Milton Terris Award Recipient Lecture: One Foot in, One Foot out

As radical health professionals we have the triple identity of workers, of activists and of intellectuals that creates the cauldron in which we live contradictory lives. We share the concerns of other workers for salaries, job security, health and safety at work, and work load. But like teachers and unlike most other workers we are not completely alienated from our work and have a stake in the outcomes of our labors that we are not always free to express or act on.

As professionals, we share with our colleagues the intellectual curiosity about the origins of new infectious diseases, how racism exhausts the adrenals, or the egg-laying behavior of mosquitoes in polluted environments but may be in conflict with them around the need for universal free health care, or distorted priority given to molecular approaches to disease. We are partisans in institutions that feign neutrality.

As activists we are unwilling to accept the boundaries of “professionalism” and both learn from and offer our understanding to our communities of struggle. These three moments of our lives sometimes conflict but are also mutually enriching. There is no single formula for navigating this turbulent habitat but there is an array of options for avoiding burn-out and enjoying a life that is politically productive, intellectually challenging, and with lovely people.