“Americans care deeply about the health of their families and communities”
National Public Health Week: UC Berkeley School of Public Health Chief Social Impact Officer Claudia Williams
Claudia Williams (she/her) is the Chief Social Impact Officer at the school of public health and the host of the podcast The Other 80. She was previously a White House senior advisor under president Barack Obama and chief executive officer of Manifest MedEx. Williams earned her BA at Duke University, and an MS in Health Policy and Management from Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Botswana and as a maternal and child health advisor in Burkina Faso and Indonesia.
We recently asked Williams about her work and thoughts on the field of public health as we mark National Public Health Week.
Berkeley Public Health: What does it mean to be a school of public health focused on social impact?
Claudia Williams: It means we work with our faculty, students, and alumni to turn public health knowledge into actual change and impact. At UC Berkeley School of Public Health, we are focused on three areas of impact: creating the conditions of health in our Bay Area communities, shaping policies for health in California and beyond, and galvanizing entrepreneurship and innovation focused on the challenges of our era.
What do you think the biggest challenge is in public health at the moment?
It is natural for the public health sector to feel angry and defensive right now. Budgets are being slashed. Anti-vaccine sentiment is on the rise. And public health leaders have been criticized and pilloried for their COVID work despite the remarkable and successful rollout of vaccines and safety measures. But this is not the time to be defensive. Americans care deeply about the health of their families and communities. They are not a problem to be fixed.
So we must defend our public health capacity with spirit and resolve while also finding new ways to build connection and understanding. It is not easy to hold these two goals at the same time. How often have we set out to build understanding, only to focus on communicating and relaying our own knowledge and expertise? This is not the path forward. Instead, we can start simply, with openness and curiosity.
Who is your public health hero and why?
My public health heroes are the community health workers I worked with in rural Burkina Faso in the early 1990s. They visited families after babies were born, ran vaccine campaigns, and helped communities access nutritious food. In an environment with few resources and many challenges, they stood up for what mattered most, forged lasting and trusting relationships and taught me so much.