Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, public health remains at the center of the global discourse—but Oxy faculty and students have been engaged in the conversation far longer
Coming to Oxy, Shanna Yeh ’22 wanted a career in health 我以为当护士或医生是实现这一目标的唯一途径. 在洛杉矶萨班社区诊所暑期实习后, where she worked in the operations department implementing new programs and looking for ways to enhance patient experience, she had an epiphany.
“公共卫生领域有很多工作都能发挥我的不同优势,” says Yeh, a biology major and public health minor from Gaithersburg, Md. After Oxy, she hopes to find a job working in community health and eventually plans to pursue a master of public health (MPH) degree.
叶是今年春天即将毕业的26名辅修公共卫生专业的大四学生之一, which Adjunct Assistant Professor Jessica Dirkes defines as “the science of protecting and promoting the health of populations, people, and communities.” Public health provides a framework to examine often divisive topics such as climate change and gun violence, she adds, and address those issues using research and evidence.
奥克西的公共卫生辅修课程成为了最具文科风格的课程, with faculty and students across multiple disciplines coming together to create a program they believed needed to be offered to students. The Urban and Environmental Policy Department introduced Public Health: Community and Environment to the curriculum during the 2001-02 academic year. The course was taught by Andrea Hricko, professor emerita of preventive medicine at USC Keck School of Medicine—a longtime friend of then-Urban and Environmental Policy Institute Director Robert Gottlieb, the Henry R. Luce Professor of Urban and Environmental Studies Emeritus.
About a decade ago, 教师们采取了行动，以回应学生对公共卫生日益增长的兴趣, and UEPI secured funding from the Kaiser Foundation to develop the minor under the leadership of adjunct faculty Heng Lam Foong, who served as program director at UEPI from 2009 to 2017. Along with Foong, Jessica Welty ’13, then a junior, 是通过凯撒基金雇佣来开发未成年人的吗.
In putting together the curriculum, 通过对全国未成年人公共卫生状况的研究, 辅修课程的主干是三门核心课程:公共卫生导论, Epidemiology, and Statistics. Additionally, they formulated a list of electives from multiple departments that students could take to fulfill their interests within the broad topic of public health. (This year, students can choose from 16 electives; five courses are required to complete the minor.)
Following its launch in December 2013, the public health minor was run by Bhavna Shamasunder, associate professor of urban and environmental policy, 在生物学和运动机能系两位教授的帮助下. 然而，她知道，不仅要维持孩子的生命，还要让孩子成长，还需要更多的帮助. With the backing of Wendy Sternberg, vice president of academic affairs and dean of the College, a full-time public health faculty position was approved, 德克斯于2019年秋季被聘为公共卫生项目协调员兼联合主席.
Prior to teaching and working in higher education, Dirkes practiced public health for 10 years, focusing mainly on HIV prevention and health education. A Ph.D. 毕业于芝加哥伊利诺伊大学公共卫生和社区卫生专业, she focuses her teaching on public health “as it applies to concepts of social justice so that we approach it as finding ways to effectively address health inequity.”
Dirkes—who teaches Introduction to Public Health, Epidemiology, and Women’s Health—is excited that students from many different majors bring their own perspectives to the classroom, making for rich discussions. “People don’t exist in isolation,” she says. 在理解人们做出的决定与他们自己的幸福有关的背景下, “Public health can help us be more empathetic.”
公共卫生课程的发展是很大的功劳 在2011年，他发起了UEPI的社区卫生参与项目. With funding support from Kaiser Permanente, Oxy能够通过课程作业为学生创造和扩大公共卫生机会, community engagement, and independent study.
Prior to joining the College, Foong worked for a pair of nonprofits on such public health issues as equitable access to healthy food, clean tap water, and neighborhood parks, 以及为英语水平有限的个人提供医疗保健服务. (Foong, 他现在是亚太岛民前进运动的项目主管, continues to teach at Oxy as an adjunct instructor.)
鉴于冯教授在社区工作方面的背景，以及联合国环境规划署对社区参与的关注, 社区保健参与是塑造未成年人的一个关键重点. This focus came to fruition in January 2013 when Foong and Welty established the Public Health Practicum course (UEP 307), 学生与社区伙伴一起实习，并在课堂上反思他们的经历.
在与社区伙伴建立联系时，“互惠是关键，”Foong指出. “We wanted to be sure that having Oxy interns would support the organization and then we identified the learning outcomes for the students. Many of these partners remain with us.”
In the Public Health Practicum, Foong ensures that her students take an asset-based approach to community engagement: “We’re not going in the communities to fix—we’re going there to learn and be a part of the solution.” She believes this approach is one of the most important takeaways of the course—one that students can only learn by stepping out of the classroom and into communities.
Verónica Ponce de León ’13 decided to pursue a career in public health after taking Foong’s practicum course. Foong“真的帮助我了解到公共卫生领域比我想象的要广泛得多,” says the Downey resident, 谁主修生物学，辅修城市和环境政策.
During her Richter Research Abroad fellowship in Peru, Ponce de León发现了对环境健康的热情. 随后，她在加州大学伯克利分校攻读了职业健康专业的公共卫生硕士学位. “Oxy is a great place to explore the public health field,” says Ponce de León, 谁自2019年以来一直在加州大学洛杉矶分校的劳动职业安全与健康项目工作. She recently started a new position managing a program to help domestic workers stay safe on the job and understand their rights.
从奥施康定大学毕业，主修生物化学，辅修公共卫生, 泰勒·威尔逊(Tyler Wilson)今年16岁，于2017年在加州大学圣地亚哥分校(UC San Diego)完成了本科后医学预科课程. 现在是费城德雷塞尔大学医学院四年级的学生, 他计划在完成硕士学位后专攻急诊医学.D. He shares Ponce de León’s enthusiasm for the practicum course and Foong’s mentorship: “She was really the reason I enjoyed the public health minor.”
Wilson notes that his public health studies have taught him how to zoom out from only addressing the problem patients come in to be treated for and look at strategies to keep the patient healthy and out of hospitals. His community work at Foothill Unity Center and ChapCare Clinic through Oxy made him cognizant of the barriers individuals in underserved communities can face in regards to healthcare and access. 而不是告诉那些只能买得起快餐的人少吃油炸食品, he understands the importance of pointing the patient to resources that give them access to more options. “我在Oxy学到的公共卫生知识使我成为一名更好的医学院学生, and hopefully a much better physician in the future.”
15岁的Collrane Frivold对公共卫生的热情始于马达加斯加. As a Richter Fellow following her sophomore year at Oxy, she conducted research in the African island country on the storage and transport of malaria rapid diagnostic tests. “Before this project, I didn’t really know what public health was,” recalls Frivold, a biochemistry major from Seattle.
在开设辅修课程之前，弗里沃德就开始学习公共卫生课程, fitting them in as her schedule permitted. 她在约翰霍普金斯大学彭博公共卫生学院攻读硕士学位, 她遇到了她在本科时已经学过的话题, 这有助于她跟上快节奏的硕士课程，并更深入地研究主题. (约翰霍普金斯大学甚至使用了弗里沃德在奥施康定学习过的流行病学教科书.)
After working at PATH, a nonprofit global health organization, for three years, Frivold entered into the epidemiology Ph.D. program at the University of Washington. After completing her doctorate, she plans to bring together all of her professional and academic experiences to continue working on projects to improve immunization coverage and equity.
作为第一批辅修公共卫生专业的大学生之一, Frivold is heartened to see the program’s growth. “I’m glad to see that there are more courses,” she says, 还有专门从事公共卫生工作的教师.”
这个国家经历了百年来最严重的公共卫生危机， 这是一个研究公共卫生的独特时期——这一点德克斯也注意到了. “If there's any silver lining to the pandemic, it’s that it is definitely drawing people into the field who maybe wouldn't have thought of it before, who realize how much work there is to do, 以及我们需要多少人才”来应对未来的流行病, she says.
As Shamasunder sees it, 现在是学院支持公共卫生辅修专业持续发展的最佳时机, which would include funding more internship opportunities. “One unique thing about Oxy’s public health minor is that it started from a really strong sense of community engagement,” she notes. And community engagement has been a crucial ingredient in setting students up for success after Oxy.
22岁的艾米丽·卡宾斯(Emily Kapins)是一名受益于这门辅修课程发展的学生, a psychology major and public health minor from Honolulu. 去年夏天，卡宾斯在韩国城青年和社区中心的“挣脱”项目中工作, a tobacco control project that seeks to implement comprehensive smoke- and tobacco-free policies at college campuses and trade schools in the L.A. area.
After Oxy, Kapins plans to pursue an MPH in social and behavioral science so that she can work on mental health in disadvantaged communities, 她承认，如果不是因为她的未成年人，她是不会想到这个机会的.
Reflecting on the timing of her public health studies, Kapins admits, “The chances of learning about a pandemic, and then experiencing it, are very low—but apparently not impossible.”
基亚·麦基22岁，来自华盛顿州埃德蒙兹，主修生物学，辅修公共卫生. She wrote “The Excitement Is Back” in the Spring 2021 issue.
Top image: Collrane Frivold '15 presents at a manufacturing workshop co-hosted by PATH with the German packaging company Harro Höfliger.
