The Becoming Better Ancestors™ Fund was inspired by the writings of Dr. William “Bill” Foege, a renowned American physician and epidemiologist. During his expansive career, Dr. Foege was one of the key architects of the successful smallpox eradication effort in the 1970s. He also guided Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates to make global public health impact their top priority, championed the science and management behind vaccines and vaccination and co-founded the Task Force for Child Survival, now the Task Force for Global Health. From May 1977 to 1983, Dr. Foege served as the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) where his legacy continues to inspire multiple generations working to protect the public’s health.

The fund was created to support best in class, future-forward thinking and strategic opportunities for improving public health. The fund was inspired by lessons learned from transformational public health impact throughout the history of CDC—including Smallpox eradication, the HIV epidemic, SARS, Ebola, Zika virus and the COVID-19 pandemic, in addition to non-communicable disease work such as reducing tobacco use and pioneering a public health approach to violence and injury prevention. The fund aims to explore how we might apply these lessons to address evolving and complex public health issues, like inequity, climate change and its impact on health and the preparedness of our communities. Learning from our public health history can empower us to become better ancestors—to leave the world better than we found it. Inaugural support for the fund was provided by Dr. Craig White (EIS, Class of '83), a long-time friend of Dr. Foege.

Photo credit: Billy Howard for The Task Force for Global Health

The PLACES Project is a collaboration between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the CDC Foundation. PLACES will allow counties, places, and local health departments regardless of population size and urban-rural status to better understand the burden and geographic distribution of health-related outcomes in their jurisdictions and assist them in planning public health interventions.

PLACES is an extension of the original 500 Cities Project that provided city and census tract estimates for chronic disease risk factors, health outcomes, and clinical preventive services use for the 500 largest US cities. The PLACES Project provides model-based population-level analysis and community estimates to all counties, places (incorporated and census designated places), census tracts, and ZIP Code Tabulation Areas (ZCTAs) across the United States. Learn more about the PLACES Project.

A Memorial Fund honoring Chris Kochtitzky who died May 3, 2020, will focus on building the bridge between urban planning and public health. Chris lived and breathed urban planning and public health—it was his life. This fund will celebrate and continue his tireless work and commitment to this field. Chris knew just how important the built environment was in terms of limiting or enabling a person and a community to lead their collective most healthy life. Chris started at CDC as a presidential management intern in 1992. Over the next 28 years, he worked in a variety of policy and programmatic positions at ATSDR, NCEH, and NCBDDD and NCCDPHP. 

In 2006, he was appointed by former CDC Director Julie Gerberding, MD, to lead the healthy community goal team, where he served until 2009. Chris was also one of the founders of the field of built environment and health at CDC. He published an influential MMWR on the subject in 2006, helped organize CDC’s Built Environment and Health Group in 2008, and was a key contributor to the Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Promote Walking and Walkable Communities in 2015. Most recently, he was a driving force in organizing the Transportation Research Board (TRB), Conference on Active Transportation and Health. His work in this area supported TRB’s decision to create a Committee on Transportation and Health in February, a seminal moment in the field.

Posthumously in June 2020, Chris received the Jonathan E. Fielding Community Guide Champion Award. He was a tireless advocate for The Community Guide and evidence-based decision making. He served as a member of the systematic review team for combined built environment approaches to increase physical activity, also helped disseminate the recommendations to varied audiences, including nontraditional public health partners.

Most importantly, Chris befriended and maintained relationships with so many people inside and outside the agency. He was a generous, caring friend and a tenacious public health professional pursuing his life and work with vigor, charm, wisdom, and intelligence. His death is a major loss for his friends, his field, and for the CDC’s public health work.