Public Health, a Lighthouse in the Dark: Love Letter #3
Candice Sauers shares a deeply personal reflection on how public health found her — and how, through pain and healing, she came to love the work that gave her purpose.
We continue our series of love letters to public health with a deeply personal entry from Candice Sauers, who expresses a powerful and heartfelt tribute to public health—not as a career path discovered by design, but as a force that quietly shaped her life. Through personal experiences of hardship, survival, and resilience, she reflects on how public health has become both a source of healing and a lifelong calling.
If you would like to follow Candice’s example by sharing a love letter to any aspect of public health or reflecting on your public health career, please get in touch!
Dear Public Health,
by Candice Sauers, Deputy Director at the Health Department of Saline County, Kansas
I didn’t fall in love with you all at once.
It wasn’t love at first sight. It wasn’t a grand moment of clarity or a lightning bolt of realization. You came to me quietly—like most good things do. You were there in the background long before I ever learned your name.
You were there when I was a child, forced to grow up too quickly. When I was learning how to give medications, how to monitor a loved one’s breathing, how to manage addiction and illness before I even knew how to manage myself. You were in the cracks of my grief, the spaces between my questions, the empty refrigerator when times were hard. You were the thing we needed, even when we didn’t know what to call you.
You were there when my world shifted again—when I walked into an abusive relationship and stayed far too long, not because I didn’t want better, but because I didn’t know how to ask for it. You saw me—powerless, disconnected, convinced I didn’t matter—and you waited patiently for me to find my way back. You never judged me. You just stayed close, like a lighthouse in the dark.
Public Health, I fell in love with you the day I realized you are everything.
You’re not just vaccines and data. You’re food on the table and safe places to sleep. You’re clean water and wages that reflect someone’s worth. You’re the quiet moments where someone finally feels seen. You’re the reason a child makes it to their first birthday. The reason a mother gets to breathe easier. The reason someone dares to hope again.
You are the connection between the farmer and the family who needs fresh food. You are the ride to the job interview. The interpreter at the clinic. The advocate in the courtroom. The safe face at the table no one thought they belonged at.
You are policy and people. Numbers and names. Action and heart.
I love you for the way you bring people in. For how you transform strangers into stakeholders. For how you help people fall in love with their communities by showing them just how much care exists behind the scenes. I’ve seen it happen—when I bring someone along to a council meeting or a public health event, and they finally see you. That spark lights in their eyes and they realize: this is what it’s all about.
I love you because you fight for the ones who don’t know how to fight for themselves. Because you meet people where they are—and never ask them to be anything other than exactly who they are. You protect, you educate, you build. You don't just respond to crisis—you work to prevent it entirely.
Public Health, you gave me a place to belong when I wasn’t sure I belonged anywhere. You gave me purpose when all I had known was survival. You taught me that my pain could fuel something greater—and that the weight I carried could be turned into compassion, into connection, into change.
I love you because you don’t do this work for applause. You do it for the one life saved. The one child fed. The one voice heard.
Almost a decade spent in survival mode taught me how deep wounds can run. It taught me how shame lingers in the quiet, how insecurity grows in the dark. But in you, I found healing. And I was lucky enough to find people—my people—who loved me through that healing. Who saw how broken I was and stood beside me anyway. You were a part of that love too.
I’ve come a long way, and I owe so much of it to you.
Thank you, Public Health, for everything you are—for the lives you touch, for the safety you build, for the future you protect.
Forever yours,
Candice
Candice Sauers is the Deputy Director of the Saline County Health Department in Kansas, a passionate advocate for community connection, public service, and systems-level change.
Join Candice for the “Let’s Talk About It” podcast: a real, unfiltered look at public health, local government, and the human stories that connect us all—because understanding builds stronger communities.
If you would like to follow Candice’s example by sharing a love letter to any aspect of public health or reflecting on your public health career, please get in touch!
Action steps - a note from Katie
Thank you for reading this newsletter for and about the public health workforce. At this tumultuous time, I’m still really not sure where we go from here. But each time that I publish this newsletter and receive positive feedback from readers, my list of ideas for action steps continues to grow. I will start to compile these suggestions here. As we learn more, let’s keep adding to this list:
Do Candice’s words above inspire you? Would you also like to write a love letter to public health? Or to reflect on your public health career? Got something to say to or about the public health workforce? I would love to publish your words here. Get in touch.
Let’s communicate what public health is and why it matters that so many of us have been forced to leave our jobs. What is your proudest moment in public health? Complete this form to submit your public health story to be used for advocacy.
This newsletter is for and about the public health workforce. Subscribe for free to never miss an episode. If this newsletter has been valuable to you and you think that it should remain available for free to others, please consider supporting it with a paid subscription for yourself or gifting one to somebody else who would appreciate it. BONUS: paid subscriptions now include full access to the archive of posts from all 4 seasons published since 2022.
Every little counts. If this newsletter has been meaningful to you, please show appreciation for the efforts and experiences that have shaped my perspective by buying me a coffee. ☕️
If you can’t support this newsletter with money at this time, support our community with your words: please join me to continue the conversation in the comments here or in the Public Health Connections Lounge. How have you been affected by recent changes to the public health workforce? How are you doing? What have you learned? Do you have any wisdom to share? What questions would you like to ask about moving forward?
Share this Substack newsletter far and wide. Like ❤️ and restack this post if you believe in public health. Use Substack’s Recommendations feature to write a review of this newsletter. (Or teach me how to use Notes or Chat better?)
Check in on your friends and colleagues who work in public health and find out how they are doing. It’s rough out here, tbh. Share a gift subscription to this newsletter with them, so that they feel less alone.
Come on over to LinkedIn and join us in the Public Health Connections Lounge for supportive conversation, resource sharing, and community building among members of the public health workforce at all stages of our careers.
Do you have suggestions for how to leverage this newsletter and community to be a supportive resource to public health professionals at this time? Please get in touch.
I believe in lifting the voices of the public health workforce. If you are a public health professional at any stage of your career who would like to publish an informed opinion in my newsletter, please get in touch.
Got more ideas for action steps that should be on this list? You know the drill. Get in touch.
I close by emphasising what I said in a previous newsletter:
“At this time of uncertainty for the public health workforce, let’s remember our commitment to science and evidence and data. We know that validating emotions and baggage has a place too, but we need to be able to identify them and distinguish opinion from fact.
Let’s recommit to kindness and mutual support for the public health workforce and beyond. If leaders are trying to sow divisions among us, the best we can do is to respond with empathy, and by strengthening, connecting, and lifting up one another.
Right now, the best I can offer my fellow public health professionals is a place* to gather and reflect and share and vent and organize and ask questions and offer support to one another. We’re going to need that now more than ever.”
*This is a plug for the Public Health Connections Lounge on LinkedIn, where we seek to build community and conversation among public health professionals. Join us.
If you are new around here, Welcome to The Public Health Workforce is Not OK! In this newsletter, I share frank insights and start conversations about the experiences of building a public health career. You can get to know me here and here. Please subscribe, review the archive, and join the conversations in the Lounge. I am committed to keeping this newsletter free for job seekers (at least, for as long as I still have a job).
 | A guest post by
|