Bob Lavan

Robert Lavan, DVM, MS, MPVM is a UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine graduate and director of Merck’s Center for Observational and Real World Evidence. Motivated by digging into scientific questions and a data lover, Bob has successfully applied his veterinary epidemiology training in a career that includes leadership positions at several major pharmaceutical companies. With a masters degree in Ecological Parasitology and work experience as a bench scientist before going into vet school, early on into veterinary practice Bob recognised that infectious diseases and population health interested him more than some of the other facets of clinical medicine. He capitalized on that interest and eventually transitioned to working in the pharmaceutical industry after working in mixed animal and small animal practice (which he loved). He cites the education and experience he gained during the MPVM program as a catalyst for awakening his interest in population medicine and large data sets. We loved learning about Bob’s journey, his family, what motivates and excites him, and his advice for early career veterinarians and vet students considering alternative career paths.

Veterinary School & Year Graduated: UC Davis, 1991

Additional Degrees:
MS, Ecological Parasitology, SUNY Albany, 1980
MPVM, UC Davis, 1992;
Certificate in Veterinary Homeland Security, Purdue University, 2008

Questions and Answers

Tell me about your most challenging and rewarding veterinary jobs or work experiences.
My most gratifying job is the job I have now. My next most gratifying job was the one I had before this. The whole point of life is to focus and find more and more satisfying positions and things that light you up and charge you. My current position, as director of Merck’s Center for Observational and Real World Evidence (CORE) is an amazing job. It’s a position that nobody told me existed. At the same time, it’s my most challenging position as well. I’m handling the biggest budget I’ve ever managed and I have more work than I can physically handle.
What did you love about the position or experience?
I love working with data. I love being the expert on some things that other people haven't looked at. I love the mental challenge of developing the data and then having to interpret it and pull meaning from it. I've met a number of like-minded people through my job who love the same thing. My boss is one of them. I'm a director, he's an executive director, and I'm not looking for promotion. If you rise up too high, you get away from the work that you really love and I really love what I do right now. Being able to apply data science to real world questions is my reason for living. I figured out that I'm a data guy. I love data. I love population information and I love veterinary medicine.
Tell me about your journey to get to that point in your life.
The person you are today is actually a combination of all the different people you were in the past. Every point is a stepping stone no matter how far it may seem from your destination. My first job was at 16, driving a truck for a hardware store. I paid my way through private high school, college, and my graduate programs. I worked days and nights, which is part of the reason why it took me so long to get into vet school. When I moved to California after my master’s degree in Ecological Parasitology, I was debt free because I had worked my way through. As a result, I had lousy grades that weren’t getting me anywhere. It took me four applications to get into Davis veterinary school. I just don't quit. I’m not the smartest guy in the world, but nobody works harder and that has gotten me far in life. I knew I loved veterinary medicine since I was a kid. I spent five years in vet school getting my DVM and an MPVM. Getting out and starting to work was sheer terror. I couldn’t get that first year in clinical medicine under my belt faster. Even when I was in clinical practice I thought more about emerging and transmissible diseases. I paid more attention to what state vets were doing and what was happening on a population level. I started playing with the idea of becoming a state vet, but the salary wouldn’t have been sufficient for my growing family. We were living hand to mouth and I just couldn't afford to walk away from clinical practice. I ended up transitioning from mixed practice to companion animal practice and tripled my salary. The companion animal practice was sold to a corporate entity. I wasn't a big fan of how the corporation managed our practice and I knew I had to leave. I started looking around everywhere and Pfizer had an opening in pharmacovigilance for animal health. That's a veterinarian who gets on the phone and talks to pet owners, veterinarians, and government representatives about concerns they have for pharmaceuticals. They wanted to know about adverse events, lack of efficacy claims, extra label use, and environmental contamination. I thought I could do that for a year, but I ended up staying for five years. By the end of that five years. I had done several studies using that pharmacovigilance data to look at different problems. That work really excited me and so did getting something published, having other people review my work, and getting positive feedback. I started thinking about how I could do this on a bigger level. I completed a certificate course at Purdue in Homeland Security thinking that I would try to get a job with them. As I was readying my application for Homeland Security, Pfizer created an animal health subsidiary company, Zoetis. They were creating an Outcomes Research Team and I was one of the first five hired because of my MPVM and background in epidemiology. That’s when things got exciting and I knew I'd found my home. I joined the International Society of Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research and all I did was population studies. There was so much to do and I never looked back. I stayed at Zoetis for 10 years and now I'm in my sixth year at Merck Animal Health. When you plan your career in your head, the plan is linear. The truth of the matter is, it's not linear. You make decisions that send you off on various paths and that's how you end up where you are. You need to know yourself and the qualities that would make you happy. I think I've been incredibly lucky. I got excellent training with Pfizer, and I got continued training with Zoetis to take me into the practical world of commercial veterinary medicine. My work and papers touch on everything from infectious disease to vaccines to parasitology to surgery, and I love that.
As a veterinary student, did you ever imagine yourself taking this journey and having these professional experiences?
My short answer is no. I was a late bloomer getting into vet school. I was one of the older students in my class and I was already married. I thought I'd be in clinical practice and I really did love practicing clinical medicine. After 10 years as a small animal practitioner, it was very difficult to walk away. I had developed a following and mostly worked with regular clients and patients. You work with a family and when their old dog dies, they get a new one and they’re back in to see you. There was a period of time when I was in companion animal practice and I was asking myself if I wasted my time in the MPVM program. I'm sitting on the floor, handling puppies, doing a visit and absolutely loving it. Working with families, showing them I care, and talking to them about the best way to manage their animals was so gratifying. There were a fair number of tears when I announced I was leaving and I had to help people find other veterinarians. Eventually you cut the cord and make the move to the next step.
In retrospect, what do you wish you’d known as a veterinary student or early in your career?
I don't entertain that thought very often. A lot of the realizations that I've had since vet school came by doing, failing, and succeeding. I don't beat myself up because I didn't understand the potential joy that I would experience working in population medicine. I have thought about how to identify the students like me and get them exposed to population medicine while still in veterinary school. I think it would be great for veterinary schools to have on-campus options and guidance for students to work with large data sets and see if they have that passion. If I hadn’t done the MPVM I wouldn’t have realized what I was missing and I think we need to find more opportunities for students to have that experience while still in vet school.
Would you have changed anything about your time in veterinary school?
I don't regret anything from my time in veterinary school. I came in just thinking about mixed animal practice and figuring out how I was going to pass the national board examination. If I didn't have the MPVM, I would be a different person. I would have stayed a practitioner, which would be fine, but I never would have awakened this passion inside.
Did you have any mentors or role models along the way that helped or inspired you? Please provide an example of how they helped you or what qualities they had that made them a good mentor? How did you find them?
One of my mentors was the statistician for my thesis. He was very patient. He walked me through how to do automated procedures by hand so that I understood what was happening. That skill has paid off in spades. I work with statisticians from all over the world now and I often hand-check their work and I have found several errors. Another mentor was a swine veterinarian. He was my MPVM mentor and very kind to me and generous with his time. Those two guys were the best and made it so easy to get through the MPVM program. They were always there if I needed them. Another mentor was a student in the class ahead of me. He was my big sib and just the best. He raised labrador retrievers and freshman year I got the pick of the litter and sophomore year, I got a second labrador retriever. Those are the dogs that moved with us to Pennsylvania and we've had labs ever since. He was incredibly generous. When he graduated he asked me to work with him every weekend at Orinda. He taught me so much. Thanks to him, I can still put in catheters when there's no vein.

My number one mentor was John Madigan. John and I hit it off and I started talking to him about Lyme disease because he ran the Borrelia lab. He offered me a position in his lab during the summer of my first year. He and I did the first Potomac Horse Fever transmission study in the isolation facility. I worked in his lab until I graduated. There were other students, who were equine-focused who wanted to get in his lab. He didn't have room because he kept me on the project. He had a job for me every summer until I graduated. When it came time to pick my thesis, I did a study on ultrasound navel ill in newborn foals falls as a little payback. I still keep in touch with him. There was nothing deliberate about finding these mentors. We just hit it off personality-wise and found ways to relate to each other. John and I were both older in our class and came into vet school with master’s degrees under our belts. You have to find people you like and want to spend your time with and hopefully they take an interest in you.
Tell me about any pivotal moments or key turning points that shaped your career.
Number one, by far, was getting into vet school. I have no idea why the admissions committee took me on that fourth try. I did really well on the GRE at the time and I had been working for five years as a bench scientist formulating designing intravenous fluids using animal models for preclinical trials so I think they found that interesting and unusual. Once I got the interview, it was easy. Another pivotal moment came when I was in mixed animal practice. It was wonderful but it was some of the hardest work I've ever done. I got pinned to the wall by non-dehorned cattle twice, which was quite scary. The straw that broke the camel's back was when I was floating teeth on a draft horse with a manual rasp. The horse was sedated and the owner was holding the head. I overshot the last molar and poked him in the back of the pharynx and he woke up and he struck me right in the chest and blew me backwards from the holding area into the milking parlor. That was the moment I knew that large and mixed animal practice was not for me.
Tell me about one or two challenges, setbacks or obstacles that you faced along the way on your professional journey. How did you address those?
The big setback was getting into vet school. I had applied three times and given up. My wife told me to give it one more shot, and it worked out. The second set setback was the damage to my body while I was learning to be a mixed animal vet. I had to get it through my head that maybe it wasn’t the right kind of work for me.
What was the most important lesson you learned as a veterinarian, and still remember today, and would want to tell vet students about.
People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. You've got to be able to empathize. If you’re not naturally empathic, try to learn. Another important skill is listening. It’s not always the time to share what you think and try to baffle everyone with your knowledge. I can recall a professor in vet school saying that 90% of the information you need to make your diagnosis is in the history, which is listening, and the physical exam. It’s easy to get into a rut in private practice and want to get everything done quickly. You have to remember that every case is the most important case and give it your all. Regarding work-life balance, you have to know what matters to you. Knowing how you recharge, how you sleep, and what you really want are all very important. Without knowing that, work-life balance is even harder to manage.
What’s been the biggest highlight of your career so far?
The biggest highlight of my life and career is my family. I love my family.
Is there anything else you’d like to tell me that you think would be helpful or relevant to veterinary students or early career veterinarians?
I want my colleagues to be happy. It is really hard to see my colleagues and other veterinarians take their own lives. It makes no sense. I also think it is important to know yourself and give back to the community you live in and your profession, I am always trying to find time for that.