Getting health to the public means going beyond the academy.

“I'm not that kinda doc” is something I say often, usually when someone mistakes epidemiologist for dermatologist and eagerly rolls up their sleeves to get my opinion on a peculiar mole. I have to explain that I'm the kinda doc who is committed to creating the evidence that powers evidence-based medicine and effective public health.

I took it all very seriously. As a student at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, I believed our first goal was to save lives, and that there was a hierarchy of knowledge and leaders in place to drive us toward the most actionable evidence. That is, I thought that until...