Becker's Hospital Review

50 WOMEN'S LEADERSHIP POPULATION HEALTH CDC's outgoing principal deputy director Dr. Anne Schuchat: What I learned over 33 years at the agency By Gabrielle Masson A nne Schuchat, MD, principal deputy director of the CDC, retired at the end of June. In an op-ed published June 10 by e New York Times, Dr. Schuchat shared what she learned during her 33 years at the agency and what she hopes the future will hold. Below are the highlights: 1. Public service is difficult. e COVID-19 pandemic has exhausted, saddened and sometimes sidelined many public health officials. While the pandem- ic isn't the first time the U.S. public health system had to surge beyond capacity, it has been the collision of the worst pandemic in a century with a system suffering from years of underinvestment. Public health departments have lost an estimated 66,000 jobs since around 2008, according to a National Academy of Medicine report cited by Dr. Schuchat. "With prior responses, the public health front line has been the little engine that could," Dr. Schuchat wrote. State and local health departments would absorb the initial shock of each crisis until emergency funding came, and then watch resources ebb as the crisis abated. In the past few decades, public health's core capacities gradually weakened while biomedical research and development accelerated. With COVID-19, public health was the little engine that couldn't. Dr. Schuchat hopes the pandemic has made it clear that when we don't invest in public health, everyone is vulnerable. 2. The U.S. public health system needs major upgrades. Data systems and lab capacities must be modernized. Public health information and response efforts must be better integrated with clinical, commercial and academic sec- tors. e U.S. needs a renewed and expand- ed public health workforce that reflects ad- vanced skills and diversity. e CDC and public health departments are now receiving critical financial resources on an emergency basis. But these investments must be sustained. e COVID-19 pan- demic will not be the last major threat our nation will face. 3. Public service is meaningful. In her first years at the CDC, Dr. Schuchat studied group B strep, an infection that harms newborns. She spearheaded CDC efforts, and, in 1996, the agency, along with e American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Acade- my of Pediatrics, issued the first consensus guidelines that made prevention of group B strep a standard of care in the U.S. e new guidance requiring prenatal screening has prevented more than 100,000 life-threaten- ing infections. Public health efforts, not a new biomedical discovery, protected most from the condition. 4. Public service is also joyful. Public health successes usually take place out of the spotlight, which for most is just fine; victory oen means preventing something bad from happening. If no one knows about it, that is oen an indication of success. Amid the disruptions and threats of the pan- demic, Dr. Schuchat hopes this is a moment "when a new generation is called to action, to experience the difficulty and mean- ing and joy of public service. Our world needs you." n 1 in 10 C-suite roles held by women, IBM report finds By Hannah Mitchell O nly 10 percent of C-suite positions are held by wom- en, with no improvement to the number of women holding executive positions since 2019 despite in- creased visibility on the issue, according to an IBM report accessed in June. Six details: 1. Just 10 percent of C-suite positions and 8 percent of ex- ecutive board roles are held by women, the same numbers IBM measured in 2019. 2. The pipeline of women in leadership positions has shrunk since 2019. All positions measured, such as vice president, senior manager and junior professional, have had the num- ber of women in those roles shrink. 3. Gaps in gender equity among leadership ranks are wider for women of color. Across senior leadership ranks, women of color hold 1 in 25 C-suite positions, while white women hold 1 in 5 roles. 4. Some organizations are working toward shrinking the gender gap. Sixty-four percent of companies are utilizing gender-blind candidate screening, 62 percent are offering parental leave for women and 55 percent are publishing gender equity pay internally. 5. Less than half (48 percent) of respondents said their orga- nization targets gender equity, a decrease from 66 percent in 2019. Just 1 in 4 respondents said their company makes the advancement of women a top 10 formal business priori- ty. Instead, 58 percent said their organization adopts a "do it when they can" approach. 6. Between November 2020 and January 2021, IBM sur- veyed more than 2,600 executives, managers and profes- sionals across 10 industries and nine geographic regions. Executives from industries such as healthcare, insurance and technology were surveyed, with each industry representing 10 percent of respondents. Countries surveyed include the U.S., the U.K., Germany and Japan, with each country repre- senting 11 percent of respondents. n

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