Will This Path Still Exist?: A public health student’s elegy for a fragile sector - Love Letter #8
In this poignant addition to our Love Letters to Public Health series, a public health student turns to poetry to process the uncertainty facing our field today.
A public health student captures the heartbreak and uncertainty of our field while watching trust erode, funding falter, and hope waver across the systems meant to protect us. Through clear, aching language, this public health poet gives voice to a generation of students wondering whether the path they’ve chosen will endure, and what it means to keep walking it anyway. This poem takes on new resonance in light of Friday’s news of further RIFs at CDC, a stark reminder of just how fragile the public health path has become.
If you’d like to follow the lead of poet Maggie Fuzak by sharing your own poem, love letter, or another perspective on public health during these times, I’d love to hear from you. Please get in touch!
Will This Path Still Exist?
By Maggie Fuzak, MS
The news hit heavy.
Talk of changes at the CDC,
leadership shifting in ways
that make it feel unsteady.
An agency meant to guide us
now pulled into politics
that chip away at trust.
Health care costs crush people.
Insurance breaks right when it’s needed most.
Families count pills and count bills,
deciding which to pay.
Hospitals overflow,
while nurses and doctors slip away,
tired of fighting battles they cannot win.
Research still moves forward,
tables and models piling up,
but none of it stops
what’s already happening.
Life expectancy keeps dropping.
Inequities grow deeper.
The silence around it
weighs almost as much as the sickness.
I’ve given years to this field.
Four years in public health,
two more in epidemiology,
now a third year into a doctorate.
And I wonder if this path
will even exist when I finish.
Public trust is crumbling.
Funding disappears.
Science gets treated like opinion
instead of a lifeline.
It is not one crisis.
It is many, stacked on top of each other.
And it’s hard not to give up,
but harder still to imagine
what happens if we do.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent the views of any organization, employer, or institution with which they are affiliated.
Maggie Fuzak is a PhD Candidate in Epidemiology at George Mason University, where her work centers on environmental exposures, women’s reproductive health, and chronic disease. With a background that includes a Master of Science in Epidemiology and several years of public health training, she brings both depth and rigor to her research. In addition to her doctoral work, she teaches an undergraduate course at George Mason University. She chooses science, persistence, and the hope that change is still possible.
If you would like to follow Maggie’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 Maggie’s words above inspire you? Would you also like to share your perspective on public health right now? Or write a love letter to public health? Got something to say to or about the public health workforce? Got big feelings about the RIFs or the RTO or the EOs or the BS? I would love to publish your words here as a step towards advocacy and support. Get in touch.
🆕☀️Thank a public health hero today! It could be a mentor, a colleague who had your back, or just appreciation for the protections we all rely on, like vaccines, clean water, and safe food. The more voices, the more powerful it becomes. Let’s fill this board with thanks and encouragement for our public health heroes. https://thankyoucdc.kudoboard.com/boards/VcgUPZZL
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.
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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.
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Please keep going. There are some of us who trust you. Who need you. Who will listen. And we are attempting to advocate for you as well.