Dr. Céline Gounder on three public health wins: youth smoking dropped from 36% to 3%, smallpox was eradicated through massive WHO-CDC coordination, and motor vehicle deaths fell through engineering improvements. The real work isn't the science, she says. It's the logistics, communication, and optimism to scale it.
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I mentioned earlier the progress with tobacco control. We reduced youth smoking from 36% to 3%, you know, 90% plus. So we've made progress. Céline, what's one example of past success that you can think of that can give us hope? And then let's talk about what are things that we can do toward the future to build a healthier country and world.
Well, in addition to smoking, A couple others that stand out, well, smallpox eradication is one. As an infectious disease specialist, it would be remiss of me to leave that one out. Bill Foege, who was one of the leaders of that effort and a former CDC director like you, recently passed away. And one of the things he told me, which I think relates to what we're ending with, is surround yourself by optimists. And yes, you need the cynics and the pessimists to sort of challenge your thinking, but be optimistic because that's the only way you get things done. And I, I think about that every day, and the challenge that was eradicating smallpox, the only infectious disease ever to have been eradicated from the face of the earth, uh, human infectious disease. And, um, so I think that was a huge, uh, accomplishment, but that required This was something coordinated by the WHO with the CDC's support and a huge amount of coordination and communication. The technical aspects of it were actually pretty straightforward. You just have to vaccinate somebody for smallpox. But the logistics of doing that are what are complicated, not necessarily the science of that. And unfortunately, that's a lot of what has been eroded, not just the science, but the operations, the logistics, the communication. Another one I would throw out there would be motor vehicle accidents. We've made tremendous progress engineering cars and roadways to be safer and safer over time.
