public health matters

A Powerful Triad

On staying true to our core values of Think. Teach. Do. in this political moment.

The world, as we have seen it transform in the past weeks, now troubles many of us to the point where we want to close down or run. We feel a desperate desire to turn away from an unjust world. If we could only shut off, physically and mentally, shut the newspaper, take a trip, stay off the Internet. We ask, why work now at public health when our federal officials seem not to care about how to make the world healthier?  

We are trapped in the present. The fabric of our pressured political world holds us in place. Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk, wrote, “We don’t have a choice about the age we live in, but I have a choice about the attitude I take and the way and extent of my participation in its living ongoing events. To choose the world is… an acceptance of a task and a vocation in the world, in history and in time.” At BUSPH, we are past the question of whether to participate; retreat is impossible; there are forces that have not stopped at the door, but have entered the house. We have moved to the question: how to participate? 

We follow our maxim Think. Teach. Do. This triad is powerful in the moment. We must travel between these three verbs, all of which are equally important in moving us past our very real fears.

It is through research that we Think. Research helps us contemplate and assess what has happened and is happening. In Thinking, we recognize past versions of our political predicaments and how they have affected health. These insights are necessary to predict health outcomes, the risks and consequences of our policies. We seek support for our work to pursue truth. Our best research captures the attention of the public and effects change in the world. To continue to write papers and collect data, and to analyze it scientifically, is to believe in the value of our endeavor.

We Teach. Teaching is what we do, and who we are. Public health is the work of keeping ourselves and others alive and well at this moment. We are teaching about the problems of public health—what are the conditions of the world that keep us unhealthy? And we offer students the tools to change those conditions. Public health involves a discussion of the present as a means to create a view of our future. We are oriented toward forming a more perfect health and this is what we must teach. Teaching is an optimistic act in in this run-for-the-exit moment. 

We Do. Researching and teaching are forms of Doing. So is political activism. Public health has always been collective, organized work. Our staff and students and faculty have chosen this profession because it is the work of civic affairs and by its nature political.  

So we at BUSPH will continue to move across the verbs Think, Teach, Do. The interplay of these actions increases the value of each of them. 

Michael Stein, MD

Dean Ad Interim
Boston University School of Public Health
mdstein@bu.edu

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