Francesca Calderone-Steichen
Calderone Prize and Lecture
October 25, 2016
Good morning and welcome!
We are here today, almost twenty-five years after awarding the first Calderone Prize in Public Health to retired surgeon-general Dr. C. Everett Koop, and almost thirty years after the passing of my father, Dr. Frank Calderone, for whom this Prize is named.
The Calderone Prize and Lecture would not exist without the steady behind-the-scenes support of our Mailman staff, for which I am very grateful, and a stellar and devoted Calderone Prize Selection Committee, for which I am not only grateful but continually amazed and always impressed. The Committee chooses Calderone Prizerecipients from an ever-changing roster of distinguished public health luminaries from around the world, and we all push to keep the Prize on the front burner in order to honor not just the recipient but the field of public health as a whole.
This field of ours is large, multi-layered, and sometimes a bit diffuse, and those who go into it face manychallenges, not the least of which aregoals that are often measured in years or even decades, budgets that grow and then shrink with dispiriting regularity,entrenched societal mores, and communities thatprod themselves into action when there is a public health emergency, then lapseinto indifference or lethargy once that emergency has passed. In other words, whenthings are going well public health is all but invisible,but when things are not going well public health faces the sharp tip of the sword. When you think about it, it really is a crazy way to make a living!
The Calderone Prizewas created to shine a spotlight on the fieldby awarding and thanking transformative public health professionals at the peak of their careers with a prize of exceptional gravitas; to shake things up a bit and focus our thinking on new ideas via the Calderone Lecture; to inspire young professionals likeour Calderone Junior Faculty awardees who are at the beginning of their own potentially transformative careers; andto give public health students who are just starting out some very good reasons to continue their studies and stay the course.
There are three generations of the Calderone family who were, and are,fellow professionals and cheerleaders for the work all of you do, and I am here today, on behalf of my family and my forebears, to thank each and every one of you.
This year we are honoring Dr. Mary Travis Bassett, Commissioner of Health for New York City. Dr. Bassett heads up one of the best managed,most highly regarded, and most influential health departments in the world, andI am happy to admit that her place of work has always helda special place in my heart because, early in their careers, both of my public health physician parents worked on the lower east side for the New York City Health Department and, what is more, they wereintroduced to each other by the incomparable Dr. Leona Baumgartner, who would go on a few years later to become thefirst woman to serve as New York City’s Commissioner of Health. So I think I can say without equivocation and absolutely no possibility of contradiction that if it hadn’t been for theNew York City Health Department I would not be here today!
To introduce Dr. Basssett, and to join with me in presenting the Calderone Medal, it is now my very great pleasure to introduce a valued colleague, friend and public health pioneer in her own right, Dr. Linda Fried, Dean and DeLamar Professor of Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health.Linda heads up the Calderone Prize Selection Committee and her continued support and wise counsel down through the years has been of inestimablevalue to us all.