broader your knowledge and experience, as long as you put it to good use, the more you bring to any prospective employer. Flitting here and there isn’t the same thing. The trick is to have a lot of tools in your kit, ones you know how to use from practice. You get that by spending time doing something (particularly, perhaps, the things you are not especially good at to begin with). Communication skills are essential. You have to be able to present often complex information simply, clearly, and correctly – orally, in writing and visually. You have to be flexible and open to opportunities, and reinvent yourself every once in a while.