Thomas Irungu - Epidemiology and Community Health

Thomas Irungu had first-hand experience with the field of public health when he began pursuing an M.P.H. He graduated from medical school at the University of Nairobi in 1989. For several years afterward, he worked as the sole physician in a rural part of Kenya, practicing public health and medicine.

“My patients couldn’t afford the drugs and oftentimes, the government pharmacy had run out of medication,” he remembers. “There were all these conditions to treat, but I didn’t feel I was making a difference. I was frustrated and eager to see what the rest of the world offered in terms of medical care.”

Opportunity knocked in the form of a three-year family medicine residency in the Bronx, New York. Afterward, Irungu got a job with the county public health department in Portland, Ore., where he worked for five years. “Then I decided I didn’t just want to treat disease anymore, I wanted to promote health,” he says.

 In 2003, Irungu began a two-year preventive medicine fellowship at the Mayo Clinic. The program included a year of academic work at the School of Public Health, where he specialized in maternal and child health and earned an M.P.H. in 2005. “My training helped me take an upstream approach to public health—one that focused on prevention,” he says. 

Irungu says he is now using the skills he acquired from his coursework and reaching people before they become patients. As district director of the Three Rivers Health District in Saluda, Va., he manages public health activities. “I look at the big picture now,” he says. “I have moved from helping one individual at a time to helping the population as a whole.”