From Laurel to Liberia and beyond

Laurel native honored for his public health work

AMES, Iowa – A Laurel native has received a prestigious award for his significant accomplishments in public health, including emergency responses to major outbreaks around the world and at home.

Dr. Bryan Buss, a 1981 Laurel High School graduate, recently received the Stange Award for Meritorious Service from Iowa State University. The award is the highest presented to distinguished doctors of veterinary medicine at the school.

His path from Laurel led him not only to Ames, Iowa, but also to Liberia and beyond. But his first stop was the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where he changed majors three times – from engineering to wildlife management before finally settling on veterinary medicine.

“I was interested in living in a rural community and being a veterinarian seemed like a good career without having to move to a big city,” Buss said.

He graduated in 1985 with a bachelor’s degree in animal science and then attended Iowa State, receiving his doctorate degree in veterinary medicine.

“In the veterinarians’ oath, there’s a couple statements at the end that deal with the promotion of public health, but most practicing veterinarians are known for animal health,” Buss said. “I can’t say when I graduated I had any aspirations through public health.”

However, as a working veterinarian, Buss was one of the first to diagnose West Nile Virus in a horse.

“I found it interesting. I really enjoyed the change of pace, looking for new challenges, and really wanted to see if I could get into a career where I could have more positive benefit on population health than in my own little community.”

The death of a brother-in-law and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on are two factors that spurred him into service in the U.S. Public Health Service Corps. The Corps is one of the nation’s uniformed services committed to protecting, promoting and advancing the health and safety of the nation. Officers in the Corps serve in agencies across the government in a diverse range of professions.

“I was interested in having a bigger impact … and the doors opened. I ended up having an opportunity to commission into public service,” he said. “I really truly felt a calling to it.”

Buss said it was a bit unnerving to give up a steady career and income and follow his heart down a different path.

“Looking back on it, it was the best decision I ever made,” he said.

Along the way, he received his master’s degree in public health in 2005 from the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa, and now works as a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Career Epidemiology Field Officer in Omaha. He’s also served as Nebraska’s state veterinarian, in which he managed statewide public health responses.

The following-his-heart path led him to Liberia, where he was deployed to help with the Ebola outbreak in 2014. Buss was involved with case investigation and contact tracing of the virus, which can cause severe bleeding and organ failure and lead to death. Humans may spread the virus to other humans through contact with bodily fluids such as blood.

“It was working with the local community there and helping keep track of people with potential exposures, coordinating care if they did get sick and promptly isolating them before spreading it to others,” Buss said. The Ebola crisis caused much death among health professionals so another part of Buss’ job was to educate them about how to properly handle patients exhibiting symptoms. “There’s not real strict control of who practices medicine. There it’s very lax and there’s no way to know where there are medical clinics, so you’d get out in the community and go about and ask people, where would you go?” Buss said.

He was deployed toward the end of the outbreak and was tasked with being thorough in trying to keep the disease at bay.

“If one case pops up, it could potentially snowball,” Buss said.

Similarly, he was deployed to the American Samoa region in 2016 to help control the spread of the Zika virus, a mosquito-borne illness.

“With it being more of a tropical environment, there was a lot more risk to people there than another part of the U.S.,” Buss said.

Educating pregnant women and coordinating testing and pre-natal care when needed were part of the effort to slow down the spread of the disease.

Buss was early in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, first deploying to San Francisco International Airport in January 2020 before the virus was detected in the United States. He evaluated ill passengers arriving from Wuhan, China, deemed at high risk for infection.

Upon returning to Nebraska, he aided quarantine activities for repatriated Americans from Wuhan and the Diamond Princess cruise ship.

“It was clear we were not going to be able to contain it,” Buss said.

His efforts then switched to developing capacity for more testing, including the rollout of National Guard troops at mobile testing sites.

When the COVID-19 vaccine became available, Buss helped work on making the limited supply available to the highest priority populations.

“We were involved with some data work, trying to determine how many were getting re-infected and vaccine breakthroughs,” he said.

The son of Delores and the late Robert Buss is grateful for the honor by the prestigious award, but also for the work he finds fulfilling every day.

“It’s a very rewarding career. I feel like I can hardly believe I get paid for this,” he said.