partner profile
minutes
with Dr. Mary Travis Bassett
by Nancy Maddox, MPH, writer
Mary Travis Bassett, MD, MPH, was appointed commissioner of the New York City Department of
Health and Mental Hygiene in January 2014, after 30 years working in public health, with a focus
on health equity. Early in her career, Bassett served on the medical faculty at the University of
Zimbabwe, followed by a stint as associate director of health equity at the Rockefeller Foundation’s
Southern Africa Office. She has also served as deputy commissioner of health promotion and
disease prevention at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, where
she established district public health offices in Central Harlem, the South Bronx and other city
neighborhoods with an excess disease burden. Most recently, she served as program director for
the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation’s African Health Initiative and Child Wellbeing Program.
Bassett grew up in New York City and earned her MD at Columbia University’s College of
Physicians and Surgeons. She received a BA in history and science from Harvard University and
an MPH from the University of Washington.
How did your interest in science begin?
My father, Emmett Bassett, was a bench
scientist, working in immunochemistry.
He was also a lifelong community activist
with a strong commitment to social
justice and civil rights. He was one of
the last students of George Washington
Carver, an esteemed black scientist at
what was then known as the Tuskegee
Institute in Alabama. My father brought
home experiments for us to do as kids.
And every year on our birthday he brought
us into his lab. I remember bending glass
in Bunsen burners.
What prompted your move to Zimbabwe
after earning your MD?
Like many things in life, it was a
combination of my work and personal
lives. I was finishing a fellowship program
at the University of Washington that
included getting my MPH degree, and I
was at a point in life where I was free.
I decided that, like many students of
African descent, I wanted to work in
Africa. So I wrote to a friend whose
parents were on the faculty of the
University of Zimbabwe. I got a letter
written on one of those old-fashioned
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LAB MATTERS Summer 2018
aerograms saying, “Dr. Bassett, you may
collect your ticket at Thomas Cook [travel
agency] and present yourself for interview
in our offices in Harare at such and such
a date.”
I finished up in Seattle and went to my
interview. I was successful. But I arrived in
Zimbabwe extraordinarily ill-prepared to
be useful to them. It was a huge learning
experience for me. And, as it happened,
I arrived just as the AIDS epidemic was
beginning to display itself in Zimbabwe.
And that turned out to be one of the worst
AIDS epidemics in the world and came
to dominate my work in the years that
followed. I had the privilege of working
with people who had some of the best
training there is, people who returned
home after [Zimbabwe’s] independence
and were committed to advancing the
health of the country. It was extraordinary
what was accomplished.
I ended up staying much longer than I
expected—I went for my interview in
1985, and I left [Zimbabwe] in 2002. It was
such an honor.
What are some of the AIDS
prevention interventions you
developed in Zimbabwe?
Our work focused on training peer
educators to tell factory workers and
others about condom use and reduction of
sexual partners. We also tried the female
condom for sex workers. They liked it
because they didn’t have to negotiate;
much to my surprise, they reported that
men were often too drunk to notice it.
They were expensive though. And then
we did programs aimed at schools, mostly
educating girls about negotiating safe sex
and also negotiating not having sex. I also
participated in US-funded studies using
antiretroviral drugs to reduce mother-
to-child transmission. And I finished up
my work there bringing HIV treatment
to those infected, something that had
been seen as unaffordable to Africa, to
Zimbabwe, before [the US President’s
Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief] was
introduced. In retrospect, all of the
interventions were useful and important,
but there really should have been a
national emergency declared. Infection
rates hit 30% of adults.
You have focused on health
equity throughout your public
health career. How do you
explain this important issue?
When I talk about health disparities, what
I’m talking about is the patterning of
health by social position. Anywhere you
look, you will find that patterning—by
income; in racial hierarchical societies, by
race; by gender and sexual orientation;
by economic position. Any way we are
defined socially influences our risk of
disease. And the most important driver is
typically poverty.
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