Her ambition is health care for all

On the wall of Deborah Klein Walker's Cambridge office hangs an old, 1960s-style poster. It shows a playground overlaid with a stamp of vintage letters and vintage sentiments like : "It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber."

It's the familiar adage about butter versus guns, but a belief in the common good is the root of Walker's career.

As the new president of the American Public Health Association, she is the head of the world's largest public health group. It's a collection of doctors, teachers, administrators, and others who profess the broad goal of making Americans healthier.

An important element of this, she says, is social justice.

"To be an advocate for public health, you have to believe in a strong role for government, because government is the ultimate protection," says Walker, 63.

She is an idealist, a liberal in the classic sense. A native of Kansas City, Mo. -- "My family homesteaded there in the 1830s" -- she came East for a degree in psychology at Mount Holyoke College. By the time she moved to San Francisco to work as an eighth-grade math teacher, she already felt the tug toward public service. Then it was graduate school at Harvard and a launch into what was then the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in Washington. Her journey into the world of policy-molding had begun.

"Before then I had no idea of a profession that dealt with the population as a whole instead of helping people one-on-one. I realized that I like to deal with systems."

In the 1980s Walker joined the Boston Center for Family Health before moving on to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, where she worked on child and maternal health programs as an associate commissioner. During her tenure, she kept her fingers in multiple policy pies, overseeing programs in everything from substance abuse prevention to HIV/AIDS to diabetes.

"Deborah has a real capacity to look at an issue or a problem and envisage a comprehensive solution," says Sally Fogerty, an associate commissioner at Mass Health. "Say in a certain community there's an increase in injuries, or in cancer. She can take that information and crystallize it into a true, comprehensive program to improve the community's outcomes and health."

Although Walker left Mass Health over concerns about shrinking funds, she expresses pride in what Massachusetts has accomplished in public health.

"Deleading houses, eliminating lead gas, prenatal care, immunization. These aren't things that are done consistently on the national level."

Currently Walker is a vice president at Abt Associates, a private consulting company where she's headed studies like an evaluation of national Healthy Start programs and a Massachusetts lupus registry. As president of the American Public Health Association, she's also active on the national stage.

"She's an outstanding leader," says Fogerty. "She's bringing a real commitment and vision for how we can work as a nation to have the healthiest communities and citizens. She's committed to primary prevention, to early detection and resolution of problems. That, and her ability to think in broad terms, is going to move the association forward."

Walker knows exactly what she wants the association to achieve: "We want better access to health; reduction in disparity of health care; and restructuring the delivery of health care." In short, she wants the Holy Grail of public health crusaders: universal, quality health care for all Americans.

"We've got to have a national solution, but we've lost sight of social justice issues, of equity and inequity," says Walker. "Health is a right."

Hometown: Cambridge.

Family: Husband, Paul Walker, is well known for his work in demilitarizing biological and chemical weapons stockpiles and is a former staff member of the House Armed Services Committee. Son Ian, 25, is a bartender. Son Drew, 24, works in the video game industry. "I told him that the key to a career is to love what you do," says Walker.

Hobbies: The Walkers hold season tickets to the Boston Ballet and the American Repertory Theatre. They also travel, recently going on a safari in Uganda and a vacation in Tuscany.

On children: "Kids are the most important investment this country can make, but we don't support programs that help them. That's because kids don't vote."