Vol. 2 No. 2 Specials

Now more than ever, the most influential advances in public health research come through more sensitive and accurate understanding of individual’s health in their social environments. This entails work that can only be accomplished through getting out and making the world our laboratory, by getting up close and personal. However getting up close often requires gaining access to people at the margins of society. Most researchers, despite wanting to believe otherwise, soon realize that they don’t have this access. They find that the most affected groups by and large have very good reasons to be distrustful and their assurances mean little. They find that trust is not an academic or research skill, it is something much more. Trust must be grounded in familiarity, cultivated with sincerity, and tempered with reality. This has resulted in the enlisting of a cadre of field researchers who have “been there done that,” to go into the community and do the work of science. It takes a special kind of person to straddle the line between the scientific community and the lay community. It takes a person who can be accountable to research protocols in destitute conditions, answer to university bureaucrats as well as drug dealers, and manage both institutional policies and the code of the street.

Anthony Givens was this kind of person. Tony had worked at the Yale School of Public Health since 1999, bringing not only his intimate knowledge of the streets with him, but unbridled enthusiasm, generosity, and love for his work, his colleagues, and especially the people in the community. His long, bouncing dreadlocks, his infectious smile, and his animated character were instantly recognized by many in New Haven and across the country. He did not come to Yale through academic acumen, but with wisdom that few possess, and a special gift of delivering hope. More than anything, he cared. He cared that things were done right and that people were done right. He cared enough to dedicate his life to helping those in a world that almost took his life so many years ago. He cared enough to place himself at risk by straddling that line for the sake of doing something good, to change our public health systems that fail so many. Alas, those same safety nets failed him in his time of need. Tony left us on February 21, 2005. We should all be thankful for the Tony Givens’ of the world, and those who knew him are especially thankful for Tony. He left us all richer. We will miss him terribly. Tony’s life reminds us that it is not science that pulls humanity along, but rather humanity that keeps science in check. Isaac Newton famously declared, "If I have seen farther, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." We have all seen farther thanks to Tony Givens.