Reflections of a Lifetime Dedicated to Public Health Advocacy - In Memory of Beth Waters
By: Tina Flores
Beth Waters was a communications professional committed to advancing the cause of vaccine development and delivery. Among her many achievements, she helped to create a model for improving access to HIV treatment that has been applied to scale up treatment for other diseases.
A reporter in the early years of her career, Beth was a senior managing director of Ogilvy Public Relations before co-founding Cooney/Waters Group, a health care public relations and public affairs company in New York City. Beth was indefatigable in her work on vaccine advocacy, traveling the world to lend her intensity and expertise to her clients, governmental committees and non-governmental organizations; and promoting immunization against polio, HIV/ AIDS, avian influenza and meningococcal disease. Beth was a wise counselor, a creative problem-solver, and a relentless optimist. Beth passed away in 2006.
She was a founding member of the advisory board of the Vaccine Education Center of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and a member of the HIV Vaccine Communications Steering Group of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease.
Beth Waters often said that her first job in immunization advocacy was as a child of nine. She was a "polio pioneer" – one of the children who participated in the U.S. clinical trials of the vaccine that would mark the beginning of the end of the scourge of the disease that crippled or killed children and young adults throughout the 20th century. An unrelenting crusader for the prevention of infectious diseases, her involvement with global polio eradication continued right through the last decade of her life. Indeed, much of her 30 years in communications and public affairs centered on advocacy for vaccines to protect against diseases in both industrialized countries and the developing world.
Every aspect of immunization intrigued her, from the intricacies of production and supply to the involvement of communities in clinical trials of candidate vaccines for mass immunization programs. Indefatigable in her efforts, she traveled the world to lend her intensity and expertise in international scientific forums and at the grassroots level, working with her client Sanofi Pasteur, governmental committees and non-governmental organizations.
"Beth's work exemplifies the power of communications in bringing together people and groups to advance the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases, most notably HIV/AIDS," said Wayne Pisano, former chairman and CEO of Sanofi Pasteur. "It was impossible to slow her down. She fought for disease prevention with an energy and enthusiasm that was often as contagious as any of the microbes she battled."
This issue of GLOBAL HEALTH is dedicated to Beth Waters, with corporate sponsorship provided by Sanofi Pasteur.
Thank Beth, we contracted the energy and enthuasiasm to continue in your works. Our goal is “Getting to zero” and we’ll achieve it.
— Abiola Ogunenika on 2011-12-14