Your nomination and your kind introduction mean a great deal to me personally. I am particularly proud to be honored by the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, because I am so impressed by the people who work in this field. Yours doesn't strike me as a discipline one chooses for the glory. It's not nearly so glamorous as, say, heart surgery. Your work is more methodical and more subtle.
Progress takes place over years and even decades.
You certainly have known dazzling accomplishments, like eradicating smallpox and dramatically reducing the incidence of dangerous childhood disease. But most often, your success is measured in incremental progress toward a goal that may be itself an incremental solution, many years in the making. I so respect your patience and your discipline. Perhaps because I, too, have a goal that I have been pursuing many years and that is marked by milestones rather than clear and final finish lines. The truth is I didn't just wake up one day to the realization that health care would be one of the pillars of my life.