On the Job | Lord ’87 goes from medieval scholar to U.S. health historian

Jamie Rosen Staff Writer

Alexandra Lord ’87 majored in Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Vassar. After working at an art museum, Lord realized that she was more interested in history, so she pursued a masters degree at the College of William and Mary and got a Ph.D. in History and the History of Medicine at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Lord worked as a professor for four years, and is currently a historian for the U.S. Public Health Service in Washington, D.C.

The Miscellany News: What are your responsibilities as historian for the U.S. Public Health Service?

Alexandra Lord: I do a lot of different things, but basically I’m the one who oversees and helps maintain the records about the Public Health Service. That can mean I interview people who work for the Public Health Service. That means I work with archivists and make sure the material they’re collecting can be used by historians in the future, and I also interpret and write about [past public health policy].

When the government wants to implement a new program, they ask what did we do in the past, why did we do that, and what factors have changed since then. For example, the government is very worried about the new flu pandemic, so they came to the office and said can you research everything about these pandemics, tell us what we did in the past, tell us the mistakes that we made as well as the good things we did, and tell us how things have changed. One question was would the disease spread more quickly than it had in the past. People travel on planes more than in the past, so the answer is the disease would probably spread more quickly.

We also work with reporters, so sometimes if the federal government is implementing a new policy or if a disease has come back in the news, reporters will call us and ask for background.

MN: What do you like best about your job?

AL: The thing I like about my job is I have no specific sort of ordinary day. When I come into the office, I can’t always be sure what I’m going to find. When I get a query from someone, it could be about anything in the two hundred year history of the public health service. It’s also a lot of fun because I’m always learning something. For me, I enjoyed teaching, but there really wasn’t enough variation in teaching for me.

MN: Is there a downside to your job?

AL: Sometimes people don’t understand what historical research is, so they think there’s a big giant book where we can look something up. Sometimes it can be a little difficult to work with people who don’t understand the limits of historical documents.

On the flip side, that can be really interesting as well. If I work with lawyers or physicians they may ask me questions that I wouldn’t normally ask. It’s like dealing with people who don’t really speak your language, and you’re trying to get them to understand.

MN: How did your Vassar experience prepare you for the job?

AL: I think that I learned some really basic research skills that helped me a lot first in graduate school and then in my job here. I think one thing that Vassar gave me was some confidence in following some more unconventional paths. A lot of Ph.Ds become professors. The sort of comfort level which I achieved at Vassar helped me to look for a different type of career.

I think [Vassar was] one of few schools where everyone was doing an internship. I think that helps people get jobs, and that helps people find out what they don’t like. A lot of what I do now is museum work, and I got that exposure when I [did an internship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art while] at Vassar.

MN: Any advice for students who hope to pursue careers in public health policy?

AL: I think it’s good sometimes to take time and try to figure out what you really like, and sometimes that means not going to grad school directly. One of the important things is to be always reading the paper and thinking about it even now. The second thing that is really important is maybe an internship, and I think D.C. can be a great place to work in the field of public health. Try to get a job that can give you a little inside look at it before going to grad school, because grad school can be a long haul. Talk to people [about their jobs] and try to figure out what you want.