If nothing happens, it means alumnus Chris Cappelli has done his job right
by Tim O’Bryhim
Some people might call you lazy if you went to work every day hoping you had nothing to do for the next few months. But for Chris Cappelli ’09, that is the sort of thing that would earn him high praise from his bosses.
As a behavioral health scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Global Health Center, Cappelli’s job is to help various countries’ ministries of health prevent outbreaks of disease.
If nothing happens, it means he has done his job right.
“The most difficult thing about public health is having to say, ‘We are successful because this didn’t happen,’ ” Cappelli said. “It’s much easier to convince people you are successful if it does happen and you respond effectively to it and get rid of it quickly. But that’s not the goal. The goal is to work ourselves out of a job.”
As a boy, Cappelli always knew his career would involve the sciences.
“I had a microscope, and I would try to get things out in nature to look at under the microscope,” he said.
When he enrolled at Wagner College, he knew he would study biology, but an experiential learning opportunity in Bangladesh with chemistry professor Mohammad Alauddin opened his eyes to the field of public health.
“The arsenic contamination in Bangladesh is the largest natural mass poisoning in the world,” Cappelli said. “Arsenic occurs naturally in the Himalayas. It contaminates the groundwater accessed by village wells throughout Bangladesh.”
Cappelli and his fellow students spent time in the capital, Dhaka, and journeyed to various villages, studying air and water filtration systems and the public health interventions taking place.
He was hooked.
After earning his bachelor of science degree in biology at Wagner, he went on to acquire a master of public health degree from Emery University and a Ph.D. in educational policy studies at Georgia State. He then acquired relevant job experience at Georgia Tech’s Center for Education Integrating Science, Math and Computing.
Cappelli’s 10 years at Georgia Tech, the experience in Bangladesh, and his Ph.D. work on social science methodology earned him a two-year evaluation fellowship at the CDC that became the full-time job he has now.
“All of the work I’m doing is to ensure that we in the U.S. are protected from infectious diseases and other public health problems happening in other parts of the world,” Cappelli said.
Last summer, Cappelli spent six weeks in Africa alongside CDC colleagues and officials from Uganda’s ministry of health conducting a tabletop simulation designed to prepare for future Ebola outbreaks.
Cappelli believes that with global travel commonplace, diseases could spread more rapidly than ever before without the CDC.
“From a rural village in Africa to New York City,” Cappelli said.
For Cappelli, none of this would have been possible if not for his experience with Professor Alauddin in Bangladesh.
“The only reason I got into public health was because of Wagner,” Cappelli said.
If his work is successful, you’ll never hear his name again.
He wouldn’t want it any other way.
