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Aman: Today we're introducing our very first guest of this season and someone not short of fascinating to me at this point, he started his career in biology as a microbiologist and moved and transitioned over time into bio-terrorism as the career moved on, he's transitioned into the United States Air Force as a public health officer and served in North Carolina as an air national guard as a public health officer there as well. Currently he's holding two hats as a Lieutenant Commander at the US Public Health Service and a project manager at the FDA. And just like all of us and a lot of prospective students watching this podcast. He is also an alum at NYU GPH from 2012, but rather than me introducing him, I'd love to hear from him himself. James Betz, welcome to the podcast.
James: Oh, thank you, Aman. I really appreciate that. That was quite the introduction. And, you know, I'm just thankful to be able to come on here and talk to everybody about my public health experience and, you know, my kind of career thus far. So I really appreciate it.
Aman: I, we love to have you here and we're so excited to chat with you today. And just as I, as I introduced you, it's so many things that I mentioned, I'm just, I'm so curious to learn about your journey, microbiology, bio-terrorism to the US Air Force, and currently are at the FDA, multiple hats. And I feel, like you've gone through so many lives and there's still many more lives to live. What's your, what's that journey been like? And how has your path changed over the years? What's formulated this path?
James: I mean, it, you know, it's definitely changed a lot and that's one of the things that I always, I actually enjoy change. And, you know, coming up when I was a little kid, I always wanted to be, you know, a scientist. I always wanted to, you know, kind of, you know, break things down and understand them and be able to work them back together and, you know, as I went through my undergrad career, I wanted to major in biology. I really wanted to just explore, you know, nature in the natural order of things. And one of my favorite books was The Hot Zone by Richard Preston, and then my favorite movie was Outbreak. I wanted to be Dennis Hoffman in Outbreak. I know that sounds cheesy, but, you know, maybe I was too young to be watching that movie, but that's kind of really what I wanted to do. And so I kind of started focusing, you know, when I came to, you know, graduating, I got a job working as a microbiologist and I, you know, I started learning, you know, lab science and bench science. And I just loved it, I was having a phenomenal time. I was kind of opening up paths that I had never thought about before and, and knowledge that, you know, you get it in the academic sense, but to apply it, or I'm learning about, you know, infectious disease and how we treat things and how the hospital system works. You know, I was at Mount Sinai as a microbiologist there, and I met so many great mentors and folks that kind of taught me things that I, you know, never even imagined and was able to, you know, basically you're directly affecting the care of the patient by potentially recommending antibiotics to the doctors on call or the nurses. And so it's just an awesome career path. And then I started, you know, as I started to gain more experience and meet people, because that's one of the biggest things that you can possibly do as you embark upon your career is just, you know, I call it shaking hands and kissing babies. You really, you know, you'd get out there, you go to conferences, you're involved in societies, you rely on your alumni network. And I actually got called and recommended like, hey, I've got this position opening here in the New York City Department of Health to be a supervisor in the bio-terrorism lab. And I literally dropped the phone and I was like, oh my God, this is my life dream. This is exactly what I want to do. And it was, it was just awesome. I mean, it was everything I imagined and more. I was learning advanced molecular techniques, you know, going into the lab gowned up and BSL three environment, looking at, you know, anthrax and tularemia and all these crazy diseases that you hear about and I've read about and I knew about, but to really do that was just a phenomenal experience for me. And it also got kind of started tickling my fancy a little bit with some other stuff. I'm like, okay, I enjoy the lab. I enjoy, you know, all the science, but I like people to, I'm a very big people, I love talking to people. I love meeting people. And I think it's like key to kind of foster your professional development to kind of always keep your eyes looking forward and always be flexible, you know, being flexible and being a dynamic, you know, professional, is one of the most important things you could do for your career because you just never know what opportunities might present themselves. So one of the things that I always saying that I had learned when I was in the Air Force that I kind of was doing passively but didn't realize is, it's bloom where you're planted, right? So you're not going to be, or it's over play the cards you're dealt, you know, you don't know what the career landscape is going to be. When I graduated undergrad in 2005, we'd started the great one of the greatest recessions we've ever had, so you know, you don't know, you're not necessarily gonna get the job you think, or go down the path you think, but when an opportunity presents itself, you hopefully you're there to open the door. And how that kind of played into my career is I was doing, you know, the bio-terrorism lab thing. And I'm just like, I want to do a little more. And so it actually, ironically enough, during the last pandemic we had, which was H1N1 we were uniquely positioned to respond with a lot of the molecular techniques that we did to diagnose rapidly. So we were part of one of the first waves of labs that actually was working with H1N1 in terms of, you know, testing patients to determine whether or not they had it. And I was on calls with the CDC and the FDA, cause they were the ones for the diagnostic techniques and all of these epidemiologists and scientists and I'm like, that's where I want to go next. And how do I get there? And that's kind of where NYU came into play, so.
Aman: Wow, wow.
James: And that's just, you know, kind of, I really wanted to take a step back and kind of look at my career scape and say, well, all right, I have a goal now, you know, I've done all this cool stuff. I really enjoyed it. It's, you know, awesome. And I could do this forever, but I wanted to take the next level. And so, you know, I was looking at a master's in public health programs and two really stuck out to me and the one was Columbia and the other was NYU. And it's ironically enough, my, I wanted to go to NYU as an undergrad. Unfortunately I didn't get in. I was like, oh man. But I never, you know, I didn't. So when I applied for the programs, I knew, I was like, I want to go to NYU. It was very like fulfilling for me to kind of be able to apply and be accepted. It was just, you know one of the best days I've had, you know, is when I got that acceptance letter, I was like, oh, this is gonna be so awesome. And, you know, part of that comes with also, you gotta pay for tuition and everything like that. But I was actually given a unique opportunity from the United States Air Force and they actually, I applied for a program where they would take, they would pay for my master's and then I'd be able to commission as an officer while going to school and then be there after. And that was just such a huge change in my career, but a welcome one. It was amazing. So I was able to really focus on going to school and NYU. And one of the things that I would tell current students is take all that time, you know? Be a part of all the things that NYU has to offer in the varying career field of public health. You know, you don't know where your path might lead because there are people that are hard line bio statisticians or epidemiologists, but then you have something, and this was introduced to me on my NYU experience was my first, one of my first classes was the social determinants of health. And it's things that I had never even thought of before. And it just like blew my mind. I'll never forget. I'm sitting in that class for social determinants of health. And we started talking about some of the things and I like jobs like, aha, of course this makes sense, you know. I had never thought of it that way because you know, for so long I had been training in terms of like hard line science. I never really thought about, wow, when you take a step back, these are some of the other things that you can do. And then, you know, you have your classmates and they're kind of, you guys are all going through that. And it's very important to maintain those relationships, you know, throughout your career. And I've kind of circled that around in a minute. So it, it really, it prepared me well for being a public health officer in the Air Force because I was basically, I went in, I'd had to go to officer training school. I was gone for a little while. Can't even remember it, kind of pushed it out of my mind. No, and it was, I was basically running my own mini department of health there, you know, with larger, larger goals of mine. So NYU prepared me because it really gave me the whole, you know, package in terms of public health. It, you know, I went and I took, you know, all the epi and the biostats and the community health courses and then as I entered the Air Force, I was responsible for community health and emergency response and things like that. So it was just such a remarkable experience. And the funny thing is, as I sort of went through my career in the United States Air Force and did just amazing, amazing things and work with just phenomenal teams and people, you know, range in all sorts of, you know, perfect things in public health, I wanted to do more. And I was actually here, I'm in Charleston, South Carolina. And, you know, I love the Air Force. We were starting family though and I was like, well I need to kind of, you know, start writing my next chapter here. And so that's when I sort of transitioned from the Air Force to what's called the Public Health Commission Corps. And we're the one of the now eight, cause we have space force branches as the uniform services. And there's about 6,00,0 6,500 officers, doctors, lawyers, nurses, and health service officers, what I am. And we work for the Surgeon General of the United States. Our job is public health and that's what I do. And so now, you know, public health has become increasingly in Bogue because of our current pandemic, we have COVID. And so, you know, it's been an awesome, awesome career field. And so in the Public Health Commission Corps, I work for the FDA and help them doing kind of food, and food emergency response, and kind of help the interplay between the federal and the state level. But probably one of the best things I've done is when COVID started last year, I actually was one of the first people to deploy as part of our, you know, government response to COVID 19. And I got to deploy as part of a program to stand up the testing sites that were kind of popping up all around the country. So we were the ones kind of spearheading that effort. So, you know, it was tough, you know, you're facing down, we don't know what COVID is, right. But here we are where I'm like, all right, you know, I have four children and I'm like, alright, this is, this is what, you know, this is what we've prepared for, you know, this is, you know, what we are here for. And so, you know, to look at my wife and kids and have to get on an airplane while COVID is kicking off and travel, you know, thousand, 2000 miles away to do my job and people, this is back when we were washing groceries and nobody knew what things were happening. So it was, it was very tough, but you know, kudos to everybody on the frontline, in public health and indirect care and every, you know, local public health, I mean, you know, it's a tough order and everybody's kind of stepped up and that's kind of the power I think that public health has is that, you know, nobody knew about it. And I remember one of my professors, you know, first semester, she's like, you are stepping into a career that, you know, nobody knows what you do, and it's gonna be very hard to explain to people, but when you have to, it's probably not gonna be great. And so those kind of words ring true. It's like, yeah, they're the people that you don't want until you need them, right. So it's just such an awesome, awesome, you know, path.
Aman: Oh man, you walked me through a journey and I loved every minute of it. There's so many questions I have.
James: I'm here to answer them. I can't wait.
Aman: You briefly touched upon what NYU gave you and how you have, how you have transitioned over here. And I'm thinking of how to frame this the best way. So how are, so let's take a step to the current world and you have lived a thousand lives at this point, served tremendously and have a great team and met fascinating individuals also that are in this amazing industry as you have described so well. Even though you said, it's gonna be tough to describe, I thought you did a pretty good job at it so far. I'm curious to know, looking ahead, you know, looking ahead, where do you see opportunities or where should the young professionals in today's world take their mindset? Where should they be looking in order to make an impact as some of them describe, or perhaps even choose their trajectory, as you said, that you never knew what, what a trajectory is going to be, what's gonna happen? What would be, what we some ideas you could have for them, where they could have either a designated path, either a pretty uncertain path? What would you suggest and suggest in, in terms of that?
James: Well, you know, now, you know, we're starting to see, hopefully, you know, based on the latest news, just this week, you know, we're seeing a transition in the pandemic response, hopefully positive direction, and we're gonna, public health isn't going anywhere, right? And now we're going to be seeing a lot of more of the long-term effects from basically two years of stress and strife and, and just worry. And that's what's so great about public health and a lot of the people that are involved in this is that there's a need for the longterm, you know, not only mental health response, because that's so, so key and what we've found out, you know, when you're on lockdown for, you know, six, seven, eight, nine months, it's, it weighs a toll on people. And that's where, you know, the community health response and the designing programs and, you know, assessing what's going on in the community and being a part of whether it's an NGO, a private company, you know, local health, local public health, or state or federal, you know, find something that drives your passion. My passion has always been people. I just want to help people, the most people in the best possible way and you know what? That might be you're passionate, If that's it, then focus on that community health. Focus on being able to understand, you know, assessing community health needs and responding appropriately, you know, designing programs, you know, those are the kind of careers and the people that we're gonna need going forward as we, you know, engage in the post pandemic response. And if you really just love math and love Excel, which, you know, part of me sometimes does, right? And you just love biostats then, you know, take that and drive with it and always seek opportunities because that's one of the great things about New York and NYU in particular, is there's no shortage of opportunities, whether it's through campus or just through, you know, I know several alumni that I interned at, you know, the New York city Department of Health, they love, you know, taking interns from NYU because they know like once you are shown that world you're gonna want to not stop, right. It's just such a wonderful organization. And there's hospitals, you know, NYU Langone is a phenomenal hospital. And I just know that, you know, whatever you feel is just cool. Like I want to do this, don't stop. It might not be a straight and narrow path. You might have to do, you know, something slightly different, but always be adding to your toolkit, always be adding to your public health toolkit because believe it or not, it is a science and it's an applicable science and everything you learn can push towards your career goal.
Aman: Yeah. So folks, what I got out of that is strive for the passion. What's, take whatever that funny bone inside is tickling look at it and then pay attention to it because that will, that was inside something much deeper and focused on the toolkit. Let's try to develop our skill sets and then take it to the next step because the two will go hand in hand for a great future.
James: Yeah. And you'll never stop learning either. That's the thing, you, you know, you grind hard through grad school and then you start in your career field and guess what? It's a non-stop learning environment because we have to be on the cusp in the forefront of, of everything, science, tech, you know, trends, you know, what's going on in the world of public health. As we know, it's kind of been turned on its head in the past couple years, but, and also the people you meet it, that's very, very important. I've got funny stories. When I worked at the New York City Department of Health, I had two acquaintances there and you know, one actually trained me in all the stuff I was learning. And he actually departed about a year afterwards. And you know, hey, you say your goodbyes, hey, if you ever need anything, you know, let me know. He took another position. And then another friend, I left and he stayed on and fast forward five years later, and lo and behold, my current position as a Public Health Commission Corps officer one is actually a Public Health Commission Corps officer working at the Food and Drug Administration, basically almost, you know, six degrees of separation away from me in terms of their job. And then another one is a project manager at the FDA, and I've worked with him on several things. So it's, funny because you just don't know the individuals that you meet. And one of them was actually really good friends with him now, you know, he has kids, we, you know, follow each other on Instagram, things like that. So it's just, you just don't know the people that you meet, what impact they're gonna have later on, because it may seem like a big world, but trust me, it is not.
Aman: Certainly, now networking is, and NYU I think provides, any school for that matter provides that extraordinary opportunity of networking and having everyone in one place that are going to take these different paths. Let's take a bit of a transition because we can go down so many little paths, but let's talk a little bit about, you know, you've been in this field since 05 and a very long time. And how has the industry changed?
James: It's not that long, right? I know I got gray hair. I'm kidding, no.
Aman: I gotta tell you, you still look great and you look, you're going to keep looking better.
James: Thanks. No it's changed so, so much. And, you know, the field of public health in just, you know, it's very, it's a lot of it is government centric Right? And I look at my career and I think a big pivot point for me, I think I said previously was, you know, when I was in the New York City Department of Health and we started ramping up for the H1N1 pandemic response, and I saw the interplay between the federal government and the state government, the local government, and even industry, because they're coming out, they're like, hey, we can pump these, you know, tests out kind of like what we see now. And I think emergency response is something, it's a very critical part of public health that I think has not very recent, but more recent than most other, you know, disciplines in public health. And it really is born, I think, unfortunately under the post 9/11 era and that we understand how to respond to emergencies better, you know, born out of tragedy, unfortunately, but that's part of, you know, the human story is responding to, you know, what is a catastrophic event, but let's make it better. How do we make it better going forward? And that's kind of one of the cruxes that I love about public health is going forward from anything, whether it's, you know, 9/11 or even, you know, we have, you know, a train derailment or things like that. Emergency responders, you know, they hotwash those things and say, what went wrong? How can we make this better? And that's what happened during COVID. We saw it live playing out on TV and, you know, unfortunately a lot of it has been politicized, but, or you know, why at the beginning of the pandemic, did you say something like this? And then it changed, well it's, you're seeing science play out live, you know, emergency response is, how do we make things better? How can we, you know, improve upon, you know, our outcomes and that's what we want. We want to help people in the best way possible. So, you know, I think that's kind of how things have changed over time. As you know, we are always striving to get better at everything that we do. And, you know, I think one of the keys in doing that is to constantly talk about, okay, well, what went wrong? And I think a lot of people in normal sight, they don't want to approach, well, what went wrong, but it's something that you have to be able to kind of say, and in the field of science, in the field of public health, it's, you know, okay, how can we do better that, you know, process improvement is key.
Aman: Yeah. And you're mentioning... So when I listened to this that you were mentioning it, it sounds to me, it's not taxing, but there's so many things going on, right. And you have a thousand things in your mind, even, even simply as a viewer, perhaps on our end, where I'm just listening and watching TV and understanding what's going on, you're in the trenches. So what is that? What, what fuels you everyday? What kind of keeps you going to do this every day and again and would that, awesome smile on your face? Like, what is that?
James: You know, it's something that, I mean, my whole life I've always known, this is kind of my passion. And for other people, they find that motivation in different ways. But when you know that you want to do something, it's, you know, I know the phrase is beaten to death, but when you truly love what you're doing, you never work a day in your life. And that's kinda what I feel, you know, like this truly is just amazing and there's challenges and you need to be challenged. I think in life, there's challenges every day when I, you know, embark upon, you know, my job and it's great because you really have the opportunity to kind of, you know, break it down. You know, COVID is probably one of the greatest challenges that we've had. You know, it's really truly like the Gideon's knot like every time that you untie something, there's just more and more and more, and now, you know, it's, you really have to have that stamina. And it's something that I think through the challenges, you know, you come out stronger and that's why, you know, NYU, it was hard, it was hard to, you know, the program, you know, we, you know, I, you know, every day you're going to school and you're learning and you're studying, you're doing more intensive reading than you probably did as an undergrad. And you're looking at things that you might not have looked at before, and you're working in groups and, you know, you're trying to probably juggle maybe a job and an internship. And, you know, those things helped to kind of prepare you for, hey, if you're in this sort of, you know, area of public health, like what I'm basically doing now, mostly emergency response, every day can be taxing but, you know, it's, you know, you just have to find that motivation everyday because you know what else is taxing? Seeing patients and being in an emergency room, or, you know, acute other forms of acute patient care people that might be in that setting, you know? So, cause that's a big aspect of public health, you know, so.
Aman: Yeah, oh man. So you have made such an awesome transitions as well in life. And I'm just curious to know what's, what do you think of when you're thinking about your future and what's next? What's a passion project currently? Anything interesting down the line that might even inspire other students perhaps as for, hey, follow your path. And this is a new found passion of mine.
James: Yeah. I mean, I'm constantly looking on the forefront. I'm really, as a, you know, public health officer, you know, I'm constantly trying to just meet, you know, new officers understand, you know, kind of the interplays between various agencies, you know, looking at, you know, how the FDA and the CDC, you know, play out and, you know, kind of my current role, you know, I'm really largely responsible for projects that occur between the federal government and the state and local government. And, you know, we have learned just so much, even just during the COVID pandemic on how, you know, resource constraints certain environments are and how some aren't and how that varies across the country. You know, you have very robust programs in some areas and ones that need a little bit more so kind of going forward one of the things that, you know, I know my agency is working on is really trying to develop and flesh out what they call the integrated food safety system and domestic mutual reliance, which is, we in government, you operate in a very fiscally constrained environment. How can we impact public health the most through utilizing resources appropriately? So, you know, really taking data and information from two different parties and being able to utilize that in a way that it will, you know, affect change. And that change in my agency is to prevent disease, death, and otherwise undesirable outcomes. So that's, you know, kind of what I'm looking forward to in the next few years is the shifting landscape of how, you know, we do things, you know, from a public health standpoint, you know, in the federal government. So just trying to make process improvement changes and do things, you know, as best we possibly can.
Aman: Man. Thanks. Thank you for all you're doing. It's a lovely, lovely to hear all of that. And I'm sure, listening to this a lot of, folks themselves are finding their, what strikes their cords inside and helping them get to the next step. I'd like to leave you with a final question. So we all have that one passion we were talking about. Our public health path perhaps. If you had a magic wand today, what's the one biggest scenario you'd like to solve with that magic wand?
James: I would eliminate COVID and all the posts pandemic issues immediately, you know, it's an unfortunate, you know, pandemic that is really affected all aspects of our life. And, you know, and we're seeing it too now playing out on the economic end and the supply chain end you know, I know I'm in the Food and Drug Administration. That was one thing that very early on, you know, our state mission partners were able to, you know, directly relate and talk to all the major food producers in their state. We, you know, as the federal regulatory body couldn't reach down as quickly as the states could. So, you know, now we're starting to see, you know, we kind of had a pause, everything kind of started ramping back up as people were able to, you know, start to go back to work. But now we're starting to see, you know, the tide shifting a little bit more. And, and so, you know, of course, like just, you know, eliminating this and getting back to the post pandemic world would be just, of course, exactly what I would do. I mean, I think anybody in public health, I think they know, would say the same thing or something similar.
James: Yeah. And cause we have to start to pivot too, to start to tackle the challenges in healthcare that maybe got pushed, not pushed to the side, but you know, there's a lot of other issues out there that we have to start solving.
Aman: Yeah. Folks, what a lovely conversation. Follow, follow, follow your path, network, follow that passion, lots of beautiful things that are going to come out because this industry requires all of us to make a difference. And we're glad that all of you tuned in for this podcast. James, it's been a pleasure chatting with you throughout.
James: Yes, absolutely. It's been a pleasure to chat with you and thank you so much for the opportunity and good luck to everybody at NYU. I know that you have made the right choice. It's a phenomenal school.