At epidemiologist’s core, a deep need to help humankind
Santa Fean deployed to West Africa numerous times to aid in battle against Ebola epidemic
Three years ago, the largest Ebola outbreak in recorded history erupted in West Africa.
From early 2014 through March 2016, the highly infectious virus sickened more than 28,000 people and killed at least 11,300, terrorizing the countries of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, and threatening public safety around the world.
Capt. John Redd, a medical epidemiologist for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, calls the crisis
the “most grave public health challenge in a generation.”
From the start, the Santa Fe
resident was eager to help.
“He didn’t hesitate. In fact, he was pushing to go [to Africa] when the outbreak started,” said his wife, Dr. Bernadette Redd. “I don’t think either of us thought twice about it.”
Redd, 54, was first interested in infectious diseases during weekly seminars at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas. Somebody introduced the lecture series as “free wine and cheese,” the doctor said, and he ended up hooked on epidemiology.
Redd went on to study public health and epidemiology in New York City during the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and later investigated post-9/11 anthrax outbreaks as an epidemic intelligence service officer with the CDC. He served as chief of the infectious diseases branch for the Indian Health Services and currently works in the CDC’s Center for Global Health.
So in 2014, when Redd was asked to help combat the highly contagious, often deadly virus in Sierra Leone, he was prepared.
Redd’s role in the country was to help local authorities survey and try to control the disease. His team investigated Ebola cases, tracked down people who had been in contact with Ebola-affected patients to get them under surveillance
or into treatment, and built up a system for getting that job done fast.
Combating the spread of the disease is essentially the way to beat it, Redd explained. Within two years, the CDC and other local and international organizations in West Africa had done just that.
“For me and many other people, it was really a life-changing experience. Of course, ultimately it was a great public health victory that we won with the help of many partners, including the CDC,” Redd said. “That really got me interested in spending the rest of my career in global health — which is what I intend to do.”
Redd was deployed to Sierra Leone nine times during the outbreak.
“It was tough in the beginning,” said his wife, Bernadette. “The first time I will say I was quite apprehensive that he might get infected. It was nervewracking.”
Following his first deployment, Redd had to go into supervised isolation for 21 days, his wife said. It was terrifying for her and her daughters — she knew that her husband had been in direct contact with infected patients, and despite precautions, it was possible he had contracted the disease.
He hadn’t. And as the number of infected patients in West Africa declined, and conditions in Sierra Leone improved, she became less and less nervous.
Redd still spends part of his time overseas, supervising the CDC’s post-Ebola outbreak efforts in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. His mandate is to help develop more robust surveillance systems for disease, train medical personnel and build up medical laboratories in the countries.
“I’ve wondered myself, why do I seem to enjoy it so much?” Redd said of the work. “First of all, the need is great. It’s very fulfilling to work overseas. But it’s also very clearly in the interest of the U.S. to do so … to try to control diseases overseas before they get to the U.S.”
When not on deployment, Redd lives in Santa Fe, where he moved with Bernadette to start training with the CDC through the New Mexico Department of Health nearly 20 years ago. Bernadette works as a radiologist in a local X-ray facility, and both of Redd’s daughters graduated from Santa Fe high schools before going on to study at Washington University in St. Louis. One of his daughters works for Teach For America. The other is studying to be a biomedical engineer.
Dr. Bret Smoker, the clinical director of Indian Health Services Santa Fe Service Unit, says his colleague and friend is wellknown throughout the national Native health agency for his “world-class” epidemiological expertise.
But it’s not Redd’s intelligence that makes him a uniquely skilled health care professional in Smoker’s eyes. The reason for that goes beyond his extensive training and prestigious commendations, including the U.S. Public Health Service Outstanding Service Medal, that gleam on Redd’s résumé.
What makes Redd great, Smoker said, is the humility and kindness with which he approaches everything from his epidemiological work to his interactions with Native American patients as an internal medicine specialist. And it’s the tears that Smoker has seen pooling up in Redd’s eyes as he talks about the suffering and pain he saw in West Africa.
“He just loves his fellow humans. I can’t overstate how important that is when you’re dealing with something like a public health emergency,” Smoker said. “He feels the importance of this work at his core.”