From Polio Eradication to Post-9/11 Response: An EIS Experience That Shaped an Air Force Career

Education

This veterinarian epidemiologist earned a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) degree from Colorado State University.

Jobs Prior to CDC

After deciding clinical practice wasn't the right fit, the veterinarian epidemiologist pursued a career program in animal disease epidemiology with the US Department of Agriculture, work he described as something he loved and could have seen himself doing long term. He subsequently discovered that the United States Air Force (USAF) recruited veterinarians as public health officers and epidemiologists and joined in 1992. The USAF sponsored his Master of Public Health degree and field epidemiology training at the CDC in the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) program.

First CDC Job

USAF-Sponsored EIS Officer

He served as an EIS officer for two years, assigned to the National Center for Environmental Health. His EIS experience was unusually eventful, spanning food safety investigation, international infectious disease eradication, and two of the most significant public health emergency responses in modern US history.

Food Safety—Genetically Modified Corn Investigation

When genetically modified corn was discovered in the human food supply, it became a major public health and regulatory concern. Reports emerged of alleged allergic reactions among people who had consumed tortilla chips and other corn-based products. The veterinarian epidemiologist’s team was tasked with investigating whether a true association existed between the modified corn and the reported reactions.

The team developed a new ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) test to evaluate the alleged association. The investigation concluded that there was no demonstrated association between the genetically modified corn and the reported allergic reactions. The work resulted in at least two publications—one reporting the epidemiological findings of the investigation, and a separate publication describing the development and methodology of the ELISA test.

Infectious Disease Eradication: Stop Transmission of Polio (STOP) Program

As an EIS Officer, the veterinarian spent three months in Pakistan as part of the STOP Program, which he described as an amazing experience. He worked in Karachi and in rural areas of Sindh Province moving from village to village with a driver/translator during national immunization days to monitor vaccination progress. Late in the day during one national immunization day, he arrived at a rural village and immediately noticed that none of the compound gates had the signature marks indicating the village children had been vaccinated. Moving toward the center of the village, he found virtually the entire village gathered around the community water tap, with the two lady health workers (LHW) at the center of an angry crowd.

Through his translator, he learned that someone had told the villagers the polio vaccine would sterilize their children. He recognized that the situation was volatile and potentially dangerous. He walked through the crowd of villagers to the LHWs, removed a vial of oral polio vaccine, and drank it in front of the crowd. The effect was immediate. The men in the crowd dispersed, and the women lined up to have their children vaccinated.

The veterinarian epidemiologist connected the incident to the broader, persistent challenge of vaccine misinformation, noting that the same sterilization rumor later resurfaced so powerfully in Nigeria that the government shut down the entire polio program, expelled all WHO and CDC polio workers, and inadvertently exported wild poliovirus to 17 previously polio-free African countries.

Public Health Emergency Response: Syndromic Surveillance — Post 9/11 New York City

The day after the September 11, 2001, attacks, the veterinarian led a group of 32 fellow EIS officers to New York City to establish syndromic surveillance across select emergency rooms (ER) in Manhattan and surrounding boroughs. Their job was to ensure a single data collection sheet, capturing basic demographics and symptom information for 10 syndromic categories (symptoms associated with known biological or chemical weapon agents), was completed on every patient that presented to the ER. Each shift, team members compiled their data sheets, and the veterinarian EIS officer hand-carried the forms to the New York City Department of Health where staff spent the subsequent hours entering and analyzing the data. Within a short period of time, the surveillance detected no evidence of biological or chemical weapon use. However, it did identify two or three foodborne illness outbreaks, epidemiologically linked to memorial gatherings for victims of the tower collapse. These secondary findings (foodborne outbreaks) were considered an important proof of concept for the surveillance methodology; the project was the first widespread real-world deployment of syndromic surveillance anywhere.

Public Health Emergency Response: Anthrax Response — New York City & Washington, DC

On the morning before the 9/11 syndromic surveillance team was to return to Atlanta, the veterinarian EIS officer received an urgent call from another CDC employee instructing him to bring available team members to NBC Nightly News studios. Upon arrival, employees were evacuating the building as the team entered. The CDC EIS team’s role was to support the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in screening NBC employees for anthrax exposure. This involved identifying workers in potentially exposed areas, administering questionnaires, collecting nasal swabs, and distributing 10-day courses of ciprofloxacin as prophylaxis for potentially exposed individuals.

A secondary challenge emerged among those employees waiting in line to be screened. Due to the large number of employees needing screening, the need to accomplish the screening and prophylaxis quickly, and the relatively small numbers of available public health personnel, there was no time to address employee questions—and there were many. Two members of the veterinarian EIS officer’s team approached him and asked, “Don’t you know something about anthrax?”  The veterinarian EIS officer did, based on veterinarian training and several years of teaching Air Force personnel about the disease prior to their receiving the anthrax vaccine. The veterinarian spent most of the next two days answering employee questions as they waited in line to be screened.

A tertiary challenge emerged when the thousands of employees who had been cleared and sent home began returning to the building—many unwilling or unable to go home out of fear of exposing their families. Recognizing the need, an EIS team member proposed, and the veterinarian EIS officer organized a structured response: small group sessions of 6–8 employees brought into conference rooms with an EIS officer and a member of a mental health counseling team. Over two days, the combined teams processed several thousand non-exposed NBC employees through these small group sessions.

After being home only a few days, the veterinarian EIS Officer was called back, this time to Washington, DC, to replicate and scale up the NBC information and counseling model for the much larger anthrax letter situation in Washington, DC, which involved many federal agencies and thousands of potentially exposed (and concerned) employees. Given the scale, the approach was adapted to a train-the-trainer model: his team provided comprehensive information and trained agency representatives, who then returned to their own organizations to educate their colleagues.

Post CDC/EIS Experience in the USAF and Beyond

The veterinarian epidemiologist served as a public health officer and epidemiologist throughout his USAF career. Assignments included serving as Chief of Public Health on several large USAF bases and as a public health and epidemiology subject matter expert to command surgeons, the senior medical officials, during combat deployments. He deployed to active war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan.

One specific USAF public health responsibility mentioned was his involvement in the anthrax vaccination program.  At time around his enlistment, anthrax was identified as a potential bioweapon and USAF members were receiving the anthrax vaccine. His responsibilities in this area included educating Air Force personnel about the anthrax vaccine—its safety, its history, and the rationale for receiving it. This training and his immunization against anthrax became relevant during the 2001 anthrax letter response at NBC studios, where his combination of veterinary training and USAF bioweapon education made him the only person on scene with substantive anthrax knowledge.

He retired from the Air Force in 2015 after 23 years of service. He described the career as one that was “never ever boring,” a sentiment clearly borne out by his EIS experiences during that period.

After retiring from the USAF, the veterinarian epidemiologist worked with the Texas Department of Health Services as a Communicable Disease Programs Manager and more recently was on the faculty at Weber State University where he taught Human Anatomy & Physiology, Pathophysiology, and Medical Terminology.

Final CDC Position

In 2023 the veterinarian epidemiologist was hired by the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, working remotely from his home.  His initial assignment was as a system administrator for a newly launched comprehensive respiratory disease surveillance system. The distinguishing feature of this system was its integrated, all-respiratory approach, rather than maintaining separate surveillance streams for influenza, COVID, RSV, and other respiratory pathogens.

Despite successfully demonstrating its concept and value, the system did not receive continued funding. This was a disappointment given the enhanced value of an integrated approach rather than the fragmented, disease-by-disease surveillance model that currently exists. Following the discontinuation of the surveillance system, the veterinarian epidemiologist transitioned to other projects within the Influenza Division.

Proudest Achievement

He identified his proudest accomplishment as being designated the leader of the post-9/11 syndromic surveillance team in New York City. Specifically, it was the EIS Program Director who pulled him aside and informed him he had been chosen for that role. The reasoning was straightforward: “You're military. You know how to lead people”—a nod to the inherent challenge of leading a large group of independent-minded medical professionals, which was likened to "herding cats."

Impact of the Work

The veterinarian epidemiologist identified the STOP Polio Program as the activity he felt had the greatest impact. His reasoning was straightforward—the sheer scale of people potentially protected, particularly children, through global polio eradication efforts made it stand out above everything else in his career in terms of potential human impact.

Leaving CDC

At the end of January 2025, one of the first executive orders issued by the incoming administration was a return to in-person work mandate for all federal employees. Because the veterinarian epidemiologist had been hired specifically as a fully remote employee, initial communications indicated the order would not apply to him.

Unfortunately, the order eventually did apply, meaning he would be required to report to an HHS or CDC office in person. As there was no HHS or CDC office in the veterinarian epidemiologist’s state and being unable to move due to personal reasons, the employee enrolled in the Deferred Resignation program. His final active workday at CDC was February 28, 2025, and official separation date: September 30, 2025.

He described the outcome as a loss—both personally and for CDC. He had genuinely loved the work and deeply valued his colleagues in the Influenza Division. The separation was not something he had sought or wanted, but rather an outcome forced by circumstances beyond his control, namely the misalignment of a policy change and his personal responsibilities.

Future Plans

Currently the veterinarian epidemiologist is working part-time teaching online and seeking remote part-time or full-time work that makes use of his vast public health experience and expertise.