A Tribute to Dr. Lloyd F. Novick: A Legacy of Public Health Excellence

I first met Lloyd 50 years ago in the summer of 1974 when I arrived at the New York City Department of Health. He was one of the "Three Turks" recently recruited by the commissioner, Lowell Bellin, to rejuvenate the department. Bellin's Assistant Commissioner, Pascal J. Imperator was another recruit, who in turn, offered me the position as Principal Epidemiologist. Dr. Bellin began to transform the department to rival that of the status of an earlier commissioner, Leona Baumgartner, who created a department as a model for other cities and states to follow. It was Bellin's and Baumgartner's legacy that Lloyd was to follow throughout his career. Both Lloyd and I moved on over the years and we lost touch until we both returned to New York. He had spread the importance of preventive medicine in Vermont and Arizona health departments. By 1994, he returned to New York as the Deputy Commissioner of Health for the state. He hired me to represent the state health department in the city to assist in combatting tuberculosis which was on the upswing. By that time, Peggy Hamburg was the Commissioner of Health, followed later by Tom Frieden. The city's health department had remained in good hands over the years. In 1995, Lloyd launched the Journal of Public Health Management & Practice and asked me to contribute an article on what was then being called "emerging infectious diseases." It was the first of 12 articles I wrote for the Journal over the last 30 years. Later, he and his wife, Carole, invited me to visit them in Onondaga, NY, where he was Commissioner of Health for Syracuse. Ten years later, he had moved to North Carolina to create a department of public health for East Carolina University. He and Carole visited us in Charlottesville and later in Maine. Lloyd began to build a solid foundation of public health at the university and asked me to teach a weekly course in the epidemiology of communicable diseases. When COVID struck in 2020, he created a podcast for JPHMP Direct, the Journal's companion site, to discuss issues around the epidemic. Just prior to COVID, we worked together on a series of articles for JPHMP Direct on infectious disease modeled after the stories of Berton Roueché's Eleven Blue Men. He called the series Backstories in Epidemiology. Lloyd continued to demonstrate a gift for presenting issues to engage younger generations using his Journal and innovative devices to educate future public health professionals. I will dearly miss him.