Deana Wagner

Master’s student, Department of Society, Human Development, and Health

Deana Wagner grew up in the tiny town of Caney, Kansas, not far from her Cherokee relatives in Locust Grove, Oklahoma. Deana was a community health major at Brown University. She says, “I thought about becoming a doctor, but I saw a real split between the medical students and the community health students. I wanted more public health involvement.” Deana also became deeply engaged with the student group Native Americans at Brown; she helped to establish the university’s annual powwow and develop Native American studies courses. After Brown, under the aegis of Teach for America, Deana spent two years teaching high school science to members of the Oglala Lakota tribe on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in Kyle, South Dakota. “Keeping students motivated and involved was often challenging, but I wanted them to hear about college and other opportunities,” she recalls. (Seven of Deana’s students received Gates Millennium Scholarships.) Seeing firsthand the connection between health and education, she came to HSPH for master’s training in the Department of Society, Human Development, and Health. Deana plans to complete a doctoral degree at HSPH and then to work with her own tribe, the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. In the longer term she hopes to return to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.