THE THOMAS FRANCIS, JR. MEDAL IN GLOBAL PUBLIC HEALTH

Introductory Remarks by President Mary Sue Coleman

Good morning. Wasn’t that a beautiful tribute?

This is a special day for the University of Michigan, and I am pleased you are here to commemorate its significance.

I want to recognize the chair of our Board of Regents, Regent Rebecca McGowan.

Among our guests on the stage are two people with an intimate connection to polio and the University of Michigan.

As you just saw in that beautiful film, Sunny Roller is a polio survivor. She came to the University some 20 years ago, in search of answers to the pain and weakness she was feeling.

Here, she met Dr. Frederick Maynard, a faculty member in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.

Once Sunny’s medical needs were addressed, she and Fred joined forces to research what we now know as Post-Polio Syndrome.

They created the Post-Polio Research and Training Program and, together, they have traveled the globe for two decades to educate patients and health care professionals about Post-Polio Syndrome.

Sunny and Fred, thank you for your boundless dedication to people around the world.

And thank you to our speakers this morning for their recollections and insights.

With the creation of the Thomas Francis Jr. Medal in Global Public Health, the University of Michigan is honoring two great figures—two men who literally changed the world by saving and improving countless lives.

The first is Thomas Francis Jr., a giant in the fields of epidemiology, virology, and medicine. Tommy Francis was the first American to isolate the human influenza virus, the first to identify its A and B strains, and the first to develop a vaccine against this deadly foe that plagues us still.

It was his inescapable attention to detail, his statistical rigor, and his sheer force of will that carried the polio vaccine field trials to their historic conclusion on this stage exactly 50 years ago this hour.

Church bells rang and front pages proclaimed victory as the wave of relief rolled worldwide from this building.

I cannot tell you what an honor and thrill it is for me to be standing at the very spot where Dr. Francis and his protégé, Dr. Jonas Salk, announced their triumph.

It is also my privilege to recognize members of the Francis and Salk families who are here for today’s ceremony. Their presence provides us with a deeply personal connection to a story of global significance.

Members of the Salk family include his son, Jonathan, his wife, Elizabeth Shepherd, and their sons, Ben and Hugh. Another Salk grandson with us is Jesse Salk.

From the Francis family, we have Dr. Francis’ daughter, Mary Jane Francis, her husband, Dr. Russell Alexander, and her son, William Levitch.

Two nephews of Tommy Francis are here: Jack Francis and Joe Francis, along with his wife, Sara. And we have a Francis cousin, Jim Eckelberger, and his wife, Kathleen.

Where the Francis family knew Tommy Francis as a father, uncle, and cousin, the world of public health recognized him as a determined epidemiologist.

He was an international leader well before the triumph over polio, but the field trials and the dramatic announcement here in Rackham Auditorium sealed his place in history.

Having seen the tremendous power of health policies based in science, Francis urged the growth of public health and epidemiology.

He said:

“Epidemiology must constantly seek imaginative and ingenious teachers and scholars to create a new genre of medical ecologists who, with both the fine sensitivity of the scientific artist, and the broad perception of the community sculptor, can interpret the interplay of forces which result in disease.”

William Foege,the first recipient of the Francis Medal,is just such a man.

He has the empathy to see into the minds and hearts of others. He has the compassion, the drive, and the will to want to do something about their suffering.

Since helping lead the global victory over smallpox, Dr. Foege has taken a leadership role in some of the most important public health issues of the last thirty years, including child survival and development; the global tobacco plague; preventive medicine; and injury control.

He has been a physician to the world—especially to the world’s less fortunate.

William Foege’s story begins in the inspiring work of scientist and humanitarian Albert Schweitzer. As a child reading about Schweitzer’s medical missionary work in Africa and his principal of “reverence for life,” Foege resolved that he, too, would minister to the health needs of the world’s poor.

He made good on that promise.

He earned a medical degree at the University of Washington and a master’s in public health at Harvard, and soon began work as a medical missionary in Nigeria.

It was there that the public health innovation for which he is most celebrated unfolded, and it was quite by accident.

The year was 1966, and smallpox had begun devastating the villages around him. But he and his colleagues lacked enough smallpox vaccine to inoculate everyone in the region, as was the practice in those days.

Instead, he applied his remarkable empathy, and put himself in the place of a greedy, self-interested virus:

What would HE do if he were bent on eternal life through spreading and replicating?

This led him to think about places where the virus would travel from one human host to another—places such as crowded markets, homes, and wherever people gathered.

From there, it was a matter of figuring out where the virus had been and where it would most likely go next.

With what little vaccine they had, Foege and his colleagues managed to corner the smallpox outbreak in three “hot spots” and surround it with newly vaccinated people who would prevent its spread.

The strategy worked.

This surveillance and modeling of how disease spreads has proven its worth time and time again, and has become the global standard of care for emerging diseases.

In 1979, the World Health Organization declared smallpox—a plague on humanity since at least the time of the pharaohs—to be eradicated.

It was a feat that would have been unthinkable just a decade before.

This new and highly effective strategy has been William Foege’s greatest gift to the world, but there are many others.

He became director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control in 1977, and it was during his leadership that the agency first addressed the troubling new scourge that came to be known as AIDS.

The CDC also went about solving the smaller mysteries of Toxic Shock Syndrome and the dangerous connection between aspirin and Reye’s Syndrome in children.

In 1984, he helped to form the Task Force for Child Survival and Development to increase childhood immunizations.

During his tenure as executive director, general immunization levels of the world’s children rose from 20 percent to an impressive 80 percent in just six years.

He then joined The Carter Center as its executive director, and fought to eradicate the Guinea worm, a water-borne parasite that cripples lives and communities.

In 1997 he joined the faculty at Emory University to train tomorrow’s public health leaders.

And in 1999, he became the senior medical advisor to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the leading advocates of improving public health in the world today.

Four years ago, in recognition of his life’s work in improving worldwide public health, Dr. Foege was awarded the prestigious Mary Woodard Lasker Award for Public Service. It is the closest tribute to a Nobel Prize awarded in our country.

Today, the University of Michigan’s Thomas Francis Jr. Medal honors William Foege for his extraordinary contributions to the cause of global public health.

He has given less fortunate children a better life, helped to eradicate smallpox, and worked to eliminate Guinea worm.

We offer the Francis Medal to thank him, to call attention to the poignant public health needs that still existthroughout the world, and to encourage efforts to end needless and preventable suffering.

We honor William Foege on this historic anniversary as the first recipient of the Thomas Francis Jr. Medal in Global Public Health.

But it is truly we who are honored to have this great humanitarian and healer in our presence today.

If I could invite Dr. Foege and Regent McGowan to join me….

By the authority of the State of Michigan, vested in the Board of Regents, and by them delegated to me, I now confer upon you, WILLIAM FOEGE, the THOMAS FRANCIS, JR. MEDAL, and admit you to all its rights, honors and privileges.

Congratulations, and thank you.