AdeSubomi (Subomi) Adeyemo

Q: Today is Thursday, September 15, 2022, and this is Mary Hilpertshauser for the COVID-19 Oral History and Memory Archive project. I’m in Atlanta, Georgia, at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the Stephen B. Thacker Library, and I’m here with Subomi Adeyemo. We’ve had one pre-interview and a Zoom call that went awry. Subomi, thanks for being here with me today. Do I have your permission to interview you and record this session?

ADEYEMO: Yes.

Q: For the record, can I ask you to say, “My name is,” and tell me what your current position is at CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]?

ADEYEMO: Yes. My name is AdeSubomi Adeyemo, I go by Subomi. I’m an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer, with the Division of Parasitic Diseases and Malaria.

Q: Okay. Before we delve into the details of your path at CDC, can you tell me a little bit about your family back in the community you grew up in?

ADEYEMO: Yes. I was born in Ibadan, Nigeria, in 1989 to Adewale and Omishola Adeyemo. My 00:01:00paternal grandfather, the late [Alayeluwa Oba] Emmanuel Adegboyega Adeyemo was the thirty-eighth king of Ibadan, Nigeria, which makes me a princess. With that, it definitely comes with a lot of beautiful history. My grandfather was a training officer in the British Army in Kaduna during World War II. His military experience includes serving in East Africa, Burma [Myanmar], India, Somalia, and Malta. He had several great positions throughout his career, including the Commissioner of local government affairs, and of course the greatest title, the king of Ibadan, Nigeria.

Q: Wow. Your parents, how did you end up here in the United States?

ADEYEMO: My parents are truly amazing people. My father, he actually schooled in the US, and my mother, she schooled in Nigeria. My father is an engineer by training, and my mother a pharmacist. Eventually they decided to come, to move to the United States. Since then, it’s

been great. I’ve definitely had the best of both cultures. Even though I grew up in the United States, I went to Nigeria a lot as a child. My grandparents would come visit, so I can still speak my language, which is Yoruba, and I learned how to read and write it while I was enrolled in school at the University of Georgia, there was Yoruba class there.

Q: At the University of Georgia?

ADEYEMO: At the University of Georgia.

Q: That’s pretty cool.

ADEYEMO: Yes.

Q: Your academic background is mainly the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia?

ADEYEMO: Yes. I’m a triple dog— I have a biology degree from there, Doctor of Pharmacy degree from there, and also a Masters in Public Health [MPH] in Epidemiology. I spent nine years straight, so they have all my money.

Q: Oh, my gosh! Did your mother or your father sort of guide you toward pharmacy?

ADEYEMO: Just growing up, the fact that my mom was a pharmacist prior to moving to the US, in Nigeria. She owned two pharmacy stores there. When we moved to the US as well, I just used to admire how all of her friends and family members would just call her whenever they weren’t feeling good, and say, “Hey, I have X, Y and Z symptoms, what should I take?”

The fact that she was able to help them, that really inspired me to just go into pharmacy and going into healthcare in general, where I can just be that resource for people.

Q: Yes. Did your father have any say in the matter?

ADEYEMO: He was happy.

Q: Yes?

ADEYEMO: Yes, he always knew that I liked healthcare, so when I decided to do pharmacy, he wasn’t surprised.

Q: Okay. What made you become—get your masters in epidemiology?

ADEYEMO: Pharmacy really just focuses on patient-centered care. While I was at the University of Georgia, I developed a love for population health, and they happened to be offering a dual Master of Public Health/Doctor of Pharmacy program, so I decided to enroll in the public health program, focused on epidemiology, just so I could gain those skills in order to be able to be a resource when it comes to public health. I was actually the first individual to graduate from the University of Georgia’s dual Doctor of Pharmacy/Master of Public Health program.

Q: Wow. Okay. From that

program, you had a CDC internship in the middle of your MPH? Is that right?

ADEYEMO: Yes, I did. I finished the Doctor of Pharmacy in 2015, but I still had one year of the Master of Public Health program. During this time, I worked full-time as a pharmacist in the community setting. I took classes full-time at the University of Georgia, and I also did two internships, which one was at CDC. I got to work on just analyzing data when it came to media response, CDC’s social media outlet, so I did @DrKhoury just to make sure that CDC messages were reaching the target audience.

Q: Then there was another one at Morgan County?

ADEYEMO: Yes, so in Morgan County Health Department [University of Georgia Morgan County Cooperative Extension], I got to work on a teen-based project, which basically looked at risky behaviors of high school students. A goal was set just to raise awareness about what risky behaviors can lead to, and just kind of educate the children.

Q: Both

of those are kind of based around communication.

ADEYEMO: Yes.

Q: It’s a little different than pharmacy.

ADEYEMO: Exactly.

Q: Where is it, because as a pharmacist, you’re guiding people to know about what they’re taking.

ADEYEMO: Yes. It is definitely related. In pharmacy, communication is definitely needed, people skills are needed because we’re more accessible than the physicians, versus with the physicians, you have to make an appointment. With the pharmacy, you just show up there. You can show us whatever is going on with you, whether it’s a rash, or tell us about a headache, like, we’re there to help you out. Definitely the communication skills are there. The public health aspect just allowed me to use communication in a different manner when it comes to tailoring my communication to a specific audience.

Q: Okay. In 2017, there was a program called PMF, which is the Presidential Management Fellowship. How did you find out about this program and become part of it?

ADEYEMO: After finishing the Masters of Public Health program in 2016, I continued to work at Walmart [pharmacy] for an additional year and a half.

During that time, I just really wanted to find a way to get involved in public health.

Q: Were you working at Walmart full-time?

ADEYEMO: Full-time, yes.

Q: Also doing these internships and—okay, okay.

ADEYEMO: Exactly.

Q: A lot of time on your hands.

ADEYEMO: Something like that. I started looking at different ways to get involved in public health and just researching different fellowship opportunities, and I came across the Presidential Management Fellows program. What was really great about this program is, that is the leadership training program that focuses on the executive qualifications of leading change, leading people, being results-driven, building coalitions—and I believe I’m forgetting one more. It just aligned with my goal to get into public health and to be able to impact population health. Just the fact that a two-year training program allows you to be at an agency such as CDC—and there are positions elsewhere, FDA [Food and Drug Administration], just different federal agencies—was really attractive to me.

I was really fortunate that a CDC pharmacist, Jennifer Lind, which I met through one of my friends, Raybun [Spelts], would also just tell me about her career at CDC, and that just really inspired me to just apply to this fellowship, see what happens. Luckily for me, it worked out. I got with the Division of Global HIV [Human Immunodeficiency Viruses] and TB [Tuberculosis] at CDC, working on the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief Program.

Q: Which is called PEPFAR.

ADEYEMO: PEPFAR, yes.

Q: Is it pretty competitive to get into that?

ADEYEMO: It is. In my application cycle of 2017, they had over six thousand applicants. Out of those six thousand applicants, only four hundred and thirty-eight became finalists. Once you’re a finalist, now you have access to apply to any federal agency you want to, whether it’s the FDA or the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigations].

Q: Wow. Okay, so you’re in this fellowship program, and you’re here at CDC, and this is during what year? It’s a two-year program, right?

ADEYEMO: Yes, so—

Q: It’s from 2000—

ADEYEMO: Yes, 2017 to 2019. After that you’re guaranteed

a permanent position, for the most part. I was able to stay on with the Division of Global HIV and TB.

Q: Okay, so how does—you’re also a Commissioned Corp officer?

ADEYEMO: I didn’t start Commissioned Corp until I started EIS, the Epidemic Intelligence Service.

Q: We’ll get to EIS in a moment because you’re the class of 2021?

ADEYEMO: Yes.

Q: We’re missing a couple of years here, where kind of a lot of things happened.

ADEYEMO: Yes.

Q: Right around the time that you’re in your fellowship, we started hearing rumors about the SARS CoV-2. What do you remember about hearing about it first?

ADEYEMO: Hearing about it first, it was a lot of unknowns. That’s the best way to describe it, and a lot of uncertainty. Right around the time we started hearing about COVID, I was still trying to plan a girls’ trip to Italy that we go on every year with two of my pharmacy school buddies. That was around the time when Italy was having so many deaths. There was uncertainty,

even when it came to the guidance around how COVID-19 is transmitted, and the mask guidance there was uncertainty as well. There was uncertainty as to how we were going to still carry out our HIV and TB programs overseas in countries, because of this pandemic that was starting to unfold.

Q: When you first heard about it, did you feel like, oh my gosh, this is a pandemic, or did you think, oh, this is going to be another, like, SARS and it’ll be pretty much nipped in the bud and be okay? Not that I’m trying to guide you in your answer, but—

ADEYEMO: Yes. Honestly, I felt that it was something that was going to be nipped in the bud. I definitely didn’t expect the devastation when it came to the loss of lives. That was very heavy and just challenging to just watch the news every morning, you’d just see the death toll continue to rise and rise. I think that was, like, the huge kind of shock of the whole pandemic— like how many lives were lost, people that survived, cancer and survived fighting in the military only to lose their lives to COVID-19 as well, and just the fact that the healthcare

infrastructure was just overthrown, basically, or exhausted. In the US, that was kind of surprising, just to see that we got to this point.

Q: Yes. Where, exactly, were you physically? Were you here in Atlanta?

ADEYEMO: Yes. I was here in Atlanta, still working for the President’s Emergency Plans for AIDS Relief. Then with that, too, our programs overseas have to pivot, because usually a lot of things are done on-the-ground, get to see partners. Because of that, we transitioned to doing thing online and just kind of making the best of it. At the end of the day, you still wanted to reach your HIV targets when it came to getting people on treatment, getting them virally suppressed, but we just definitely had to pivot because of the pandemic.

Q: You went to all online—like CDC shut down March 13th, maybe the 17th, around there—that was the week when we were told to all go home. You had to go home as well?

ADEYEMO: I had to go home then as well, but I thought we were coming back.

Q: Everybody did.

ADEYEMO: I definitely didn’t expect it to be a two-year work from home, but all

the amazing colleagues— they made it work. Like, working from home for two years, we were definitely effective. It was unexpected.

Q: It was unexpected, yes. It was quite a lot of people all of a sudden going home and working. Did you have any—did you plan for it? Did you have enough time to pack? Did you—was it—did you have any notice that you were going to do this for two years?

ADEYEMO: No notice at all. I think what did help is, prior to the pandemic, I was already teleworking two days a week, so I did have everything that I needed to work from home kind of there. Did I have to come back to the office to get anything? Eventually, I did, maybe just to pick up some notes, or a novel that I was reading. Other than that, I had everything that I needed at home. The fact that we were able to still communicate with our colleagues over Zoom and by video, that definitely did help, but it was an adjustment.

Q: Do you think

working as a team, because you were on a team, did that help or hinder your team to work apart, but still together virtually?

ADEYEMO: Honestly, I think it depends on an individual. For me, it definitely helped me, just because I’m able to get more work done at home. At the office, I love my colleagues and there’s always that tendency to kind of take a break and catch up, which is really good. When I’m at home, it’s just work, work, work. I need to have better balance about taking breaks and working at home. Yes, in the office, there was more of that balance of working, taking a break, talking to your colleagues. At home it’s just straight working, which works for me. For everybody, that balance might not be the best.

Q: What did you do for your work? I mean, there was kind of a gray area of, usually a nine to five job and you’re done and you go home, here you’re in your office at home, there’s no definite time when you can say, I’m done working.

Did that impact your life? Did you just keep working? It sounds like you did keep working and didn’t really stop working. A lot of people just went, it’s five, I’m done.

ADEYEMO: I definitely kept working. That’s something that I’m working on because I know it’s good to have that work-life balance. For me, just to be completely honest, it’s still in progress. I definitely do work longer hours just because I feel like—just like a lot of my colleagues here, we’re just so committed to the mission of CDC, and there’s always something to do. I’m just one of those people that if I’m online before I know it, five hours have passed. I am going to work on that because I know it’s good to have that balance.

Q: Yes. How was COVID-19 discussed in your department? How did you guys go from working on PEPFAR, and then, oh, I’ve got to do this, and you still have to manage PEPFAR. You’re doing two things at once now?

ADEYEMO: Exactly. The pandemic caused the way of life for everybody to change, and programs for everybody to change. One of the things about the

HIV program that I truly do admire is that they had already systems and dashboards in place that we used to monitor HIV and TB targets and commodities. In Uganda, for example, there was a system that was used to monitor the number of HIV medications that each facility has on a national level and a regional level, where they were able to pivot and use the system that they had for HIV to now monitor the amount of test kits that are in the country. Just one example from a country of how something that was used for a different program was able to be utilized for COVID-19.

Q: I see, okay. This is off the COVID track, but is that also being used for monkeypox [mpox]?

ADEYEMO: I am not sure about that at the moment.

Q: Okay. You had changes in your workflow. Did things happen faster? Or did they just kind of—because

the virus is changing so quickly and rapidly, and our guidance is changing quickly and rapidly with the virus, which is somewhat confusing to people. How did you guys react to the communications that were coming in and out of CDC? Also, the federal government had a part in that to play, how they communicated to the world and the United States.

ADEYEMO: Exactly. There is always room for improvement, and I feel like during the pandemic, there were a lot of areas that as an agency we could have been better when it came to communication, and just being transparent as to what was going on with the pandemic, and how that would affect the way that we do work. I guess on the flipside of that, we were all learning together as a nation, globally about this pandemic and about the virus. Even though, yes, there were definitely areas for improvement when it came to communication and transparency as the information came in, I

do understand that we were all learning together. I necessarily might have not been able to have information as quickly as I would have wanted, but I definitely think that is one of the areas that the agency, as a whole, is working on as far as improving communication, getting communication out there quicker, versus having to go through so many clearances before it actually reaches the people that need it to do their work.

Q: Yes. Testing was a big thing early on, because it was a way to know where the virus was. Did you have—you worked in testing, or you actually performed tests, did you not?

ADEYEMO: I still maintained my part-time involvement working in the community pharmacy setting, and through that, the pharmacies eventually did have drive-through testing for individuals to come in. With that, it took a while to kind of get it streamlined, but once it was streamlined and people booked appointments for it, it did flow. There was a period where you would have to wait days to get your test results, or you wait to get an appointment. That definitely affected how the pandemic

kind of played out.

Q: Since you were one of the testers and I never talked to anyone who actually did the testing, how did you learn to do the testing, and tell me your experience about doing that.

ADEYEMO: From the pharmacist’s aspect, we actually did the nasopharyngeal swabs, and we didn’t actually do it for the patients, the patients would do it in front of us. We basically walked them through the technique of how to do it, because of course, we wanted to protect ourselves as well. We’d walk them through the technique of how to swab their sample, and then we’ll send it off to the lab for testing.

Q: Yes. Is that difficult to tell people, you know, a little bit further up, a little to the left? Was it—how was that?

ADEYEMO: It was overall—I don’t think it was difficult, it was just an adjustment. At that time, people were just—really wanted their test results, so they were willing to be patient and just kind of follow instructions, so they could get a good sample to get a test result.

Q: These were all people that were willing to be tested?

ADEYEMO: Exactly.

Q: Yes. There’s a whole other part of the

people that were just unwilling to be tested.

ADEYEMO: Exactly.

Q: That sort of impacted—

ADEYEMO: Yes, it definitely did. One thing, as a pharmacist, when it came to testing, and even the vaccine later on, my role is just to always give people the data, give people the information about testing and about the vaccine, about the virus itself. I never argued with people, because you’ll always have somebody that feels like they know necessarily more or think that the government is trying to deceive them. I would never argue with anybody. I’ll just give them the facts and say, hey, these are the facts. It’s up to you to make an informed decision as to whether you want to be tested or whether you want to get the vaccine.

Q: Yes. Is it the same thing when the vaccine rolled out? You were vaccinating people as well? Did you vaccinate yourself?

ADEYEMO: No. We’re not allowed to vaccinate ourselves.

Q: Okay, I was wondering.

ADEYEMO: Yes, definitely did give out a lot of vaccines for the pandemic. It was great to see people come in and get vaccinated. Eventually,

you got to a point where all the people that wanted to be vaccinated were vaccinated, so then it was an issue of doses were being wasted because people didn’t want to get vaccinated, which is kind of sad. But at the end of the day, you can’t force—it wasn’t mandatory for people to get vaccinated.

Q: As a pharmacist, was it hard for you to throw away vaccines?

ADEYEMO: It was. It was. Especially at the beginning, when you had people just waiting days and trying to get appointments, it was so difficult to get a vaccine. Then later on, when there was still a large portion of the US population that wasn’t vaccinated, but yet they weren’t coming to the pharmacy or going to other healthcare centers to be vaccinated. Sometimes when I would have to open a vial that’s usually supposed to be for ten people, and I only give one dose and I had to waste nine—it hurt every time, especially when you knew that other countries didn’t necessarily have access to the vaccine supply that we had in the US.

Q: Did you ever think, maybe if I do this or do that, I could save it?

ADEYEMO: That

definitely was a strategy that was taught. We tried to just do appointments on certain days, like, instead of having it available every day, we’ll try to schedule ten people, or thirty people for one day. Then with that, again, some people wouldn’t show up. Of course, if two people are there for a vaccine, you don’t want to turn those two people away, because they might have taken a while for them to actually get to the stage to have the confidence to come in and get the vaccine. I definitely did understand the decision that was made that, hey, if it’s only one person that wants to get vaccinated that day, open the vial, give them that shot because, at the end of the day, it’s a confidence for them to come to the pharmacy. You don’t want them to get discouraged to say, oh, I tried to get it, but they didn’t give it to me. I definitely understand that perspective.

Q: Okay. This is kind of your side job from CDC.

ADEYEMO: Or part-time job, yes. Approved outside activity, yes.

Q: I love that. Also, you were, in April-May of 2020, you got deployed.

ADEYEMO: I did. I think overall I did five COVID deployments. My first one was

with the Connecticut Department of Health, and I was actually working on infection prevention control in long-term care facilities. One of the reasons that this one was really dear to my heart is that the elderly population was very vulnerable during the early part of the pandemic, the death toll was significantly high. Basically, it was to go into the long-term care facilities and talk to the health providers and really teach them how to manage their personal protective equipment, how to keep their patients safe—how to keep themselves safe. Because there was a shortage of healthcare workers as well, sometimes you go into a healthcare facility, and you’ll see one person doing the job of three or four people just because So-and-So is out with COVID— they might have maybe five or ten employees out with COVID at a time. Just understanding that they would never do anything intentionally to bring COVID into their facility, but at the end of the day, you know, they

had their families that they went home to afterwards as well. It was really hard to know when somebody contracted COVID, or was it from the grocery store? Was it from when I went X, Y and Z. It was a lot of uncertainty there, but the goal at CDC was definitely to share the information that we had. Then the challenging thing was that I would have gone to the health facility— share the CDC guidelines, the guidelines could change the next day, or it could change while I’m out in the field. I would always stress to them that, hey, these are the CDC guidelines, just keep in mind that this may change. Always refer back to the CDC website. Even though we say that X, Y and Z is what you should do today, if data comes out to say something else is better, we’re doing a better job of getting that information to you guys.

Q: Right because this is a novel virus—

ADEYEMO: Exactly.

Q: —it changes, it mutates.

ADEYEMO: Exactly.

Q: It mutated a lot. Still mutating.

ADEYEMO: Yes.

Q: What were some of the other—was there any experiences that stick with you in your deployments?

ADEYEMO: I

guess another deployment that I did was at Grady Memorial Hospital here in Atlanta, Georgia, and during that time we were actually testing the self-collected nasal swab against one collected by a healthcare provider. Through that, I think I dealt with about ninety-eight different patients at the healthcare facility, just walking them through how to collect their own specimens. Then we tested that against ones that were collected by the healthcare provider just to see if it was sensitive enough as well. Just through that, I interacted with a lot of different people in the metro Atlanta area, coming from different economic backgrounds, and just really hearing their views of the pandemic. Some people would say, hey, I lost four or five family members because of the pandemic—it was hard to hear. It definitely made me just thank God that personally, for me, I didn’t lose anybody close to me during the pandemic. I do feel for the families that lost four or even one

family member because of this pandemic.

Q: Yes. Do you think it was because many people couldn’t quarantine or separate themselves? There’s a lot of people that live in multigenerational housing, and they’re not able to stay six feet away from each other.

ADEYEMO: There’s several factors. I think that definitely played a role when you can’t really have your bubble. Luckily for me, with my family, I was able to kind of have a bubble, and people stayed in that. Even though I have my bubble, I was still working at hospital— interacting with patients.

Q: People who are of economic standing, you were saying, seemed to have contracted it more, because they were in multigenerational housing—

ADEYEMO: Yes, got you.

Q: —or

their jobs that were ones that they had to be out in the public.

ADEYEMO: I think that’s the thing about COVID-19, there were several factors. Definitely, there were some people that worked in the service sector, still went to work during the pandemic— couldn’t work from home. But then there was really no way to tell where people were getting COVID from, so even at some point they were saying, okay, when you go to the gas station, make sure if you touch this service—when you go grocery shopping, there was a point where everybody was wiping all of their groceries down. There was really no way to tell for sure, if somebody contracted COVID, you can’t say for sure it was from this event, because then you had people that stayed at home all the time, too, and somehow COVID was brought in—to them. Yes, it was very challenging. For the people that didn’t have the luxury of having that bubble, they were definitely more at risk during that time, because they didn’t have that bubble of protection. It wasn’t guaranteed that just because you had that bubble, that— you wouldn’t get COVID-19.

Q: Right. Right, because we

didn’t really know where it was at the time.

ADEYEMO: Yes.

Q: It just seems like there was only, like, six months where you really didn’t have a handle on exactly where it was coming from. Within those six months, we had a vaccine, as well. By the time COVID-19, which was really January 2020, we started it there, then by December 2020, we had a vaccine which is incredible.

ADEYEMO: It’s incredible.

Q: Just as a pharmacist, can you talk about the vaccine itself and how amazing that technology—okay, well, talk about the technology of that vaccine.

ADEYEMO: I would definitely say that one of the great things about the vaccine— the manner in which the FDA—one thing I wanted to definitely say is there were no steps skipped in making the vaccine. There was just a lot of steps that were done simultaneously, at the same time, so the vaccine could come out. I think that was one of the common misconceptions about why people weren’t getting the vaccines. They’re, like, oh, this came out too quickly,

they skipped steps—no. There weren’t any steps skipped. There were multiple steps done simultaneously. One thing that I had to say about people that had a lot of vaccine hesitancy is that a lot of people, when COVID happened, they prayed for a miracle. Then the miracle came, which is the vaccine. You still had a lot of people that were reluctant to get it. My discussion with them was, like, hey guys, you prayed for something to happen that would help stop this massive death toll that we’re seeing every day. This is something that’s available. You should really get it, just to save your life. Yes, that was definitely a discussion that I had even with family members that were reluctant to get it. Some of them say, like, oh, I’ll get it in a year, after it’s been out for a year, and a year and a half. I was, like, there is no guarantee that you’ll have a year, a year, and a half. God forbid, anything can happen. There were people that regretted waiting

to get the vaccine. It wasn’t until they got COVID and they ended up in the ICU [intensive care unit]. They were, like, oh wow, this is so serious, if I knew that it would impact me like this, I would have got the vaccine. Then again, there’s no convincing some people, and social media definitely did play a role in it. There were a lot of people that used social media to spread misinformation. Just because somebody says something confidently, people believe them. That happened a lot, even though they don’t know what they’re saying. That was definitely something that was going on during the pandemic as well, when the vaccine was going out. As a healthcare provider and just somebody working in public health, it was shocking, or I guess a word that’s beyond shocking, just to hear some of this stuff that came from leadership [of the country], and just to see that people that were around leadership would just kind of allow this information to come out there. Working at CDC in general I felt that the agency

could have done a better job of kind of protecting our brand, protecting our integrity as far as how information was shared, when something came out that wasn’t true, just quickly saying, like, eh, no,—we know that the government official said that, but this is not true, and this is the science to support it. I think we definitely did do that, but it wasn’t done public enough for people to—or quickly enough to kind of counteract the misinformation that was coming out of there.

Q: Yes, early on we did have a spokeswoman who came out and spoke for CDC, but then she was quickly removed from the spotlight. Then Dr. [Anthony Stephen] Fauci became the speaker for all public health.

ADEYEMO: We appreciated Dr. Fauci.

Q: We do appreciate Dr. Fauci.

ADEYEMO: We definitely did appreciate Dr. Fauci, but yes, just to see that happen in the US, of all countries, was really surprising, because, in the US, we are looked upon globally as leaders

when it comes to public health, and when it comes to other aspects in general. Just to see that we’re the ones hearing this kind of misinformation from our leadership was a surprising moment. I think the pandemic, in general, humbled America in general. The leadership during the pandemic kind of humbled America because it did kind of take away from our leadership role, effectively allowed misinformation to come from the highest parts of government. It was definitely a humbling experience to say that, hey, we have work to do internally to kind of protect our public health systems and our public health workers against this kind of misrepresentation of this information.

Q: Do you think that, well, do you think it hurt our reputation globally, or just in the United States?

ADEYEMO: The great thing about CDC is that we have such a huge track record of just being dedicated to public health and excellence, so I don’t think it

did any permanent damage when it came to our reputation, because people recognize the CDC as a center for excellence. In the US in particular, I think there was a lot of distrust, like people would ask me all the time, “You work at CDC, what are you guys doing over there?” I’m, like, we’re working our butts off, not sleeping. Just because of the way information was shared. At the end of the day, I hope that people realize that nobody’s perfect, all we can do is try to improve, and we see that we’re trying to improve as an agency. They recognize our long, extensive history of just bringing out excellent work, people that have dedicated their whole lives, thirty plus years, to just public health.

Q: Yes. Dedication is something that’s a huge thread that runs through the culture

of CDC.

ADEYEMO: Yes.

Q: During this period of time, also while you’re being deployed and you’re working on COVID, you look at EIS as an option. You applied to EIS probably in, what, October? What is it? When did you apply to EIS? I’ll let you say.

ADEYEMO: Yes. Number one, the Epidemic Intelligence Service has always been a program that I’ve admired since I was doing my Master of Public Health program— that’s the first time I had heard about it. That’s, like, wow, these people are amazing. They’re leaders. When I got to CDC as a Presidential Management Fellows program, I was really happy in my position, but I still always looked to the Epidemic Intelligence Service program, because they had that dedicated training in applied epidemiology outbreak response. They really knew how to communicate information, whether it’s verbally or through writing manuscripts. After or while I was in Connecticut doing my deployment for infection prevention control in the nursing homes, I decided to apply to the Epidemic Intelligence Service

program. This was partly due to an EIS officer that I worked with, Christopher [Prestel]. Just seeing his passion and seeing all his skills that he gained through the fellowship, and then also through the encouragement of two of my mentors, Dr. Paul Young and Yoran Grant Greene, who just had nothing but excellent things to say about the fellowship, and really knew that I would gain skills in it. I applied in May, and then I found out on October 1st, which was Nigerian Independence Day, that I was an EIS officer. I was literally in Walmart getting my tires changed, and I get a call from Eric—

Q: Eric Pevzner?

ADEYEMO: —yes, Eric Pevzner, the head of EIS program. The first time, I actually didn’t pick up, because you know, sometimes when you don’t recognize a number, you don’t pick up. Something told me, hey, pick this number up. He called again—thank God he did call again—and I picked up, and he said, “Hey,” like, “how are you?” “I’m good.” He’s, like, “Are you ready for some news?” I was, like, “I hope it’s good news.” He’s like, “You’re

an EIS Officer.” I literally just started yelling and screaming in the middle of Walmart, people are looking at me, like, what’s wrong with this girl? But it was definitely a great moment. The fact that it happened on October 1st, Nigerian Independence Day, I think that was like God telling me, this is where you’re meant to be. You trusted me, you applied to it, and everything worked out, because this is where you’re meant to be.

Q: But you also told me that you had the ability to become a full-time—

ADEYEMO: I did.

Q: Which, FTE [full-time equivalent] is like a golden—

ADEYEMO: Exactly.

Q: —opportunity.

ADEYEMO: Yes, so when I applied to the EIS, I actually had my full-time FTE. I actually gave up the full-time FTE to do EIS. Looking back, no regrets because I gained so much from this fellowship. My former job was great, I definitely did get to do a lot. There were aspects that I got to focus on, applied epidemiology, but that wasn’t my main role.

Having a fellowship where it’s dedicated to me one hundred percent of my time focused on applied epidemiology was truly a blessing, and trusting God that I would get a full-time FTE once it’s over in June again. Yes, it was definitely worth just giving it up and being a part of this great program.

Q: Yes. Now you’re Commissioned Corps as well.

ADEYEMO: Yes.

Q: Tell me about how that all happened together. Or did it happen altogether?

ADEYEMO: It did happen together. Through the EIS program, you had the option to either do it as a civilian, or you could do it through the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. I chose to do it through the Commissioned Corps after talking to one of my mentors, Paul Young. He had been encouraging me probably since 2017, 2018 to do Commissioned Corps. I was a little reluctant, just because I was still learning more about what the United States Public Health Service is. After doing my research, I signed up for a two-year commitment, I said that this was the perfect time to join the Corps as an EIS officer,

as a pharmacist public health official and just really focus more on service in general.

Q: That’s what the Commissioned Corps is—it’s mainly about service, and it’s a federal, it’s one of the uniform branches of the federal government, very much like the Marines, Navy, all of that, except that you’re not armed.

ADEYEMO: Exactly.

Q: You’re armed with public health.

ADEYEMO: Exactly.

Q: Yes, it’s a pretty good—oh, love the program. That is what the Public Health Service is really about now.

ADEYEMO: Exactly. Exactly. Whether it’s hurricanes or Ebola—

Q: Yes, you’ve got it.

ADEYEMO: —front-line public health responders.

Q: Now you get virtually matched because it’s still a pandemic happening amongst all of this.

ADEYEMO: Yes.

Q: You get virtually matched with what division or branch?

ADEYEMO: I matched with the Division of Parasitic Diseases and Malaria, and within the Center for Global Health. It’s a great moment, number one, one of the great things about my position is that I focus on a variety of parasitic diseases, whether it’s just

lymphatic filariasis or strongyloidiasis—just so many different parasitic diseases. Each day is different, and I get to work on so many different topics and projects. My mentors, Sharon [L.] Roy and Caitlin [M.] Worrell, they were absolutely wonderful, just really focused on my professional development, really encouraging me, really supportive. The whole branch is in general, like, even though I have my two, my primary supervisor and my secondary supervisor, everybody in the entire branch is really invested in my success and my growth, which makes me feel like I have family, basically.

Q: Yes, you had family.

ADEYEMO: Yes.

Q: Yes, so this is not usually your—this is really stepping outside your comfort zone. That’s what EIS does— it always makes you look—pivot you 390 degrees.

ADEYEMO: Exactly.

Q: Tell me more about the Division, and why you chose that division, too, because you do have a choice here.

ADEYEMO: Yes. Yes. Let’s

see, my CDC career has mostly been—apart from the EIS, it was mostly HIV-focused. I spent three years in global HIV, then I spent about eight months in domestic HIV before I started EIS. With the Parasitic Disease Branch, my day-to-day job is to provide counsel to the public [public healthcare providers]. When healthcare providers, infectious disease doctors, they’ll call CDC because they have a patient with a parasitic disease that we’re not used to seeing in the US. They’ll say, like, “Hey, based on my patient’s symptoms, based on their travel history,” whether it’s for something like leishmaniasis, “what should I do to diagnose this patient? What should I do to treat the patient?” Having that opportunity to interact with healthcare providers and the fact that they’re able to call CDC at any—we have on-call hours too, so they can call us after hours and they can call us on weekends as well, for emergencies, to be able to provide that counsel. That relates to my pharmacy aspect, too, because as a pharmacist, we do a lot of consultations, so I was right

in my zone. Going to one of the EIS things that we do is outbreak investigations, so I’ve gotten to work on donor-derived strongyloidiasis outbreaks.

Q: Explain was strongyloidiasis is.

ADEYEMO: It’s a soil-transmitting helminth that people usually get from an—

Q: A helminth is a—?

ADEYEMO: Parasitic worm.

Q: Thank you.

ADEYEMO: —that people get from contact with contaminated soil. With that, organ transplant recipients may be able to get it from a donor that is infected. If there is a case of an infected recipient, we kind of do an investigation to say, hey, is this something that the recipient got from the donor, or is it something that was a reactivation that the recipient already had prior to the transplant? I’ll work with state health departments and work with transplant donors as well, just to do that investigation.

Q: Is this a common thing?

ADEYEMO: The overall prevalence is unknown because estimates

are anywhere from thirty to a hundred million people who are infected worldwide with strongyloidiasis. It is unknown. Donor-derived transmission is rare, but it does happen. When it happens, it can be associated with a high rate of mortality and morbidity, because of complications that could arise. Whether it’s hyper-infection syndrome or disseminated strongyloidiasis.

Q: Were you deployed to any outbreaks while you were in EIS?

ADEYEMO: I was deployed for the—COVID response in Dallas, Texas, working at a quarantine station, and then I recently did for polio. There was an outbreak of polio in Malawi and Mozambique, and I was sent to Zimbabwe because of the nature of the borders, just to help do some active surveillance to see if there’s any active cases of polio in Zimbabwe, and also to prepare them for their vaccination campaign.

Q: Was

it wild polio, or was it vaccine-derived, or imported?

ADEYEMO: This one was wild polio. Yes. It was actually the strain that was in, I believe, was it Pakistan or Afghanistan, that somehow was circulated undetected for about two years.

Q: All right. Are you still working on that?

ADEYEMO: I am. I’m actually going back to Zimbabwe in October to work on that.

Q: Are there still active cases of polio?

ADEYEMO: In Zimbabwe, I’m not sure if there’s been any cases detected. Last time that I was there in June, July, there weren’t any detected yet, but we’re doing surveillance for it.

Q: Okay. All right, does the Global Polio Eradication Initiative [GPEI] part of that?

ADEYEMO: Yes. Yes. Exactly, The CDC’s part of that [GPEI].

Q: Yes. Yeah, accepting other partners now. It used to be just five partners, now you’re adding somebody

else.

ADEYEMO: Exactly, Rotary—

Q: The Rotary, yes. Rotary’s been there from the other—yes.

ADEYEMO: Yes.

Q: UNICEF [United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund], Rotary, us—

ADEYEMO: WHO [World Health Organization].

Q: WHO, [Bill & Melinda] Gates Foundation, GAVI [Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization]. I think that’s it. There might be one missing. There was another thing that you worked on for COVID. Tell me about that one, the one in Texas.

ADEYEMO: Yes, so Texas was the quarantine station. During this time, we still had the global testing order—

Q: Why were there quarantine stations in Texas?

ADEYEMO: There were quarantine stations at several different airports throughout the US in general. The role of the quarantine station is, whenever there is a passenger that’s suspected with any illness, the people at the quarantine station would meet them, assess them when they get off their flight, and if they need to, they would quarantine them. The quarantine station also provides medications where they’re needed so they can get it in time, so they have certain medications that they keep there. During this time, they had the global testing and the global vaccine order was still in place. My role during

that time as a quarantine officer was just to help do compliance checks for the airlines, to make sure that all passengers that were coming into the country did have a valid negative COVID test, and if they weren’t US citizens, if they were already vaccinated for COVID-19.

Q: Did you have any instances if there were people who didn’t have COVID vaccination cards, or were not vaccinated?

ADEYEMO: Luckily for all the compli [compliance checks]—it is random, so for the flights that we did check, everybody was compliant.

Q: Okay. Did you ever hear about any non-compliance?

ADEYEMO: I did not in particular.

Q: Okay. All right. Around this time, aren’t you just getting a little burned out? Like, that’s a lot of work, COVID, and you’re in your EIS. You’re still in your EIS program. Do you ever get to take a break? Or do you ever work on your own mental health?

ADEYEMO: I’m really close to my family, so being around

my family definitely did help me during the whole COVID time. Even with friends, technology in general— and the fact that we now have whether it’s FaceTime or video conferencing, since you’re still able to see people’s faces even though you might not need to physically be with them—definitely made things easier. There was a period of time during the pandemic that I did experience burnout. My solution to that was basically to take a year off the response. After doing about four or five deployments, I just took a year off when I purposely didn’t do any COVID-19 deployments, just because I needed a mental break and a physical break from working on a response. Working on a response, you do put in a lot of hours. Sometimes it is twelve or thirteen hours a day, just because leadership needs information, the organizations you’re working with need information. You still have that self-drive to get this information out with them. Another thing that I did for my mental health, binge-watched a lot of Netflix shows.

I was always aware of how I was feeling,—so whenever I did feel like, hey, things are a little bit heavy right now, I would always kind of realize that and share that with a close friends. Like, hey, I’m feeling a little bit heavy about things right now, let’s talk through why I’m feeling this way. That usually helped me.

Q: Did you have any worry for your own family members because you said you would be going out and then you’d come back to your bubble.

ADEYEMO: Yes.

Q: Did you worry about your family?

ADEYEMO: I did.

Q: Are they all in Atlanta?

ADEYEMO: Yes, they’re—let’s see. One, my sister, Lola, she was in Utah at this time, but my other siblings, Bunmi [phonetic: boo-me] and Yemi [phonetic: yem-me], they were in Atlanta at this time. My mom, also. I was sometimes deployed to work at the Grady Hospital, —but my mom, she owns an independent pharmacy in Georgia. Her business was still open during the pandemic too, so at the same time that I was sometimes deployed for the pandemic, she was, on a daily basis, helping people get their medications, keeping her business open during the pandemic

so there was always that fear that she had too, like hey, I’m interacting with people, even though I have on my N95 mask, there’s still always that risk that, God forbid, I bring something back home to my family. We did have those measures of using hand sanitizer, washing hands as much as possible, changing your clothes when you get home, and just praying for the best.

Q: Did she have that ritual when she came back home? She would—

ADEYEMO: Exactly.

Q: —take her clothes off, put them down there, change.

ADEYEMO: Exactly. Yes.

Q: Yes. That was a lot of people did that.

ADEYEMO: Exactly.

Q: But it seemed to work.

ADEYEMO: Yes.

Q: We’re still kind of in the pandemic, and your entire EIS experience has been framed by the pandemic. You were the only class that has. Did it affect your class, do you think? Or because what EIS does also is, creates this camaraderie, this elite group that can go out and then spread their

knowledge to other people, they’re like seeds on the wind. You guys, have you had a chance to really know each other as a class, and that way you can interact later when you’re in your other lives?

ADEYEMO: I think definitely the fact that we did do EIS during the pandemic kind of didn’t allow us to have that strong bond that you usually hear about with the other EIS classes. Like, I hear people talk about, yeah, we were in EIS twenty years ago together. They were at my baby shower, X, Y and Z— because we were virtual for summer classes. We didn’t get that time to really bond together. We do have our signal chat groups that we try to keep in touch. Recently we met in person, which was great for our fall class, and just to see everybody’s faces and say, okay, yeah, I’m used to seeing you on the screen. This is what you look like in person—that was really nice. We’re trying to do a better job of it. I think we have, what, about eight months left in our EIS fellowship, but not having that time in the

beginning to bond definitely did play a factor.

Q: How many people are in your class?

ADEYEMO: My class, there’s seventy EIS officers. I think we have about seven LLS [Laboratory Leadership Service], the laboratory fellows.

Q: Yes. “LLS” is Laboratory—

ADEYEMO: Leadership Service.

Q: Leadership Service?

ADEYEMO: I believe so.

Q: That’s it? Yes. We’re coming up on time here, but I just wanted to get to our reflective part on this, and this is totally up to whether you want to—but I wanted to ask, how do you think COVID pandemic will change our work lives and our personal lives? We kind of touched on that a little bit. Do you think we’ll just go back to nine to five? Or will we be a different hybrid society?

ADEYEMO: Moving forward, a lot of people will be a hybrid society. The fact that we’ve shown, that we can do our work

and we can do our work with excellence while working remotely just shows the need, that we don’t have to be together twenty-four seven. I think for some people that do like to have that consistent interaction, like to come into the office, that option is still available for them if they choose to do so. The fact that that flexibility’s recognized not only in headquarters here in the US, but even for our overseas programs, that before, some offices didn’t allow telework. During the pandemic, overseas, they were forced to work from home for two years. They showed that they can do it effectively. Those offices that didn’t have any telework policy before overseas, they do now have a telework policy, which helps as well when gas prices are going sky-high.

Q: It’s helpful for the environment, too.

ADEYEMO: Exactly. Exactly. Even with using masks, like we saw during the pandemic that the number of other diseases, or even flu in general, it was lower, because people were washing their hands,

using hand sanitizer—so hopefully people will keep with some of those same practices. Just so that when it does come to flu season, we won’t see the usual high numbers that we saw before the pandemic.

Q: Right. The loss of people who were not able to get their long-term or chronic care while the pandemic was going on, that’s another thing that we need to look into, because—

ADEYEMO: Exactly, yes.

Q: —we need to still—even though we’re concentrating on this pandemic, there’s still the same stuff going on—

ADEYEMO: Exactly.

Q: —at the same time. It’s a hard thing.

ADEYEMO: Yes.

Q: You can still have the same amount of people working on all of this, which is why the burnout happens.

ADEYEMO: Yes. Yes, definitely.

Q: Have you seen any people around you change their opinions or their day-to-day activities in response to the pandemic? Like they, at one point in time, thought this really isn’t a pandemic—oh my God, this is a pandemic, or this vaccine—I’m not sure you had touched on that. Had you seen that in your day-to-day? Did you have any loss of friends or relationships with friends

because of their opinions on vaccination?

ADEYEMO: Definitely got into a lot of verbal disagreements, I won’t say arguments, although some might classify as arguments. Yes, definitely had a lot of those conversations, even some people that were in the healthcare field. I’m, like, “Hey, you’re in the healthcare field, why are you thinking like this,” or, “Why don’t you believe in the science?” That was kind of difficult to have with people—

Q: With colleagues.

ADEYEMO: With colleagues and with family members too, that were highly educated, but at the same time, they don’t want to believe the science. Just me trying to understand their perspective, I tried to be open-minded, but I couldn’t understand their perspective.

Q: Wow. How did you have a conversation like that? It’s, like, you know that they’re scientists, but yet they’re not believing the science. It’s a hard conversation to have.

ADEYEMO: It is. It is. It’s a hard conversation,

it’s a sad conversation, too, because at the end of the day, some people didn’t take it seriously until it happened to somebody that they knew, or it happened to them personally. My thing is, like, I don’t want this to happen to you personally for you to realize that this is real, for you to get the vaccine. All I could do at the end of the day, especially when it came to some family members that were reluctant, is just pray for God’s protection, because it’s real. It’s real. I can’t force anybody to get the vaccine.

Q: There were a lot of people out there still don’t believe that there was actually a pandemic.

ADEYEMO: Exactly, which is crazy. .

Q: Are there any important details about your job, or your experience, or your background that you wish people to know about?

ADEYEMO: I guess one of the last things that I would really want to reiterate is just the amazing colleagues that we have here at CDC from every division. Even yourself, the fact that you’re documenting this as a part of history, it just really shows

that the colleagues at CDC are dedicated to the mission, they’re dedicated to protecting the US and globally from different public health threats. I just want people to just realize that people here are hard-working, they’re passionate about their work. They want to do what’s best, but at the same time, we’re not perfect. There’s always room for improvement. The fact that the agency is just moving towards making those improvements, whether it’s through our clearance process to get more information out there, or just being a little bit more transparent with things that they can be in a quicker pace is encouraging.

Q: Has there been anything on your mind throughout the whole pandemic, a thread that’s been there? Personally.

ADEYEMO: Personally, the fact that just thinking, like, wow, this happened in my lifetime with all the technology, with all the resources that we have, like, how could this pandemic have gotten so out of hand in the beginning? But then I do see the glimmers of hope, the

fact that we were able to get a vaccine out there quickly, that the federal government did make sure that it was available to everybody, regardless of whether you had insurance or not, and just using those different channels was encouraging. Still, when I look back and say, this happened during my lifetime, it’s still kind of surreal. I think there’s already been one movie made about this, but when there are other movies made about what happened during the pandemic, it’s going to be hard to watch, you know? Even with healthcare providers that, unfortunately, like some of them committed suicide because of the strain of the pandemic, and how it just got too much for them just dealing with so many people in the emergency rooms. There was even a factor where there were so many bodies that they had to be put in a—not—I want to say trailer, but that’s not the right word. There wasn’t enough room for people in the morgues. They had to use other means to store bodies.

Q: Containers.

ADEYEMO: Yes, other containers, exactly. That definitely kind of sticks with me,

that this actually happened. It’s not just the movie I’m watching. I lived the movie.

Q: Right. It is enormous.

ADEYEMO: Yes.

Q: It’s hard to wrap your head around.

ADEYEMO: Exactly.

Q: Yes. Well, I want to ask the last question. What else haven’t we covered that you wanted to share, other than the enormity of the pandemic, and the fact that it was like living through a movie, but it was real life?

ADEYEMO: It was real life. There’s nothing else that I want to share, except that I’m excited about the future of the CDC as an agency, and just to see what’s going to happen,

Q: Yes. See what’s going to happen with you.

ADEYEMO: Yes, me as well. What’s the next chapter?

Q: What do you want to happen?

ADEYEMO: I love the agency, so I definitely see myself staying at CDC long-term, or just working in global health in general, long-term, even if it’s not CDC, maybe another global health organization. Just to continue to grow

in my professional career, and just teach the next generation. That’s one thing that I do on a regular basis, so I have monthly sessions with students from the FDA or students that are at CDC, or the Office of Personnel Management and just really expose them to the different careers that pharmacists can have in public health. Just to get them to think outside the box about what they can do.

Q: All right, well, thank you.

ADEYEMO: Thank you.

Q: All right, I’m going to stop recording. [END OF INTERVIEW]