Commencement 2002

A large class, an inspired speaker and a tall order — to do some good in the world.

During their second-year show three years ago, the Class of 2001 sang (to the tune of “Jesus Christ Superstar”), “We’ll all take a fifth year before we’re done.” Meant as a joke, the lyric was almost prophetic. Many in the class did stay for a fifth year. Meanwhile, the number of students in the Class of 2002 who took a fifth year was lower than average. These two anomalies swelled the ranks of this year’s graduating class to 112, the largest in recent memory.

The students’ choice of Commencement speaker was also a departure from the norm. Paul E. Farmer, M.D., Ph.D., has followed an unusual path since he received a medical degree and a doctorate in anthropology from Harvard in 1990. He works in Haiti’s central plateau, tending to the rural poor in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. He also travels the world, defying the experts as he finds ways to bring medical care to tuberculosis patients in Peruvian slums or Russian prisons.

“When we began to treat AIDS patients in rural Haiti, it was dismissed as neither cost-effective nor sustainable,” Farmer said. “In fact, some experts argued that it was downright irresponsible to use antiretroviral drugs in a setting of such squalor. I underline the word experts here because such critiques have never, in my experience, come from poor patients and their families. I have never had someone say, ‘You know, doc, I’m very interested in treatment, but being a Haitian I’m really not cost-effective.’ ”

In closing, Farmer urged the new doctors to use their skills to change the face of medicine.

“Try not to constrict your borders to the confines of a single hospital,” he said. “The rest of the world is out there. This world will find you, even if you are hidden away in a hospital or a lab. It is my hunch and my hope that you will succeed in the challenge now before medicine, now before doctors-to rebuild modern medicine on a foundation of evidence and equity.”

Dean David A. Kessler, M.D., awarded Farmer the Peter Parker Medal for his contributions to medicine. “You demonstrate that there is all the difference in the world between a profession and a calling,” Kessler said. “Dr. Farmer, you teach us what it means to have a calling.”

—John Curtis

Commencement awards and honors

Bohmfalk Prize
Frederick J. Sigworth, Ph.D.
Richard Belitsky, M.D.

Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey Humanism in Medicine Award
Guadalupe Garcia-Tsao, M.D.

Leah M. Lowenstein Prize
Marie E. Egan, M.D.

Francis Gilman Blake Award
John S. Hughes, M.D.

Betsy Winters House Staff Award
Haider A. Akmal, M.D.

Parker Prize
Michael S. Singer

Miriam Kathleen Dasey Award
Rocco A. Iannucci
Rebekah G. Gross

Norma Bailey Berniker Prize
George King-Tso Lui

Dean’s Prize for Community Service
K. Claire Stylianopoulos
Emmanuelle M. Clerisme

Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey Humanism in Medicine Student Award
Anna Gibb Hallemeier

Campbell Prize
James S. Castle
K. Claire Stylianopoulos

Perkins Prize
R. Griff Kelley Jr.

Merck Book Award
Kebba M. Jobarteh
John A. Davis

M.D./Ph.D. Award
Scott R. Floyd
Nataki C. Douglas

M.D./Ph.D. Alumni Award
Michael S. Singer

Connecticut Society of American Board of Obstetricians and Gynecologists Prize
Hyacinth N. Browne

New England Pediatric Society Prize
Elizabeth M. Bird
Diana I. Bojorquez

Society for Academic Emergency Medicine Award
Jeanne K. Tyan

Connecticut Chapter of American College of Surgeons Prize
Prashanth Vallabhajosyula

Connecticut Academy of Family Physicians Award
R. Griff Kelley Jr.

Dr. David and Arthur Schuman Award of Excellence in Family Practice
Corey L. Martin

Endocrinology Society Medical Student Achievement Award
Daniel A. Hoit

Peter A.T. Grannum Prize
Nataki C. Douglas

Lauren Weinstein Award
F. Nikki Pinkerton

ACP-ASIM Internal Medicine Award
Joyce M.S. Oen-Hsiao

Cortlandt Van Rensselaer Creed Award
Kebba M. Jobarteh

Norman Herzig International Fellowship
Marc A. Davis

In a changed world, the agenda for public health remains much the same.

The prospects for public health altered dramatically on the morning that journalist Mark Schoofs left his New York City apartment in search of coffee “and was greeted by the sight of a gaping hole in the World Trade Center.

“You are being graduated into a world that has changed,” the Wall Street Journal reporter told students from the School of Public Health at their May 26 Commencement ceremony at Battell Chapel. “Things are different. … Some of you may find yourselves organizing vaccination or treatment against the deliberate infliction of disease,” said Schoofs. “But I suspect that most of you will not work directly on terrorism. And, without belittling the war on terrorism, that is as it should be.”

In a single day, he said, malaria kills almost 3,000 people. Tuberculosis kills about 5,500 people, and aids another 8,000-a toll of more than 15,000 people daily. “That’s five World Trade Center attacks, ten towers collapsing, every day.”

For the 123 students graduating with degrees in public health, Schoofs said the terrorist threat should underscore the impact of politics on public health. “It was a political vision that led those 19 hijackers to mass murder. But it is also politics that condemns many thousands to die of preventable or treatable infectious diseases every year,” said Schoofs, a 1985 Yale College graduate who won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of AIDS in Africa in 2000. Parents still lose their children to infections that could have been prevented by inexpensive vaccines. African-Americans die at higher rates than whites and receive inferior care, even after accounting for differences in socioeconomic status. “That’s politics,” said Schoofs.

He rejected the argument that the terrorists were motivated by anger over poverty and injustice. They were not poor, and their attack was not a protest but rather “an act of pure destruction and obliteration.” To counter this, he said, public health graduates must “insist that every life matters … Partly this is sheer pragmatism-infectious diseases do not stay in marginalized groups, but leak out into the general public, and your job is to protect the public. But insisting that every life matters is also a profound political statement, perhaps the most profound statement you can make.” In doing so, he told the graduates, “you are putting forth a philosophy that is the exact opposite of callousness and nihilism.”

The Rev. Thomas Gariepy, the student speaker, also emphasized “the political determinants” of health. He said that while the diseases afflicting people may have changed little over time, the political forces that influence disease are unique to our era. “Social justice is born in political engagement,” said Gariepy, a Catholic priest who was among the graduates. “If public health is social justice, then for us, public health will be political engagement.”

—Cathy Shufro

Terry Dagradi is a photographer with Med Media Services at the School of Medicine.

Commencement awards and honors

The School of Public Health awarded 114 master’s degrees and nine doctorates at Commencement exercises at Battell Chapel on May 26. s

Dean’s Prize for Outstanding M.P.H. Thesis
Michael Chan
Inhibited HIV and SIV Replication by Polymorphic VIF Sequences

Shalini Kapoor
A Needs Assessment of Orphan Children and Their Caregivers in the KwaZulu Natal Province in South Africa

Karen Sautter
Protecting Children in Times of Terror: Lessons From the Cold War

Katherine Van Loon
Informed Consent: A Study of the Experiences of Clinical Trial Researchers in South Africa

Award for Excellence in Teaching
Robert Dubrow, M.D., Ph.D.

The Henry J. (Sam) Chauncey Jr. Inspiration Award
Chanda Cashen

The Cortlandt Van Rensselaer Creed Award
Eric Ashton


			Originally published in Yale Medicine, Summer 2002. Copyright © 2002 Yale University School of Medicine. All rights reserved.