Becoming the Public Health Leaders We Need to Be

ABSTRACT

[...]from her vantage points as a medical student, a resident, an emergency room doctor, a public health professional, and a political commentator, Wen provides a capsule history of several major public health events of the last few decades, including the continuing burden of HIV, the opioid epidemic, food insecurity, the Affordable Care Act, the rising toll of gun violence, the COVID-19 pandemic, the climate emergency, and more. [...]Wen describes her interactions with a glittering cast of mentors and role models as well as her efforts to pay this support forward by advising, assisting, and advancing the careers of her colleagues and students and the life success of her patients. Wen devotes limited space to a very public phase of her career, her brief stint as president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA).7 Hoping to provide a new direction for PPFA, she reports she had taken the job with the goal of repositioning the organization from being a leading advocate for abortion and reproductive rights into becoming a women's health organization that speaks for the health care needs of all women.