Oral History

 

"The fact that public health is so separate from medicine is not good. When I was at Hopkins, we always talked about the canyon between—Wolf Street was a canyon, on one side was a medical school, on the other side is the school of public health. I think that's improved a lot and that's partly improved because so many physicians have chosen to go back and get an MPH for a variety of reasons; sometimes they think they're getting the research skills, they're often getting skills in population health. Medical schools and their academic health centers have not been terribly responsive to the communities which they serve. I think they've gotten very much better over the years. I mean, to me there's a real social responsibility that we have. Both private and public institutions have this responsibility and so what you would see the school of public health, for example, at Hopkins, doing in the community, versus what you at the time saw a medical school doing in the community, and they were really different. So as they have come closer together. They're not there yet, but they're much closer. That's something that I felt very strongly about. ” - N. Lynn Eckhert, MD, MPH, DrPH, on bridging medical education and public health

 

For the complete audio of the oral history and full transcript, click here.