Illinois Medicine

Julie Morita continued from page 29 Service officer at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, she joined the Chicago Department of Public Health in 1999 as medical director of the department's immunization program before being elevated to chief medical officer in 2014 and then commissioner in 2015. Morita's work at CDPH included spearheading the development and implementation of Healthy Chicago 2.0, a four-year health improvement plan focused on bolstering health equity, reducing disparities in immunization coverage levels and leading Chicago's H1N1 response. Since moving on to RWJF, Morita has continued addressing health equity, efforts propelled partly by her family history, including the detention of her parents in Japanese internment camps during World War II. "The more I considered the opportunity and the experience I bring, the more I felt a responsibility to participate," says Morita, a board member of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases and a former member of the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Rachel Caskey, MD, chief of the division of academic internal medicine at the University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System, has worked alongside Morita on various vaccine initiatives over the years and calls her "a conscientious public health professional." "Dr. Morita is incredibly attentive, articulate and well- informed," Caskey says. "She impresses with an ability to push through bureaucracy, prioritize health equity and do what is right for the public at large." Soon after Biden announced his COVID-19 task force on November 9, when Morita joined the likes of Vivek Murthy, MD, the 19th surgeon general of the U.S., and former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner David Kessler, MD, on the 13-member panel, the then-president-elect addressed the group on a video call. He appealed for a clear and equitable response plan rooted in sound science and evidence. In Biden's words and during the group's first formal discussion, Morita recognized a clear sense of urgency and a deep commitment to collaboration, which ignited memories of her days as a medical student. "I can remember standing with classmates around the anatomy lab table, supporting one another and finding a way forward," she says. "Here again, I felt a respectful appreciation for diversity and progress, and that gave me great hope. We all understood the enormity of the problem before us, but also the immense opportunity to make a big difference." Since then, Morita says, the task force has continued to distill information arriving from various sources—public health agencies, researchers, pharma and the like—with an unrelenting eye on crafting an earnest and efficient plan that addresses public health needs across a diverse nation. "We know the clock is ticking, and we've been working hard to create a thoughtful plan the Biden-Harris administration can lean on to confront this pandemic immediately," Morita says. "If we accomplish that, we will have done our job." UST AFTER DONNING HER PPE FOR THE FIRST TIME and stepping into the "hot zone" of the emergency field hospital, in Cremona, Italy, on March 22, 2020, Barbara Zimmerman, MD '85, wondered if she could really do this. With layers of PPE, Zimmerman felt claustrophobic while the high-risk threat of a still-novel viral enemy ignited concerns about her own health in one of the globe's early COVID-19 hot spots. Steps away, a 68-bed field hospital filled with COVID-19 patients and healthcare staff scrambling to keep pace only intensified her anxiety. "It was a reality check for me," Zimmerman acknowledges, "but, ultimately, you move forward because patients need your help." And that's precisely what she did. Over the next seven weeks, Zimmerman served nearly 45 12- hour shifts at a field hospital in Cremona as part of the Samaritan's Purse Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART). Inside military- style tents, she served as a women's ward doctor and navigated an environment unlike anything she had ever encountered during three decades in emergency medicine. "The sheer volume of patients with respiratory issues and the magnitude of the situation were sobering," Zimmerman says, adding that she and her healthcare colleagues became dying patients' de facto family in the absence of visitors. She held their hands, prayed with them and played music while they took their last breaths. Zimmerman's spring journey to Italy was the first of three coronavirus-related medical trips she accepted in 2020 with Samaritan's Purse, a faith-based international relief organization she joined in 2019 upon retiring after a 31-year career in the ERs at Elkhart General Hospital and Goshen General Hospital in Indiana. "I have my health, my mental faculties, and now just isn't the time for sitting on a beach with a little umbrella drink," says Zimmerman, whose first experience with DART took her to the Hurricane Dorian-ravaged Bahamas in fall 2019. Zimmerman's former medical school classmate Diane Elson, MD '85, calls her friend's medical trips "a shining example of her deep sense of duty and faith." "When Barb sees the potential to help people, she does it," Elson says. "She has a selfless commitment to being a part of the solution." J 30 | Spring 2021

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