As part of National Public Health Week 2022, CSTE is highlighting the work of our members in applied epidemiology. Today is Part 1 of a spotlight focused upon CSTE President Dr. Ruth Lynfield.

As a medical student, Dr. Ruth Lynfield spent a summer in Brazil and had an epiphany: She wanted to be an epidemiologist. 

Specifically, Dr. Lynfield was gathering data and assessing risk factors on cases of leishmaniasis, a parasitic disease that is found in parts of the tropics and subtropics.

“That really put the idea of “being an epi” in my head,” she said. “I really liked the idea of using epidemiology as a lens to understand infectious disease.”

That fascination with infectious disease has propelled Dr. Lynfield through a distinguished, decades long career in public health. The past 15 of which have been spent as the State Epidemiologist of Minnesota, and more recently as the 2021-2022 CSTE President.

While the past two years have been an almost non-stop marathon of COVID response work, before that Dr. Lynfield enjoyed the fact that no day was ever the same. For example, an outbreak of progressive inflammatory neuropathy in pork processing plant workers was related to inhalation of aerosolized swine brain.

“Interesting things happen for which you can use epidemiology and try to piece together the puzzle,” she said.

In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic raged, another tragedy occurred, this one closer to home for Dr. Lynfield: The murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis at the hands of police officer Derek Chauvin. The tragic loss of life and subsequent fallout helped shape the basis of one of Dr. Lynfield’s main CSTE presidential priorities: Law Enforcement Involved Fatal Encounters (LEIFE).

As today’s National Public Health Week theme is Racism as a Public Health Crisis, Dr. Lynfield reflected on her thoughts after that awful incident.

“My sense was that this was the tip of the iceberg because of the occurrence of cases of [LEIFE] in many states,” she said. “In Minnesota, we went back and looked and found that we had about 30 cases a year of [LEIFE] and that people of color, particularly African Americans and American Indians, were much more likely to be injured or have a fatal encounter with law enforcement than white non-Hispanic Minnesotans.”

According to Dr. Lynfield, one thing that the public health community can do to help reduce LEIFE is to see these tragic encounters as a public health crisis which requires taking a public health approach. As an example, there are fatality reviews for newborn deaths and a plethora of other conditions, so developing a standardized case definition for LEIFE is crucial.

Dr. Lynfield has been working with a couple of exceptional CSTE Applied Epidemiology Fellows, and the Chairs and members of the health equity and the injury subcommittees on this standardized case definition for several months and says it will allow jurisdictions to follow trends over time.

“It’s important for the public to know what is happening and I think it’s important for us to be able to describe and understand these events in order to come up with recommendations about how to change the conditions that would lead to these [LEIFE] events.”

Dr. Lynfield’s LEIFE work aims to stem the long-standing inequities and systemic racism inherent to law enforcement encounters which have too often resulted in tragic outcomes for minorities and communities of color.

She strongly believes the methods of applied epidemiology, gathering data and assessing risk, are a cornerstone of public health that can be used anywhere from the fazendas of Brazil to the streets of Minneapolis.

“If you’re able to measure it, then you’re able to deal with it better.”

Ruth Lynfield, MD, is State Epidemiologist from Minnesota and CSTE President for the 2021-22 term. More information on Dr. Lynfield's current work on LEIFE and other presidential priorities can be found at https://www.cste.org/page/presidential-priorities-award.

Part 2 of our spotlight on Dr. Lynfield will be posted later this NPHW 2022.