Graduates and guests, it is my honor to call up Boston Mayor Martin Walsh
to give the keynote speech for this year's commencement.
Thank you Dean, and good afternoon to everyone.
Faculty and staff, families and loved ones, and, most of all,
you the graduates.
It's a great honor for me to address you on this occasion
and I know that it's me, the diplomas,
and the party somewhere so I'll try and be brief.
I'd like to offer special thanks to David Rosenbloom,
the chair of your department of health and policy management.
Dr. Rosenbloom served as my co-chair of public health on my administration's transition team.
His work is helping guide the direction of our public health policy taking in the city
of Boston.
It's another example of how Boston University School of Public Health plays a leadership
role in our city.
As graduates, you have the opportunity to join this tradition and to become leaders
as well.
I'm gonna talk a little bit today about why that's not only your opportunity,
but it's the city's opportunity.
And about why we need you to aim high and set ambitious goals.
But I want to start by telling you some of my story.
You may have heard I suffered from cancer as a child
and I recovered from alcoholism as a young adult.
I want to tell you more about those experiences today.
First, because these stories contain lessons about the values of public health.
But also, because my story is about doing more.
More than you thought was possible with your life.
I was born in St. Margaret's Hospital in Dorchester which is now
St. Mary's Women's and Infant Center.
It does amazing work supporting vulnerable families.
I grew up in Dorchester.
My parents, as the dean mentioned earlier,
were both immigrants from Ireland.
They didn't have much of an education but they had very strong accents.
That was okay in the neighborhood that I grew up in.
We were a working class neighborhood in a community of immigrants.
My dad was a union construction laborer, my mother was a homemaker.
They raised me and my brother Johnny in a three decker house that
my mother still lives in on Taft Street.
I went to St. Margaret's Grammar School and at the age of seven
I was diagnosed with Burkitt's lymphoma.
A fast moving type of cancer that mostly affects young children.
For a long while, people were wondering if I would make it.
I had four years of chemotherapy and I missed almost two years of school.
But the community rallied around me, the community rallied around my family.
Neighbors, the church--they did and they supported us.
In hundreds of different ways, they let us know that we weren't going through this alone.
But to survive, I needed more than a neighborhood.
It took research, surgery, diagnosis, technology.
It took caring doctors and nurses at Children's Hospital in the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
And it took my family having access to those treatments.
So by the age 11, I was cancer free and my childhood was back on track to a normal life.
I felt safe and secure in my neighborhood.
I loved sports.
I loved politics.
I dreamed someday of being the mayor of Boston.
But I wasn't focused on school.
It wasn't what I focused on.
The ambitious kids in the neighborhood went on to schools like BC High
and CM but I couldn't get in cause I wasn't paying attention.
After high school, I went to college.
I went to Quincy Junior College to get my grades up because my grades weren't there.
I enrolled in Suffolk University cause I realized I could do this.
It was easy, I could do it, I got good grades in college.
But I went to Suffolk and after the first semester
I dropped out because I wasn't motivated to pursue my education.
So my father helped get me into the building trades as a construction worker.
After a while, I got a job in the benefit fund office.
That office had a very important function but I didn't like the work.
I knew it wasn't what I wanted to do with my life.
I didn't have much direction.
I wasn't exactly sure where I was going.
I was too busy partying and not focusing on what I wanted to do in the future.
So I developed a drinking problem.
I started drinking extremely heavy and, in the neighborhood that I came from,
that was normal in some circumstances.
But gradually, things got worse.
Soon I wasn't a reliable friend, I wasn't there for my parents,
I wasn't able to do functions the way I wanted to.
I lost myself inside.
On April 23, 1995, my life somewhat crashed to a halt.
I couldn't really function anymore.
I didn't know where I was gonna go.
I ended up going to detox.
I felt like my life was over.
What I didn't know was my life was just beginning.
With the help of treatment professionals and recovery groups, I got sober.
And more than that,
I got active again in the same community that supported me as a child.
A year and half later, my name was on the ballot as a state representative in the neighborhood
I grew up on, in.
I was thirty years old and I was finally following what my dream was in life.
I won that election, I went to the State House.
As the Dean spoke about earlier,
I worked on many issues around recovery programs.
I worked on public health issues.
I worked on job creation.
I worked on immigrant rights, protecting workers' rights, funding early education.
In 2013, Mayor Tom Menino announced after 20 years
he would not run for mayor of the city of Boston.
I had a chance to go after my second dream.
Most of last year, I spent seven days a week, 18 hours a day,
campaigning for mayor of the city of Boston.
On November 6, 2013, I was elected mayor of the city of Boston.
My inauguration was in January at Boston College at Conte Forum, an arena just like this one.
I sat on stage, looked out at about 800 people,
and I thought back on the path that took me there.
It wasn't a smooth path.
It wasn't a straight path.
There were obstacles and surprises, twists and turns.
It was filled with challenges.
There were even times when I gave up hope.
Any number of moments, if you had told somebody who knew me, one day,
I would be the mayor of the city of Boston, they probably would've laughed.
I might've laughed at certain moments.
I'm proud of how I've persevered.
But the truth is, the story about strong communities…
the story is about strong communities and it's a story about public health.
Let me explain now.
When I got cancer, my parents and teachers felt I faced it bravely but really,
I was living day to day, in my reality, like any child.
Looking back, the real resilience lay in them and in the community that they had built.
We didn't have a lot of money but we had a good strong neighborhood, church,
and my father had a good strong union.
My father had benefits from that union and we lived close to great hospitals.
And, by the way, the Commissioner of the Health and Hospital at the city of Boston
at the time was a man named David Rosenbloom.
When I got sober.
It was the same thing.
Recovery stories in the media are often described as heroic journeys of individuals,
but once again it took a community.
It was made up of very different types of people all brought together by the crisis
of addiction.
It was councilors and health professionals and it was men and women living in sobriety.
People who had been where I had been, who had taught me to do what they had done.
It was the recovery community.
Recovery reaches beyond individual stories.
It transforms every aspect of a person's life including their relationships with families,
with workplace, with law, with the community.
It's a deeply personal experience with a wide social impact.
That's the realm of public health.
Sometimes doctors don't understand this aspect of recovery that goes beyond the physical.
As public health professionals,
you will be uniquely positioned to bridge the gap between the medical and recovery community.
And I ask you for help in doing so.
People get sober not just by improving their health,
but by learning to how to live in their community.
In recovery, when you feel vulnerable, you have to reach out for help.
And the only way to make your sobriety stronger, is to help other people achieve it.
You have to think, every day, about how your actions are affecting others.
And you have to live in service to those who are still suffering.
That's why we sometimes say, we're being given a special gift.
We've been forced to learn the only way to help yourself is to help others and strengthen
community.
Now that's true for everyone.
It's especially true for public health professionals.
You've chosen this kind of career and you've had this kind of education
that defines success through service.
Public health leaders have demonstrated this truth in amazing ways.
I'll tell you about three people who've inspired me personally.
The first, Dr. Paul Farmer.
In 1987 at the age of 28, Dr. Farmer co-founded Partners in Health
to provide life saving treatment for TB
and AIDS at a single facility in the country of Haiti.
Since then, his work has spread all over the world
from Rwanda to Peru
achieving success rates comparable to those in much richer countries.
Reading about Dr. Farmer changed my views about what is possible in
both public health and personal development.
His success in public health is based on the sensitive and rigorous understanding of the
communities he works with and a practical commitment to doing what he will for them,
rather than what looks good in a textbook.
And his achievements, owe not just to the work of ethics, but also to his relentless
ability to collaborate with patients, with partners, with government, and with private
funders.
Cultural understanding and constant collaborations, these are the same values we apply to public
work in the city of Boston.
The second public health person that I'd like to talk…that inspires me is Dr. Howard Koh.
Dr. Koh sat where you sit right now, 19 years ago.
He earned a Masters degree in Public Health from Boston University.
In 1997, Massachusetts Governor William Weld appointed the Public Health Commissioner of
the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Howard Koh.
In 2009, President Barack Obama appointed him assistant secretary to health in the United
States Department of Health and Human Services.
That's a Republican governor and Democratic president
a good example of how public health transcends politics.
Dr. Koh has created successful programs to combat health disparities in HIV and AIDS
and to promote vaccinations and fitness and research.
I know how effective he is because I saw it here in Boston.
When I was a state representative, Dr. Koh went from city to city,
from neighborhood to neighborhood, to advocate for a ban on smoking in bars and restaurants.
Some people couldn't imagine a bar scene without a cloud of smoke.
And restaurant owners, good people, came out in opposition of the ban,
afraid it would hurt their businesses.
Dr. Koh was kind, but he was firm and he never, never stopped.
He never let lose sight of the facts
and he never let us lose sight of the human cost borne by vulnerable workers who work
in these establishments.
His persistence paid off.
He changed out culture and he left a legacy in our city
and the lives of countless workers we know would have contracted lung disease under the
old circumstances.
And of course, he left another legacy here, his son, my chief of staff, is Daniel Koh.
Dan definitely takes after his father.
He's a tireless activate for positive change.
The third public health professional that inspires me is seated right here among you.
I don't know which one of you it'll be.
I hope it'll be many of you.
Being here today represents a tremendous personal achievement and I want to congratulate you.
You've mastered complex subjects and become an expert in your field.
You've gained practical experience, often working with people of Boston.
That sets your education apart.
But in looking forward in your career,
I urge you to think beyond the goals you've already set for yourself.
Think about what Dr. Paul Farmer has done, what Howard Koh has done, starting in a similar
place.
I truly believe that, like them, you can use the tools of public health to change the world.
I felt that power of change at a deep level.
It saved my life twice.
I have no doubt that you will do the same for many people.
Some of you will travel far like Dr. Farmer.
The needs are great.
The same cancer I survived in the 70s is killing thousands of African children every year
simply because they don't have access to chemotherapy.
And some of you will become transformative policy advocates like Dr. Koh.
As new public health professionals,
you have learned the powerful framework for understanding the needs of communities.
As your experience grows, you must make your voices heard.
And if you stay in Boston, you will help us to break new ground on what public health
can achieve.
Maybe you will work in our new Office of Recovery Services
as we fill the gaps of addiction treatment
and tailor it to the vulnerable populations here in the city.
Maybe you will help us use the tools of public health to end the cycle of violence,
integrating trauma response into our public safety framework
or bringing trauma treatment to our community health centers.
You will find in the city of Boston a willing partner in these dreams.
We need you to help solve the greatest challenges that confront us.
We need your energy, we need your expertise, and we need your leadership.
So I look forward to working with you and I look forward to being inspired by you.
Because I know, until we meet again, in a place where children develop resilience,
where families go strong, where addicts find recovery, where neighborhood thrive.
I want to thank you once again and congratulations to the class of 2014.
I want to thank the mayor for his inspiring and personal remarks and,
as I said to him as we were in the robing room,
I hope this will be a continuation of his strong engagement with public health
both with the School of Public Health and with public health in the city of Boston.
There are great needs there, great opportunities
and we're happy to be working with him as a partner going forward.
I'd like to…as our appreciation…a commemorative clock,
present that to the mayor.
I would also like to wish,
to bid the mayor adieu because he needs to head off to other engagements
and I, my one word of advice is be sure to leave the academic regalia
or you're gonna look out of place at the next event.