Reimert T. Ravenholt MD, MPH ’56 is a physician epidemiologist. He was a member of the second class of the Epidemic Intelligence Service of the Centers for Disease Control and as a public health officer served in Paris as the Epidemiology Consultant, Europe, for the U.S .Public Health Service. During his career, he directed major public health and population programs. He implemented some of the earliest epidemiological research on the adverse health impacts of tobacco. At USAID, he oversaw the delivery of hundreds of millions of dollars of contraceptives to the world’s poor and conceptualized and initiated the World Health Surveys, one of the premier tools for the measurement of health and family planning status in countries around the world. He retired from the U.S. Food and Drug Agency where he was head of the office monitoring adverse drug reactions.

“Berkeley moment”

The presentation of my term paper on malignant cellular evolution, a unified hypothesis of carcinogenesis

Public health dream team

Most pressing problems: excessive population growth and access to family planning (Malcolm Potts), access to universal health care (Barack Obama), morbidity and mortality from tobacco use (myself), prevention of infectious diseases (Bill Foege)

A change to one U.S. policy that would transform public health

We need effective gun control policies, legislation, and enforcement.