The career of F. Marc LaForce, MD began in1965 with an assignment to the United States Public Health Service at the Communicable Disease Center—now the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)—in Atlanta, GA. Dr. LaForce’s public health career has spanned multiple continents and changed countless lives.
In his senior year of high school, Dr. LaForce earned a four-year scholarship to Saint Anselm College. “I fell in love with chemistry. I fell in love with real education,” Dr. LaForce said. “That led me to medical school, then to a career, and an important part of that career has been in international health. It all started at Saint Anselm.”
In 1964, Dr. LaForce began his postgraduate training in internal medicine on the Harvard Medical Service at the Boston City Hospital (BCH), but his work was interrupted by a telegraph informing him that he was to report for duty to the U.S. Air Force—a draft notice for the Vietnam War. Dr. Charles Davidson, Dr. LaForce’s program director and mentor at Harvard, presented him with an alternative: a war deferment to complete his residency at the US Public Health Service at the Communicable Diseases Center.
Discovering public health and the EIS family
There, Dr. LaForce was assigned to the Bacterial Diseases Unit as a Meningitis Officer as part of the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS). In operation since 1951, EIS trains public health disease detectives as they manage infectious disease investigations and conduct research both nationally and internationally. “I never expected to work in public health,” said Dr. LaForce. "That was all to change after the EIS experience.”
Dr. LaForce’s two years as an EIS officer, including time spent in Thailand, India and Nepal on assignment, broadened his medical perspective. “I never again thought of health problems solely as they affected individuals,” said Dr. LaForce. “I thought more diligently about how their conditions could be prevented.”
EIS also made Dr. LaForce part of the CDC family, and he always sensed that he was part of a special club. CDC staff like Alexander Langmuir, who created EIS, supported his work and career. He, in return, ushered another generation of epidemiologists, like Joanna Buffington, toward EIS. Dr LaForce explained that this new generation of EIS officers made him proud to be part of the EIS family. “Hearing of their epidemiologic exploits gave me a sense that I was repaying EIS for all that it had given me.”
And that special club—the EIS Alumni Association (EISAA)—continues to foster and sustain that sense of family among EIS alumni and creates opportunities for networking and mentorship between EIS alumni, future EIS members and current officers, solidifying that connection to the EIS program.
Dr. LaForce on EIS assignment in Nepal in 1966 during the plague epidemic.
Dr. LaForce in 1986 as a WHO consultant for poliomyelitis in Indonesia.
Leading public health’s fight against meningitis
In 2001, after 30 years in medical academia, Dr. LaForce moved to Ferney, France to direct the Meningitis Vaccine Project. Its aim was to develop, test and license an affordable Group A meningococcal conjugate vaccine in sub-Saharan Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa’s meningitis belt is an area that stretches from Senegal in the west to Ethiopia in the east and has an at-risk population of about 470 million. Without a vaccine, at least one in ten people who develop bacterial meningitis will die. Another 20 percent develop permanent disabilities.
In caring for the world, we care for ourselves.
Faced with the high cost of developing vaccines and with an eye toward making vaccines that were both effective and affordable, Dr. LaForce’s team spent nine years developing and testing MenAfriVac®, and in 2011, the vaccine was introduced via mass campaigns in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. Among the 19.5 million people who received MenAfriVac®, not a single case of meningitis A was reported. The effectiveness and affordability of the vaccine has since essentially ended meningitis A epidemics in this region of Africa.
Today, the CDC Foundation carries this work forward, partnering with CDC, the World Health Organization-Regional Office for Africa (WHO-AFRO), Davycas International, Ministries of Health and other non-governmental agencies through Meningitis Africa Network (MenAfriNet), a consortium that supports decision-making, implementation strategies, impact evaluations and special studies for addressing bacterial meningitis.
Dr. LaForce conversing with Center for Vaccine Development staff in Bamako, Mali in 2005.
Dr. LaForce in 2022 during the introduction of MenAfriVac in Burkina Faso.
Leaving a lasting legacy
Living by a credo developed during his time at EIS, “never accept second best, and everything is possible,” Dr. LaForce has changed the course of public health in sub-Saharan Africa. He sees these enormous impacts as the results of a simple idea: “In caring for the world, we care for ourselves.” His goal now is to ensure these messages are carried forward to a new generation of leaders. Dr. LaForce has taught at the George Washington School of Public Health and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, is currently writing a monograph that details his career and has set up scholarship programs to help youth from New Hampshire go to college. He’s also ensuring his four grandchildren have pathways to a quality education.
“People have a right to food. They have a right to health. They have a right to see that their kids are going to get educated, and their kids have a chance to succeed. Life everywhere must reflect a system of values where individuals, whoever they are, are valued for what they are: unique human beings.”
