He applies Army skills to public health challenges
Before Dr. Ross Boyce led projects to fight malaria in Uganda, he led soldiers in combat in Iraq.
In his Carolina office, above a collage of drawings by his three young children, Dr. Ross Boyce displays a 20-year-old photo of himself with 29 other soldiers.
The photo captures a proud memory of U.S. Army service for the man who is now a leading epidemiologist and a research expert on diseases caused by ticks and mosquitoes.
“The infantry to academia path is not particularly common,” says Boyce ’12 (MD), an assistant professor in the UNC School of Medicine and UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and a member of the UNC Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases.
These days his duties include searching for solutions to malaria in Uganda, seeing patients in the UNC Infectious Diseases Clinic and studying a rare mosquito-borne disease in western North Carolina. But the memories — good and bad — from serving as the leader of this reconnaissance platoon during the Iraq War stick with him.
Boyce and those under his command were tasked with scouting the location of enemies and relaying information before calling in reinforcements.
“We spent a lot of time getting shot at,” says Boyce. “That’s how you often find where they are. And my guys, they all came back alive. About 25% were wounded, and about 25% won various awards for bravery or heroism — but they all came back alive.”
Boyce is among those recognized for bravery. He received the first of his three Bronze Star medals in 2004 and the last in 2009.
That was for service during his second tour, when there was a surge in Iraq, and Boyce felt compelled to leave medical school at Carolina to return to active duty. “It was really hard for me to concentrate because I just saw all of my friends going back, and it felt like I would have more impact going back than sitting in a classroom,” he says.
In that tour, Boyce served as a civil affairs officer, working on infrastructure, rebuilding communities and addressing local grievances.
“What we cared about was that we took care of each other and all tried to survive as best we could,” says Boyce (right) of the reconnaissance platoon he led. (Submitted photo)
Applying military lessons to public health research
As a kid growing up in Clemmons, outside Winston-Salem, Boyce was fascinated by bugs. Later, as a scientist, he was fascinated by the diseases bugs cause.
“You have to have an insect, you have to have the pathogen — whether it’s a bacteria or a virus or a parasite — and you have to have the human,” he explains. “And all those things have to come together in the same place at one time.”
Solving these complex problems sometimes requires organizational and logistical skills Boyce learned in the military, as well as leadership experience. One important lesson? “Don’t tell people how to do their jobs. Tell them what the goal is,” he says.
That approach has helped Boyce oversee projects involving doctors, nurses, medics, epidemiologists, geographers and local community members.
Boyce and his collaborators created a malaria test that better identifies the need for immediate medical care. They’ve also pinpointed malaria hotspots and are studying whether treating baby wraps with a bug repellent will protect children from mosquitoes.
“We have reasonably good treatments and diagnostics,” Boyce says. “There, it’s about how do we get those things to people.”
Boyce recently attended a 20-year reunion with the reconnaissance platoon. Keeping up, he says, has been harder than you might think.
“As much as I love those guys, being around them reminded me of some of the most difficult times in my life,” Boyce says. “But as we have gotten older and our hair’s turned gray, I think we increasingly appreciate the role that we all played in each other’s lives. None of us are unscathed, but at least we’ve got each other.”
“We have reasonably good treatments and diagnostics” for malaria Boyce says. In Uganda, “it’s about how do we get those things to people.” (Submitted photo)
