I met Stanley Foster back in 2006 when I moved to Atlanta for grad school. Last week, when I learned he passed away it was like a light went out and I immediately felt the loss because the world is worse off without him. He was a truly great human, an incredible teacher and my graduate thesis advisor. I love telling stories about my crazy life adventures, you all know that, but I rarely brag about my accomplishments, not because I’m humble but because I never stop to think about them, I’m always on to something new – I do however brag to anyone who will listen that I got to work closely with Stan when I was at Emory studying global health because he was a true public health rock star and you have to tell everyone that you learned from a rock star. I feel so fortunate for having known him. He was part of the team that vaccinated smallpox off the face of the earth. He helped to eradicate that devastating disease and he is proof that with hard work and focus we can make a positive impact on the health of entire populations. He also gave me one of the most precious gifts – he let me be my most authentic self, and studying with him and Roger Rochat was one of the best times of my life. I am now and forever a better version of myself because of it. He even let me “thesis outside the box”. In the global health program most students went overseas to work in global health during the summer between their first and second year of study and then wrote a scientific paper as their graduate thesis based on the public health work or research they did during that summer practicum. A literature review paper was also acceptable. I didn’t want to do that because I’d already done some global health work in Guatemala – I even got cholera and ended up in hospital! Can’t get more global health than that! Thank you very much John Snow (the epidemiologist not Game of Thrones 😉). Plus, I thought I was going to spend my life overseas doing global health work so I wanted to do something different while in grad school. I was obsessed with infectious diseases and experts were estimating that we were 50 years overdue for the next influenza pandemic. I was worried about that and the threat of novel pandemic respiratory illnesses due to the impacts of climate change and highly mobile and shifting populations. I knew a global pandemic would have devastating impacts on our lives and economies. I also knew that back during the 1918 flu pandemic many people resisted wearing masks and social distancing which unfortunately helped spread the virus. I didn’t want us to repeat the mistakes of the past when the next pandemic hit. Therefore, I wanted to write a novel as my graduate thesis. I wanted to write something fun that people would enjoy reading but that was packed with public health information so that when the next pandemic hit the general public would know what to do and it would save lives. Instead of a scientific paper, let’s use entertainment to inform the public. I proposed this idea around the department and kept getting the door slammed in my face, and people looking at me like I was crazy and didn’t belong. Of course, this wasn’t new for me. I’ve been judged before for my love of science and literature. Always told I can’t do both, I need to pick one and stick with it. When I was in undergrad I wrote my Comparative Literature honors thesis on plague environments in literature. I compared classic plague novels to current scientific papers on climate change and the spread of vector borne diseases. My honors thesis advisor hated me and didn’t understand my work. He thought I should be purely analyzing literature and keep the science out of it – but I saw things differently, I saw the data and the art as pieces of the same puzzle (the puzzle being the human experience of disease outbreaks). So back to grad school, I’m going door to door pitching my creative thesis idea and I approach Stanley about it and he immediately said yes. I went on to conduct key informant interviews with experts in pandemic preparedness and mitigation at CDC, Emory, and even the California prison system (my novel had an outbreak in a California prison). Then I used qualitative research methods to analyze the data for themes, and I did an extensive literature review on pandemic flu. As I wrote the novel, in one summer on my dad’s broken couch in his dusty San Diego apartment, I included the themes from my research – things like isolation and quarantine, school closures, mass vaccination campaigns, disproportionately effected populations, racism, resistance to public health advice, etc. Stanley even offered to pay for me to publish the work, but I didn’t think it was ready. Yes, I’m kicking myself now, but I’ll forever be grateful for his support and belief in my abilities as a researcher and writer. Now, as I spend my days working at CDC and my evenings writing a new novel I am weeping with gratitude for having known Stanley because I am doing what I love instead of letting people tell me I can only be one thing. I have many stories about Stan but I’ll leave you with one more. One day, I was meeting with him in his office and I mentioned to him that I was very disturbed and upset about his vivid lecture on female genital mutilation (female circumcision). He said good, that I should be upset by it, everyone should because it’s torture and it needs to stop. He said he talks about it in class hoping to inspire students to get out there and do the work to stop it. He was unrelenting in his quest to make the world a better place. He didn’t care if the process was uncomfortable. Knowing him and seeing his fearless approach to teaching made me a better teacher when I went on to teach the high school sciences. I was inspired by Stan’s honest and fun approach to education and tried to be fearless like him when I went on to design my own environmental health curriculum and sex education curriculum for my high schoolers. Whenever I see a hippo (he loved and collected hippos) I’ll always think of you Stan. Thank you for being you! May you be in peace. ❤️
Jane Keir