Steven Wiersma '84

It's a long journey from Grand Rapids to Florida, even longer when your itinerary includes stops in Zaire, Zambia, Eritrea and the Gulf War. But 1984 Calvin graduate Steven Wiersma wouldn't have made the trip any other way. And he concedes his odyssey has not likely ended in Tallahassee, where he currently serves Florida as the state's chief epidemiologist.

"It's safe to say," he says with a smile, "that I enjoy challenges and don't mind looking for them."

Perhaps that is why when Wiersma, a Grand Rapids native, left Calvin almost two decades ago for medical school, he chose Wayne State University because, as he once told a CNN interviewer, it was a more "blood and guts setting." As part of his training he was sent to Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo. And there a strange thing happened.

He discovered during his three months working side by side with a surgeon that he liked the work, but that he envied the local public health doctor who was training others in the villages, training that had a lasting impact.

"The surgeon," he says, "would leave the village and his work would basically come to a halt. He was the only one who could do what he was doing. But the public health worker, he was equipping people with knowledge that continued to be a benefit even when he was gone. There was something very appealing to me about making a difference in such a lasting way."

And so he finished up at Wayne State and then did a master's in public health and his residency in preventive medicine and public health. He's never looked back, spending time in public health with the World Health Organization in Zambia and then with the United States Agency for International Development in Eritrea.

Now, for the last half dozen years, he supervises a steady stream of breaking stories from his base in Florida's capital city, where he lives with his wife Petra, a native of Germany who also is a doctor (the two met in medical school), and their three children.

First Wiersma handled an outbreak of St. Louis encephalitis and then came the nation's first human case of mad cow disease. That was followed by West Nile virus, which, says Wiersma, he worked on as a hurricane bore down on Florida. That then gave way to anthrax and two cases in Florida, including the death of reporter Bob Stevens, which, it became clear, were caused by humans and not naturally.

It was the two cases of anthrax that cast Wiersma most swiftly into a national spotlight. He recalls doing one press conference and hearing later that Ari Fleisher, the White House press secretary, and members of the National Security Council had been watching his remarks. It was at that point, he says, that he realized the significance of his efforts to track down the sources of the anthrax cases.

Wiersma says that from the beginning his suspicion was that the anthrax cases were deliberate acts of terrorism. But tracking down the source would prove to be time consuming and detailed work.

In an interview with NPR radio Wiersma told Richard Knox some of what it took to track down the anthrax spores to the mailroom of the American Media Inc. building.

"That happened," he said, "because a bunch of our people, epidemiologists and laboratorians in street clothes, were sent out looking for something. And we found it."

Now, over a year removed from the cases, Wiersma can reflect at a more languid pace on what those chaotic days in the fall of 2001 were like.

"It was hectic," he says. "We had an emergency operations center set up in Palm Beach but we didn't know where it (the anthrax) was. We were flying around in helicopters, chasing down leads. We were going to ponds and restaurants. We were tracking the postal system."

In the end, says Wiersma, finding the anthrax's origins took a combination of both good science and good detective work, two indispensable tools for an epidemiologist. And the good detective work, Wiersma adds, was based on having relationships with people, both existing relationships and newly formed relationships with Bob Stevens's friends and co-workers.

These days Wiersma is focused on efforts to vaccinate Florida health workers against smallpox (not to mention dealing with cruise ships and outbreaks of Norwalk virus). There are times, Wiersma admits, when he wonders what's next.

"We've been in the middle of some pretty intense situations," he says. "Things that have gotten national media attention. You do wonder what might be around the next corner."

Luckily, says Wiersma, "I'm a little bit of an adrenaline junkie."

And, he adds, such high profile situations also provide a high profile soapbox. Wiersma fully believes in the power of the bully pulpit when it comes to his work as Florida's epidemiologist, saying equipping people with information works.

"The thing I've loved from the beginning about preventive medicine," he says, "is empowering people—giving people tools to make changes. When you get things like West Nile and anthrax you have people's attention. You need to take advantage of that."

Despite the experiences he's had in Florida with things such as anthrax and West Nile, Wiersma's long-term concerns might be considered more mundane. Two of his biggest worries are obesity and influenza.

"My greatest concern as a public health worker," he says, "is influenza. It is a real threat."

Wiersma says pandemic influenza could circle the globe and kill millions with new viruses capable of emerging at any time.

"It (influenza) is capable of high mortality for young and old," he says. "In risk populations death is significant."

Wiersma believes that deaths from influenza have been underestimated and that as surveillance becomes better there will be a greater push for more widespread use of flu vaccines.

Unfortunately, he says, there is no vaccine for obesity. But it too is fast reaching epidemic proportions.

"We're seeing caloric intake increase," he says, "while "exercise is decreasing. We're seeing diabetes going up. We're seeing a whole host of health problems. We'd better start thinking about what we're going to do. And we'd better be courageous. It's not a simple problem but it needs to be addressed now."

Fortunately addressing things now is Wiersma's style.

It's a talent, he says, that was nurtured at Calvin.

"A liberal arts college like Calvin," he says, "gave me a broad exposure to different educational areas and that is something I still draw on every day in what I do. Beyond that, and these things are not separate in my mind, is the importance of a Christian, liberal arts education. What I learned at Calvin was a Christian worldview, to think about whether I'm really making a difference in the world in the way that God calls us to make a difference."

APRIL 2003 EDITOR'S NOTE: Steve Wiersma's globetrotting adventures will take yet another twist this summer when he and his family move to Geneva, Switzerland where he will work as an employee of the Center for Disease Control, seconded to the World Health Organization. His task will be the prevention and control of vaccine-preventable forms of viral hepatitis. He will plan, introduce and evaluate hepatitis B immunization activities, develop simplified diagnostic and laboratory methods, work on safe injection practices, head up surveillance methods and oversee production and distribution of immunological and antiviral drugs.