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Erik: How did Yale ecology professor Alvin Novak inspire your public health career?
Clara: Professor Novak was one of the really inspirational figures in my life. I only took
one class with him but it really opened my eyes to a lot of the challenges that face
politicians, policy makers, and a lot of people who are making decisions for large numbers
of stakeholders.
I took a class that was called AIDS and Society and Professor Novak had originally started
his career as an ecologist and he transitioned to areas of biology and sociology. In addition
to being an outstanding professor, he pioneered the idea of the needle exchange.
His slant on science was a human rights perspective. We like to think science is very colorblind.
In reality the way funding works and different things, it is very political.
The types of answers you get from scientific questions depend on the questions you are
asking. A lot of times policy makers and politicians can influence those questions. So one of the
things that we learned was that when the AIDS epidemic came to the US, because it was looked
at as this gay disease and there was a lot of rampant homophobia, the political response
really helped to exacerbate the epidemic whereas another infectious disease that may haveÉif
it was an infectious disease striking down children at that rate, even though we didnÕt
know all the science behind it there would have been a much, much stronger response to
the epidemic and it possibly could have been stopped, at least in the United States.
Instead, because it was a marginalized population there was a lot of hesitation to do any research
around it. Once they discovered what the cause was there was not much public health mobilization.
So that really opened my eyes to the fact that though diseases can be blind Ð can be
colorblind Ð our responses are not always so. So, educating policymakers on the potential
overflow impacts of their decisions I thought was a really important aspect of one of the
things I learned Again it was an idea of trying to bridge É between the scientific researchers
and the policymakers and trying to connectÉ. trying to let the scientists understand why
political decisions where made and try to let politicians and policymakers understand
how their decisions can affect the science.