John D. Meyer, MD, MPH is one of the newest members of the Board of Directors, elected to the Board at its January 2021 meeting. He will begin his term immediately following the August 2021 Board of Directors Meeting.

Dr. Meyer is Professor and Interim Chief of the Division of Occupational and Environmental Medicine and Director of the Occupational and Environmental Medicine Residency Program at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York; the Director of the New York – New Jersey Occupational Safety & Health Center; an attending physician at the Selikoff Centers for Occupational Health at Mount Sinai Hospital; and the Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Industrial Medicine.

He is certified by the ABPM in both Occupational & Environmental Medicine and Public Health & General Preventive Medicine.

He took some time to tell us a bit about himself, including his journey to Preventive Medicine, the importance of board certification, and more!

How did you get into the specialties of Occupational and Environmental Medicine & Public Health and General Preventive Medicine?

Similar to many others in the specialty, a very long and tortuous road. My original training was in ob/gyn and surgery, and when I moved out of those, I worked in student health for Boston University, who were willing to pay for an MPH degree while I worked there. Thinking I was headed into health care administration, I instead became fascinated with the environmental and occupational courses I took, along with those in epidemiology. When I was close to finishing, some of the faculty in the program pointed out to me that I could return to residency and train in, and make a career in occupational [and envrionmental] medicine and take that fascination with me into practice. So I returned to residency in [Occupational and Environmental Medicine] and haven’t looked back since. I think because of my somewhat unusual road to training, with the MPH before the clinical training, I’ve always looked at [Occupational and Environmental Medicine] and [General Preventive Medicine] first and foremost as public health specialties and tried to use (and teach) the tools of public health practice.

Why did you choose to become board certified in these specialties, and what do you think the value of board certification is?

I think that board certification is a way of demonstrating to yourself, as well as to the larger world, that you have achieved mastery of a subject area. That was certainly my feeling on qualifying in [Occupational and Environmental Medicine]. I subsequently (11 years after my [Occupational and Environmental Medicine] Boards) took the [Public Health and General Preventive Medicine] Boards for much the same reason. I was teaching clinical epidemiology and evidence-based medicine to medical students at the time and there was talk of establishing a [General Preventive Medicine] residency – so I wanted to demonstrate that I had the mastery and knowledge base in the field to move forward on those fronts. There is value in gaining those credentials, I think, in order to demonstrate to the public as well as colleagues that one has developed expertise in the field, as well as sharing in a specialty’s definition of its field and scope of practice. The tricky part, of course, is to determine what the shared knowledge is for any field, as I’ll go into further below.

What do you hope to accomplish during your time as a Director on the Board?

Most of my career I’ve been involved in residency training and teaching relevant subjects in MPH courses, as well as developing and leading board review courses for trainees coming into the field and those needing to recertify. This has led me to consider questions of how practice skills and new material are assimilated by trainees and updated by physicians in practice. This is a particularly important time to address these questions, as specialty boards and certification bodies move from narrow assessments such as the high-stakes exam, and into mechanisms that promote continuous learning and updating of knowledge throughout a career. My goal as an ABPM Director will be to help move the specialty into new methods and programs that promote ongoing learning and practice informed by the most current information available, in order to ensure the capacity of practitioners to address current and future challenges that arise within preventive medicine and within the larger society.

What do you enjoy doing in your spare time?

Growing up for the most part in Syracuse (where there are two seasons: Winter and the Fourth of July), my affinity has been for that region’s outdoor activities. Cross-country skiing is a particular favorite; I’ve also been blessed with a high-school age daughter interested in both downhill skiing (which I took up again with her after a long hiatus) and lacrosse, in which we can engage together.There’s a shared interest between my wife and I in the 19th century, which means that vacations are always focused on exploration of old factories and old churches. And just try prying me loose from any used bookstore…

Any other information you’d like to share about yourself with ABPM Diplomates?

Like most people in this field, I feel very lucky to have come by it, even if it took some time to get there. Many probably feel as I do that [Occupational and Environmental Medicine], [Preventive Medicine] and public health have been the ideal combination of clinical medicine with an interest in other facets of the world that one never saw in the hospital or clinic, such as how most of the world does its work and how medicine and the larger society intersect. The fact that we find this field fascinating probably helps contribute to our goal of continous learning as practitioners. I also want to add a pitch to the ABPM Diplomates to consider the role of mentors who guided them in their early career and to pick up the work that those people did in mentoring for the benefit of trainees and new practitioners in the specialty.

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