Joseph Bates, M.D., Honored as Public Health Hero

By Liz Caldwell

 
Joseph Bates, M.D., was the 2014 recipient of the State Excellence in Public Health Award.

Bates is a professor of epidemiology and associate dean for public health practice at the UAMS Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health as well as the deputy state health officer and chief science officer for the Arkansas Department of Health.

At the Sept. 11 awards ceremony, Bates was honored as an internationally recognized researcher in tuberculosis and a “tireless leader and advocate for public health for five decades.” The award was one of six “public health hero awards” given by the association this year.

Presenting the award were David Lakey, M.D., past president of the association and commissioner of the Texas Department of Health Services; Paul Halverson, Dr.P.H., former Arkansas Health Department director; and Nathaniel Smith, M.D., current Arkansas Health Department director and state health officer, who nominated Bates for the award.

“He helped pioneer short-course, outpatient treatment of this disease, closing down the sanatoriums and transforming the management of this disease,” Lakey said.

That innovation, in collaboration with Arkansas Health Department, in fact, helped eliminate tuberculosis as a major public health threat and reduce Arkansas case rates from well above to well below the national average.

Bates said he was “deeply honored” to receive the award. “We are optimists, but we are more than optimists,” he said of public health officials. “We are determined people, and we are persistent. Those are wonderful qualities for getting things done.”

After a career in academic medicine, Bates joined the Health Department as director of the Tuberculosis Control Program in 1998 and has served as deputy state health officer and chief science officer since 2005. He played a key role in the establishment of the College of Public Health at UAMS and since 2005 has served as a member of its faculty and administration. He has also been a vocal supporter for state legislation affecting health and an advocate for the needs of the underserved.

Bates provided critical leadership for the Clean Indoor Air Act of 2006, which protects Arkansans from secondhand smoke. He has championed the health needs of the more than 6,000 citizens of the Marshall Islands living in Arkansas. The Health Department clinic built in 2011 in Springdale, Ark., to serve the needs of the Marshallese is named in his honor.

The Association of State and Territorial Health Officials is the national nonprofit organization representing the public health agencies of the United States, the U.S. territories, and the District of Columbia, as well as the more than 100,000 public health professionals these agencies employ.