August 18, 2016 – Osa Iyekekpolor sees people in his Dorchester, MA neighborhood smoking cigarettes and wonders if they realize how much it can hurt their health.
Phinix Knight-Jack knows that the fast-food restaurant across from where she lives, near Dorchester’s Codman Square, is always a popular spot—and that it serves a lot of unhealthy food that could be contributing to overweight and obesity.
Their shared concern about the health of those in their community is what brought Osa, Phinix, and about a dozen other high school and college students to Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in early August to learn some basics about public health and career possibilities in the field. Osa is a senior at Codman Academy, a Dorchester charter school; Phinix is a rising sophomore at Hamilton College and a Codman Academy alumna; and the rest of the students on the tour are current students or alumni at Codman Academy. All have also been working as summer interns at the Codman Square Health Center.
In a presentation from Ra’Shaun Nalls, associate director of community engagement at Harvard Chan School, the students learned that public health researchers examine risk factors for health, such as drinking a lot of sugar-sweetened beverages, smoking, or living in areas with high levels of air pollution. Stacey King, assistant director of the MPH (master of public health) field practice, outlined various professional tracks for those with a public health degree, such as health policy, global health, or data analysis.
The students also got a tour of two of the School’s labs. In a lab focused on hearing loss, research associate Elisa Ghelfi explained how she analyzes the ways different drugs interact with cells from the inner ear, to see if any of those drugs might mitigate hearing loss. In a nutrition lab, research assistant Matthew Lopes described how he measures amounts of different types of fats—some healthy, some unhealthy—in blood samples.
The students’ visit came about as the result of connections made between the Harvard Chan School and Codman Academy. Last year, Ellen Fugate, MPH ’16, helped develop a youth risk behavior survey while on practicum at Codman Academy under the direction of Chetna Naimi, who heads a partnership between Codman Academy and Codman Square Health Center. This year, Naimi proposed bringing the Codman Academy-affiliated summer interns to the School.
“This was an exciting opportunity to make the partnership between Codman Academy, the Codman Square Health Center, and the Harvard Chan School more substantive,” said King. “We would like to see these types of mutually beneficial partnerships with community organizations grow.”
Shaneice Brown, a senior at Codman Academy who was on the Harvard Chan tour, said she appreciated the opportunity to learn about how public health efforts can lead to improving people’s lives on a large scale. “I’m interested in whatever I can do to make my community better,” she said.