.” The busy mother of two recently took time to speak with HealthyWomen's editor-in-chief Jaimie Seaton.: You write very movingly at the beginning of your book about watching a young boy die when you were a child and how that influenced your decision to go into medicine. Can you talk a little bit about that?: When I was about 10 years old, there was a boy who lived in the same apartment building as me. He was a couple of years younger, and we used to walk to school together.
It was also working in the ER that I saw how much health is not just about the health care that we receive. It's also about the air that we breathe, the food that we have access to, the housing resources that are available. All of that is what's involved in this concept of public health. Public health was not something that I went into medicine thinking that I wanted to do. I had no concept of what it meant.