YOUR ASSOCIATION
Open Access
PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE
I Stand on the Shoulders of Giants
Larry A. Ramdin, MPH, MA, REHS/RS, CP-FS, HHS, CHO
I am humbled and honored to serve as your president. The presidents who served before—from Herbert A. Jewett to CDR Anna Khan—have all prepared a way for me and guided our organization from its beginnings in 1937 to today. We have seen numerous practice changes as we have adopted hazard analysis critical con- trol point (HACCP) processes and accepted model codes for food safety, swimming pools, and body art. We played a vital role in the elimination of smallpox and rejoiced in 1978 when smallpox was declared eradicated. Past- President Vince Radke was part of that pro- gram. We also faced and are dealing with new diseases such as West Nile virus, the spread of numerous tickborne illnesses, and the emer- gence of new vectors in places they were not seen before due to changing weather patterns. A transition from paper to electronic report- ing, increased data sharing, and the list goes on. We as a profession have always responded to the changes and have embraced them. I was born in Trinidad in the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago, an area that gifted the world with steel drums. I attended Presenta- tion College San Fernando in Trinidad where I developed a love for biology. After leaving high school, I was oered a job interview at a bank, but working indoors and wearing a tie was not something that appealed to me. I applied for a job in a municipal Aedes aegypti control program as a field technician, going to people’s homes locating mosquito foci and treating them. The job was fun and I enjoyed what I did—going to a new environment each day, getting to know my town, meeting new people, and exploring a variety of living condi-
a future generation of public health and envi- ronmental health practitioners could acquire the skill and certification needed to do their jobs. That is the foundation for my belief that information is useless unless it is shared. Bell inspired us daily with a quotation from Dale Carnegie’s book, How To Win Friends and Influence People . One quote has stuck with me and has guided my approach to practice and life: “I shall pass this way but once; any good, therefore, that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.” I was first introduced to the National Envi- ronmental Health Association (NEHA) and the Journal of Environmental Health through the stacks that were in the classroom. The environmental health practice in the Carib- bean was dierent from what I encountered in the U.S., where there is significant special- ization and duties distributed among several agencies. The environmental public health practitioner in the Caribbean is expected to have a wide knowledge, and their duties include environmental sanitation (duties nor- mally conducted by the Department of Public Works), water quality monitoring, mosquito control programs, emergency preparedness and response, meat and food inspection. milk sanitation and hygiene, healthy housing, and onsite wastewater, to name just a few. I migrated to the U.S. and became a mem- ber of NEHA. I have earned several creden- tials from NEHA: the Registered Environmen- tal Health Specialist/Registered Sanitarian (REHS/RS), the Certified Professional–Food Safety (CP-FS), and the Healthy Housing
Let us all work together to
claim our space and gain the recognition we deserve.
tions. I immediately knew this was the space I wanted to be in for the rest of my working life. While vacationing in Barbados, I saw a notice in the newspaper inviting applications to the public health inspection program at Bar- bados Community College and was encour- aged by my Barbadian hosts, Lorna and Chris- topher Edwards, to apply to the program. As an indecisive young adult, it took me 3 years to decide to apply and once I stepped on the path, there was no looking back. Hinkitch Irvin Bell, the program coordina- tor and a retired chief public health inspec- tor, took me under his wings and guided me through the program. It was here that I truly understood the breadth and depth of the environmental health practice, although at that time the term environmental health was just being introduced to describe our profes- sion. Bell was not only a mentor but also an inspiration. He was one of the first in Barba- dos to earn the Public Health Certificate from the Royal Society of Public Health and to become the first Fellow of the Royal Society of Health in Barbados. He also taught public health inspection classes at his home so that
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Volume 88 • Number 1
https://doi.org/10.70387/001c.142104
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