Student Profiles

Marleny Huerta-Apan

Student: Marleny Huerta-Apan

Marleny Huerta-Apan is a Master of Public Health student at the School of Public Health, graduating May 2021. Prior to coming to the University of Minnesota, she spent two years working as an Assistant Director of Admission for the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University where she worked specifically with first generation, low-income students. A Bennie herself, Marleny graduated in 2017 from Saint Ben’s with a degree in psychology.

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Marleny was drawn to the Health Equity Minor through her lived experience of health disparities for her and her family. She believes that health is a human right and all too often people experiencing gaps in their health are those who are systematically forgotten in both policy and language. Marleny is interested in the ways in which policy and health can work together to create change and improve the well-being of all marginalized communities.

Initially, Marleny wanted to pursue medicine and help treat unserved communities. However, thanks to her mentors and friends, Marleny found out about public health and realized that prevention and advocacy were where she was called to be. Moving forward, Marleny’s minors in public policy and health equity have created a strong foundation and her hope is to use those in positions of leadership in Minneapolis and influence systems.

Genelle Monger

Student: Genelle Monger

Genelle Monger is a Master’s in Public Health in Maternal and Child Health Candidate with plans to graduate in August of 2021. She currently is a Health Graduate Fellow at the Minnesota Department of Health’s Center for Health Equity where she assists in the management and administrative needs of the Community Solutions Fund.

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Genelle also works as a Community Health Initiative Consultant and assists Hennepin Healthcare in evaluating their African American focused Virtual Doula Project. Lastly, Genelle serves as the Community Liaison Lead at Heart of the Customer where she connects healthcare systems, Heart of The Customer staff, and Black community members to help document and improve the Black Expectant Mother’s experience.

Genelle has been interested in public health for as long as she can remember, even though at the time she did not know what public health was. She comes from a family of advocates that emphasized the importance of vaccination, clean water, safe neighborhoods, and physical activity. Throughout her journey to her Masters degree, Genelle has been reminded how important health equity is in public health. Even though she believes that an equity lens should be used throughout public health she has quickly learned that is not always true. The Health Equity minor has allowed Genelle to expand upon her knowledge and skills that originally sparked her interest in public health.

2022 Health Equity Minor Students

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Alexis Chavez

Alexis Chavez will be graduating in May 2022 with a Master of Public Health (MPH) in Maternal and Child Health (MCH) with a minor in Health Equity and Health Services Research Policy and Administration. She previously earned her Bachelor of Science in Public Health with a concentration in Health Promotion and minor in Health and Human Values from the University of Arizona (UA).

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During her time at the UA, Alexis interned at UA Banner Children’s Postinfectious Autoimmune Encephalopathy (CPAE) Center of Excellence, where she completed a capstone project for the clinic; as well as completed an honors thesis through the College of Public Health for the ‘Intense Physiotherapies to Improve Function in Children with Cerebral Palsy” clinical trial at Tucson Medical Center. While earning her MPH in MCH with the UMN online, she worked as the blog editor for the National MCH Trainee Blog, and as a medical scribe. Alexis also participated in some research with the UMN SPH, became a mentor for the MCH Peer Program, pursued an internship with the Eyes On Learning Organization, and was accepted to be an attendee and presenter for the Making Lifelong Connections 2022 Conference.

Alexis has always wanted to pursue a career in health care, ultimately striving to be an empathetic and compassionate caregiver. During her time pursuing her MPH MCH online, she continued involve herself in different opportunities that allowed her to deepen her understanding of the needs for MCH populations and become an advocate for them. Her passion to better understand this population is what led her to pursue the health equity minor which allowed her to get involved with genuine efforts to become informed and help overcome their disparities and inequities. The health equity minor provided her with great teachings and values that contribute to her goals in becoming a health care provider someday and help bridge the gap between medical science and public health.

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Alissa Perteet-Jackson

Alissa Perteet-Jackson is a Nutrition PhD candidate in the Department of Food Science and Nutrition at the University of Minnesota. She holds a Bachelor of Business Administration in Accounting from Jackson State University, a Master of Business Taxation from University of Minnesota, and a Master of Science in Nutrition from the University of Minnesota. In addition to studying nutrition, Alissa works in public accounting where she specializes in taxation.

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Alissa was inspired to pursue the Health Equity Minor following personal experiences with family members, volunteer activities, and her interest in community health and wellness projects. Her research projects involve evaluation of food systems based experiential learning projects within the nutrition undergraduate curriculum through partnerships with community and industry. Alissa believes health equity is inherent in her work and is interested in increasing diversity in nutrition professionals through mentorship of high school students.

Alissa hopes to develop multilevel programs to increase access to culturally approachable and affordable foods, promote sustainable meal patterns, and support holistic community wellbeing.

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Annie Youngblood

Annie will be graduating May 2022 with her Master of Public Health in Epidemiology. Holding a B.S. in Environmental Science and a B.A. in Justice & Peace Studies from the University of St. Thomas, Annie has always been drawn to interdisciplinary and justice-oriented work.

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After graduating college in 2018, she spent time as an AmeriCorps VISTA in North Minneapolis working on nutrition access and post-secondary success for youth and took a Global Health in a Local Context course through UMN as a non-degree seeking student. These experiences reinforced the idea that Public Health was the career trajectory for her, so she enrolled in the MPH Epi program.

Throughout her time with SPH, she has worked with COVID-19 equitable data reporting through the BroadStreet COVID-19 Data Project, served as an editor for the Public Health Review, a student run journal intended to decrease barriers to access in publication for nascent authors, conducted research on incentivization of vaccines at the Hennepin County Adult Detention Center, and worked as a TA for Epi Methods I and Public Health Ethics.

Annie is certain the health equity lens she’s practiced throughout courses in the health equity minor will be useful as she navigates her research and teaching career. Annie will be pursuing her Ph.D. in Social Epidemiology at the University of Minnesota beginning Fall 2022 and working as a predoctoral fellow with the Research on Eating and Activity for Community Health (REACH) research team. Inspired by liberation educators such as bell hooks and Paulo Freire, Annie ultimately hopes to teach at the undergraduate level, and continue to learn with new generations of justice-oriented public health students.

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Anu Bompelli

Anu Bompelli is pursuing a PhD in Social and Administrative Pharmacy (SAPh) with a doctoral minor in Health Equity. She holds a MS degree in Health Informatics from the University of Minnesota, and a Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) degree from Kakatiya University, India.

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Anu worked as a Project Manager for the Earl E. Bakken Medical Devices Center Internship program at the University of Minnesota, where she collaborated with her team to address an unmet clinical need through innovation and product development. Her research interests include health economics and outcomes, secondary analysis of EHR data, medical device innovation, social determinants of health (SDoH), and child maltreatment.

Anu was drawn to the Health Equity Minor to better understand how social, economic, and environmental factors shape health inequities, explore potential practice and policy solutions for fostering health equity including how to develop and implement effective interventions. She believes that knowing why and how some communities experience disproportionate health inequities, and the roles that the environment, safe housing, race, ethnicity, education, financial status, and access play, will aid in addressing the inequities.

The health equity minor has provided Anu a framework for analyzing the historical

context of inequities and has allowed her to work toward a deeper understanding of the social, economic, environmental, and structural disparities that contribute to intergroup differences in health outcomes both within and between societies. She learned in her coursework that the negative consequences of health inequities extend beyond the individual to their children, communities, and society at large. She intends to break the intergenerational cycle of child abuse and neglect by identifying and addressing the root causes of child maltreatment.

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Caroline Bornstein

Caroline is a second-year Master of Public Health student in Nutrition graduating in December 2022. She received a bachelors degree in Anthropology and Sociology with an emphasis in Global Development Studies from the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington.

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Her professional interests include food insecurity and access, food systems and weight stigma. As an MPH student at the University of Minnesota, she has found a passion for promoting weight-inclusive health care and examining the effects of social factors on health outcomes. Caroline hopes to continue this work following her graduation. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with her husband, reading, cooking and exploring the Twin Cities.

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Choua Xiong

Choua is a second-year student in the MPH Community Health Promotion program expected to graduate in May 2022. She attended the University of Wisconsin – Stout where she graduated with a B.S. in Dietetics and a minor in Workplace Diversity (’20) prior to coming to the University of Minnesota.

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Choua had a wide range of experiences working in multiple healthcare facilities throughout her undergraduate years and became interested in public health after realizing her strengths were more parallel in community and institutional work rather than clinical and individual-level consultation work. She has a huge intersecting passion for social justice and population health especially Asian and immigrant populations. Her interests lie within nutrition; health education and communication; and curriculum and training development. Choua knew she wanted to obtain a minor in Health Equity at the start of her MPH journey because of her personal experience with health disparities. As an immune-compromised individual with a genetic chronic disorder, Choua has experienced firsthand of how the healthcare she receives is impaired due to the underlying systemic health inequities. She believes in the importance of universal healthcare and culturally appropriate health services, and how the healthcare system should integrate cultural humility into its design. Choua’s academic and career goal is to continue her education and obtain a DrPH in health education while working with communities and schools to develop educational programs around food and nutrition.

In her free time, Choua likes to be in the kitchen cooking, binge-watching TV shows, or going on spontaneous nature walks.

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Ciana Burrell

My name is Ciana Burrell (she/her/hers) and I am a second-year MPH student in the Community Health Promotion program. When I am not working or completing homework, I enjoy reading, traveling, concerts, and yoga.

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I was drawn to the Health Equity Minor due to my lived experiences growing up low-income as a Black woman in the US, as well as learning about the experiences of various marginalized and underserved populations in the US. Additionally, I was interested in learning more about intersectionality and systemic factors, and how to create community-driven interventions focused on these two concepts. The coursework from this minor has provided me with insight of other marginalized communities that are often not represented in mainstream culture/healthcare (i.e. rural communities). I am excited to utilize the competencies from the minor working either conducting community-based research or creating and evaluating community-based interventions.

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Dakota Crowell

Dakota Crowell is a Master of Urban and Regional Planning student with a concentration in Housing and Community Development. He also currently interns with the City of Minneapolis and their 4d Affordable Housing Incentive Program.

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Prior to coming to the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, Dakota received his Bachelor of Urban Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and then served two years for Public Allies Milwaukee (AmeriCorps). While a Public Allies fellow with the Housing Authority for the City of Milwaukee, he worked with the Choice Neighborhood Initiative to support the transformation of Wisconsin’s largest public housing development into a mixed-use, mixed-income neighborhood. Through this work, he engaged with residents and community health workers around improving fresh food access and improving infant mortality rates in the neighborhood. This fostering of a healthy and sustainable community led him to learn more about the interaction between urban planning and public health and ultimately pursue the Health Equity minor.

Whether it be housing, transportation, or land-use, many of the decisions planners make will impact the health of people. The Health Equity minor has been a rewarding experience to reflect on how my career interests in planning can address health and racial disparities and not repeat the systemic harm that the planning profession has had on communities. Dakota believes the coursework of the Health Equity minor has given him many tools and frameworks to intentionally and authentically engage those disproportionately impacted by systemic harm and take an asset-based approach to develop solutions. In the future, he hopes to support healthy and sustainable communities through affordable housing and equitable community development.

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Elizabeth Magnuson

Elizabeth Magnuson is a Master of Public Health student in the Community Health Promotion program with minors in Health Equity and Sustainable Agriculture Systems.  In 2014 she received her bachelor’s degree in Biology, with two minors in Spanish and Community & Global Health, from Macalester College.

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Prior to pursuing her master’s, Elizabeth worked for six years in the field of community health as a sexual health educator through the Community HealthCorps, a public health advisor with the Pascua Yaqui Tribe Health Services Division and the Puerto Rico Department of Health, and a nutrition coordinator for Dream of Wild Health in Minneapolis. These years of professional work in various sectors and communities allowed her to explore the current practice and history of public health in the United States and the urgent need to challenge the interlocking systems of oppression that perpetuate health inequities locally and globally. As an MPH student at the University of Minnesota, Elizabeth has focused her coursework on community-engaged and human-centered approaches to policy, systems and environmental change, Tribal sovereignty and natural resource management, and alternative ways of knowing. Elizabeth will continue this work in a professional and personal capacity following her graduation.

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Eustacia Ikeri

Eustacia will be graduating in May 2022 with a Master of Public Health in epidemiology and the health equity minor. She grew up in the Twin Cities, went off to Madison for her undergraduate degree in Biology, and was excited to return here for her graduate studies.

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She currently works as a clinical research assistant at the VA Medical Center where she helps improve patient care through diuretic medication research.

Eustacia’s health interests include health equity, immigrant health, health literacy, interprofessional collaboration, and primary care medicine. Her identity as a Nigerian immigrant and Black woman guide her understanding of health equity. She serves on the board of the Health, Education, Advocacy, and Learning (HEAL) Program. This community outreach program provides culturally competent health education to English-language learners at the English Learning Center in Minneapolis. One major goal of the program is to help increase health literacy amongst immigrant and refugee populations here in the Twin Cities through public health, medical, and dental educational lessons. In her free time, Eustacia loves to lift at the gym, make new candles from old, burnt-out candles, and watch telenovelas.

What drew Eustacia to the Health Equity Minor was the opportunity to focus her graduate studies towards understanding how health inequities are created. She will begin medical school in the fall of 2022 and will apply the information she has gained through this minor towards decreasing these inequities in healthcare. Eustacia plans to use this knowledge to increase healthcare access and improve patient care amongst underserved communities in her future career. She hopes to work in primary care and continue to be involved in community outreach programs similar to HEAL.

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Grant Zastoupil

Grant is a Master’s of Public Health student in the Community Health Promotion program. He received his Bachelor’s of Science in Genetics and Cellular Biology and from the College of Biological Sciences and a minor in Leadership at the University of Minnesota.

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After completing his undergraduate education, Grant spent a year in New Orleans as a City Year AmeriCorps Member He worked at a school in New Orleans East school doing academic enrichment and socio-emotional learning with 1st through 8th graders. This experience fundamentally reshaped the way Grant saw and understood systems of oppression and how they constantly restrict and inhibit the happiness and well-being of students.

During his time in his MPH program, Grant was able to explore a variety of public health practices around evaluation and community engagement skills with a focus on how to move research and assessments into action and policy to address health inequities. Having taken classes in community based participatory methods, communication, urban design, and evaluation among others, Grant is excited to consider himself a public health generalist. He is interested in working on big issues around the built environment, participatory program design and evaluation, and using public health to help re-imagine the just city.

During his down time, Grant enjoys baking, exploring the great Twin Cities bike paths, and checking out local bookstores, coffee shops, and bakeries. After graduating he will be taking his skills and passions to the Eau Claire City-County Health department as a fellow in the Wisconsin Population Health Services.

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Holly Hagstrom

Holly Hagstrom (she/her) is a Master of Public Health student at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health pursuing a major in Public Health Administration and Policy and graduate minors in Bioethics and Health Equity. She earned a Bachelor of Arts from Macalester College in 2020 with majors in Philosophy, Political Science, and Spanish.

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Holly first became interested in working in public health during her senior year of college when she realized that most of her self-guided undergraduate research projects revolved around the ways that ethical considerations can serve as guides for public health policy development. When the last semester of her undergraduate career was disrupted due to the escalation of the COVID-19 pandemic, it became even clearer to her that she wanted to dedicate her life to improving health and health outcomes on population and systems levels. The Health Equity Minor aligns with Holly’s firm belief that public health policies (and policies more generally) need to be grounded in and guided by ethics, equity, and justice. Coursework for both the Health Equity Minor and MPH programs allowed Holly to explore how policy can serve as a means of reducing reproductive health inequities and improving health outcomes on a systems level. Holly is profoundly grateful to both programs for providing her with the foundation and skills necessary to engage in health equity work.

Ultimately, Holly hopes to use her public health and health equity education and training to advocate for the needs of people with chronic pain, chronic illness, and chronic disease conditions, particularly those relating to reproductive health. She also aspires to work to reduce inequities in time to diagnosis for reproductive health conditions and promote the use of gender-inclusive language in reproductive health care spaces. On the rare occasion that she has free time, Holly enjoys playing guitar, searching for the best hot chocolate in the Twin Cities, and browsing Petfinder.

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Isabella Rolland

Isabella (Bella) Rolland is a second-year Master of Public Health student in Maternal & Child Health graduating in May 2022. She previously received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Anthropology with minors in African American & African Studies and Neuroscience from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.

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Her professional interests include birthing practices, children’s mental health, and the impact that adverse childhood experiences have on health outcomes. She was drawn to the Health Equity minor after learning about the influence that medical racism has had on the Black community in the US. She believes the minor has given her more tools to support the health of women and children of color. For her next adventure, Bella will be working as an Early Childhood Communications Specialist.

In her free time, Bella enjoys painting, exploring nature, and trying out new restaurants in the Twin Cities.

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Jessica Yescas

Jessica Yescas will be completing her Master of Public Health degree in Environmental Health Sciences in May 2022. She holds a B.A. in Public Health with a minor in Food Systems from the University of California, Berkeley.

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Jessica is originally from California’s Central Coast where she was unknowingly exposed to various environmental health injustices. While her curiosity surrounding parasites and diseases is what first introduced her to the field of Public Health, she honed her interests in on Environmental Health while a student at Berkeley where she conducted research on indoor air quality and children’s health. While at the UMN she has participated in the IonE Graduate Scholars Program as well as consulting with the Community Health Initiative program.

Jessica chose to continue her education at the UMN to develop her skills to further serve marginalized communities facing environmental injustices. She decided to pursue the Health Equity minor when she recognized the few options the EHS department offered surrounding the interconnectedness of health equity and the environment. Jessica hopes to apply what she has learned about health equity and environmental health in her future career involving environmental justice and immigrant occupational health. In her spare time Jessica enjoys vegan baking, thrifting, running, concert-going, and visiting different churches around the Twin Cities.

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Lauren Glass

Lauren Glass is a Master of Social Work student pursuing an additional certificate in Non-Profit Management through the School of Public Affairs and a minor in Health Equity through the School of Public Health, graduating in May 2022. Lauren’s interests include non-profit and government leadership, with a focus on working with communities experiencing systemic barriers to physical, mental, social, cultural, and environmental health.

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Since graduating with a B.A. in Communication, Journalism and a minor in Anthropology in 2013, Lauren has enjoyed working toward health equity through a variety of positions and with a variety of populations. Over the past decade, Lauren’s professional experience has included: volunteering with refugee resettlement programs; providing case management in a housing first program; providing victim advocacy and support for families experiencing violence; program administration in the Minnesota Department of Human Services’ Division on Aging and Adult Services; research, training, and program evaluation in the substance use and mental health field; community organizing in support of environmental rights and renter’s rights; and providing individual, group, and family therapy for young adults experiencing psychosis. Through these diverse experiences, two common threads have emerged that define Lauren’s interests: the importance of addressing systemic barriers to health in partnership with individuals and communities who experience these barriers most acutely, and the impact of leadership on developing policies, programs and cultures that promote health equity. The Health Equity Minor has provided Lauren with the education and skills needed to deepen their work in these areas and pursue a career in leadership that is focused on building a more equitable society.

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Lauren McPherson

Lauren McPherson will graduate in May 2022 with a Master of Public Health in the Maternal Child Health program with a minor in Health Equity. She will also be completing an interdisciplinary research training in child and adolescent primary care fellowship and Health Equity Leadership and Mentorship fellowship.

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She received her bachelor’s degree in Latin American Studies, with a second major in Biology, from the University of Chicago. She then went on to teach high school biology in DC Public Schools while pursuing her Master of Arts in Teaching from American University. She returned to Minnesota and earned her MD at the University of Minnesota Medical School and completed her residency in family medicine at Hennepin Healthcare. She is a board-certified family physician.

Her work in public education and clinical work at a county medical center and a federally qualified health center drives her work in health equity and social justice. The Health Equity Minor curriculum provided her the opportunity to gain a strong understanding of the structural causes of health inequalities and the tools to address them. The interdisciplinary cohort made this especially rich.

She will continue her work as a primary care physician and health equity research as well as with the Resilience in Immigration lab and as a member of the MAFP Health Equity committee.

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Madalyn Nones

Madalyn Nones is a Master of Public Health student in the Epidemiology program with minors in Global Health and Health Equity. She will be graduating in May 2022.

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She previously received her Bachelor of Science degree in Nutrition Science from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. Her interest in public health results from wanting to understand the intersection between societal structures and individual behavior. Her professional interests include social epidemiology, nutrition and infectious disease research with a focus on health equity. She will be pursuing a research career in hopes of beginning an Epidemiology PhD program. While she isn’t sure of the exact field of her future research, it will certainly focus on local health inequities. In her free time, Madalyn trains as an amateur Muay Thai fighter. She also enjoys trail running, spending time with her cats and seeking out new bakeries in the Twin Cities area.

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Ming-Ching Liang

Ming-Ching Liang is a Community Health Promotion major in the Master of Public Health (MPH) program at the University of Minnesota (UMN)-Twin Cities. With minors in Health Equity and Epidemiology, Ming-Ching Liang aims to bring positive changes in the community for all members.

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He is fascinated in the roles communication plays in equitable community health promotion. Specifically, he is passionate about how media use and information behaviors contribute to health disparities and equity. Another area that interests Ming-Ching is strategic efforts to address health disparities and improve health equity among Asian American populations. Through the Health Equity Minor coursework, Ming-Ching explored numerous topics related to diversity and inclusion, such as mental health service use among Chinese Americans, communication about health equity, community assets in LGBTQ+ populations, and rural health profiles. In his Applied Practical Experience, Ming-Ching Liang worked with Picture Impact, a design and evaluation agency for social change located in Minneapolis, on a research project to better understand principles and practices among professionals who had worked with audiences with lower literacy levels. Currently, Ming-Ching Liang serves as an evaluation intern at Second Harvest Heartland on the Theory of Change Project. He co-developed work group session plans and co-facilitated the sessions.

While working towards his MPH degree, Ming-Ching Liang teaches health communication, information study, and media study classes in the Department of Professional Communication at Metropolitan State University. He has authored several peer-reviewed papers on health information behaviors, tobacco control, handwashing, and science communication. Ming-Ching Liang is also engaged in the Social Justice Leadership Certificate Program and the Equity and Diversity Certificate Program at UMN.

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Shay Gingras

Shay Gingras (she/her/hers) will be graduating in May 2022 with a Master of Public Health in the Maternal and Child Health program and minors in Health Equity and Sexual Health. She previously received her Bachelor of Arts from Macalester College in International Studies and a minor in Sociology.

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She currently works at Planned Parenthood North Central States, Minnesota’s local Planned Parenthood affiliate, as a Senior Research Coordinator in their Research Department. Her professional interests include contraceptive and abortion access, and reproductive justice, health, and equity. Shay’s previous work in abortion care exposed her to the deep inequities in reproductive healthcare and drew her to the Health Equity minor in the School of Public Health. She plans to continue her work at Planned Parenthood after graduation and is eager to continue researching how to best increase equitable access to reproductive healthcare and incorporate her learnings from the School of Public Health into her professional work.

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Taylor Lees

Taylor Lees will be graduating in May 2022 with a Master of Public Health (MPH) in Maternal and Child Health and minors in Health Equity and Epidemiology. She completed her Bachelor of Science degree in Neurobiology at the University of Wisconsin- Madison in May 2018.

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She currently works as a Program Care Coordinator for Early Youth Eyecare Community Initiative at Phillips Eye Institute, working to promote equity in childhood vision health. In her role, Taylor provides vision screenings in Minneapolis and St. Paul Public Schools and then works with families to identify and remove barriers to receiving treatment including coordinating and funding vision care, providing interpreters, and organizing transportation.

Taylor became interested in health equity while working as a medical scribe at Northpoint Health and Wellness, a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) in North Minneapolis. At Northpoint, she observed that patient health was shaped by many factors beyond medical care and that health disparities were largely driven by inequities in social, environmental, and community factors. She later came to understand these factors as the social determinants of health, influenced by pervasive systems of racial and social injustice. Around the same time, Taylor was in treatment for an eating disorder and was introduced to the Health At Every Size Framework, a weight-inclusive approach to patient care and a social justice movement working to end weight-based discrimination. She became interested in weight stigma but noticed that it was often left out of the conversation when discussing systemic forms of oppression and their impacts on health.

While Taylor originally planned to apply to medical school in 2020, these experiences motivated her to postpone her application to pursue an MPH at the University of Minnesota- Twin Cities. She chose the Maternal and Child Health (MCH) program given its emphasis on social justice and family systems. The Health Equity minor complemented the MCH curriculum well and allowed her to develop a solid understanding of the historical roots of health inequities and the systems that continue to perpetuate them today. Ultimately, Taylor hopes to continue her education in medical school to train as a family medicine provider and provide individualized, inclusive health care through a public health lens. One day, she would love to work at an FQHC like Northpoint.

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Tia Phan

Tia Phan will be graduating with a Master of Professional Studies in Civic Engagement from the College of Continuing & Professional Studies and a graduate minor in Health Equity in December 2022. Previously she received a Bachelor of Individualized Study degree with concentrations in Political Science, Global Studies, and American Indian Studies from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.

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Prior to pursuing her master’s, Tia worked as a caseworker in South Minneapolis to families in a child protection services prevention program and then as a housing outreach coordinator. During her time working with families, she witnessed the ineffectiveness of current policies meant to help families experiencing poverty and the inequities faced by the population she worked with. The belief that policies would be more effective if the policymakers and those affected by the policy were at the table together, empowering those communities to state what they need to live healthy and fulfilling lives, prompted her to pursue this degree program. She feels that the Health Equity Minor complimented the Civic Engagement program well with the shared goal of preparing students to be strong advocates in improving the quality of life for individuals and communities. Tia hopes to one day be able to provide the table for policymakers and those affected by the policy to gather around.

Outside of school, Tia works as the Executive Assistant to the Dean for the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. She loves trying new restaurants, watching movies with her partner, sharing meals with her parents, and spending time with her extended family (she has 11 nieces and nephews!).

Past Health Equity Minor Student Profiles

Lexie Adams

lexie-adamsLexie Adams will be graduating in May 2021 with a Master of Public Health in the Maternal and Child Health program with a minor in Health Equity. She received her Bachelor of Science in Public Health – Community Health Education from the University of Wisconsin – La Crosse where she also minored in Nutrition. Currently, Lexie works as a Data Analyst at the Minnesota Department of Health in the Health Regulation Division working towards ensuring fair and equitable experiences for vulnerable adults in Minnesota. She also holds an internship at Hennepin County Public Health on the Assessment team developing a Community Health Assessment for Hennepin County. While working towards her master’s degree, Lexie has worked with the Minnesota Student Survey creating presentations for community workers highlighting equitable opportunities for children and adolescents. After COVID-19 hit, she worked on the Broadstreet + COVID-19 Data Project  collaborating with the Broadstreet Health Equity work group to create data dashboards showcasing COVID-19 rates based on race and ethnicity.

After Lexie completed her undergraduate degree, she volunteered with Domestic Abuse Intervention Services (DAIS) in Madison, WI where she first became really interested in health equity. She was exposed to many women who have increased barriers to health and saw how that effected their livelihood as well as their children’s. While earning her master’s degree, Lexie traveled to India with the School of Public Health and saw first-hand how people around the world are influenced by social determinants of health.  The Health Equity minor has allowed Lexie to build a deeper understanding of the structural causes of inequities and how they affect people’s health. She is excited to see where her future as a Public Health professional takes her.

Alex Bates

Alex Bates is a second year Master of Public Health student in Epidemiology graduating in December 2021. He previously received Bachelor of Science degrees in Biology and Psychology from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. After his undergraduate career he went on to receive his medical degree from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland in Dublin, Ireland. His professional interests include infectious disease epidemiology and health equity. He’s been interested in exploring health disparities faced by the LGBTQIA+ population since his undergraduate career and is continuing this passion by pursuing a PhD in Epidemiology at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities under Dr. Simon Rosser.

In his free time, Alex enjoys spending time with his partner, fawning over his one-eyed cat, watching Netflix, and supporting the local drag scene.

Lauren Burroughs

Lauren Burroughs is a Master of Public Health student in the Community Health Promotion program with minors in Health Equity and Health Services Research, Policy, and Administration. She received her bachelor’s degree in Biology, with a second major in Anthropology, from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Prior to pursuing her master’s, Lauren worked for three years in epidemiological research. During her time as a researcher, her favorite research projects became ones involving patient recruitment and health education. Through this work she came to recognize the significant medical disparities that exist in medical care and outcomes, which prompted her to pursue this degree program and concentration.

As an MPH student at the University of Minnesota, she has found a passion in the evaluation of and advocacy for public health policy that can improve health in equitable and inclusive ways. Lauren hopes to continue this work in a professional and personal capacity following her graduation.

Jenny Chomilo

jenny-chomiloJenny Chomilo will be graduating with a Master of Public Health from the Executive Public Health Practice program and a graduate minor in Health Equity in Summer 2021. She holds a Master of Nursing from the University of Minnesota, and Bachelor of Science in Business with a minor in Entrepreneurship from Miami University. Jenny currently works as a school nurse consultant at KIPP Minnesota with plans to eventually pursue a Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) degree specializing in pediatric primary care.

Jenny became interested in health equity during her time working as a pediatric nurse in the hospital and an adult oncology clinic nurse and seeing the disparities in health and access to health care first hand. This became even more realized when she was on the other side of health care dealing with a complicated pregnancy and was subsequently hospitalized on bedrest for 7 weeks followed by a 4-week NICU stay for her son. It was at this time that Jenny saw the inequities in preterm birth and how challenging the whole experience can be for families and their community.

During her time at the University of Minnesota, Jenny has focused her academic studies on the health inequities of Black and American Indian pregnant persons, in particular focusing on preterm birth disparities. She also has been an active member of the Health Equity Work Group (HEWG) in addition to both the Student and Community Engagement subcommittees.

In her free time, Jenny likes to spend time with her husband Nate and their 4 year old son Nchare, watching movies and going on outdoor adventures.

Jessy Countney

Jessy Countney will be graduating in May 2021 with a Master’s in Urban and Regional Planning with a concentration in Land Use & Placemaking. Prior to her graduate studies, she obtained a Bachelors of Design in Architecture from the University of Minnesota. There she emphasized learning how design could be used as a tool to aid community engagement through the use of various medias and more importantly how thinking creatively provides opportunities for innovation in and around urban communities. As part of her graduate studies, she has worked with MS-STEP graduate Andrew Butts and his organization, Green Neighbor Challenge, which provides research and disseminates information on green energy needs for communities across the United States. Her work with Green Neighbor Challenge has primarily stemmed from a passion to investigate unique community-based solutions to difficult problems like energy disparities. This passion continues in her interest in working for a firm dedicated to public-interest design and community-building, helping urban residents utilize both planner and designers’ toolkits.

Jessy has always been intrigued by the growing field of Health Equity as she grew up in Rochester, MN surrounded the Mayo Clinics’ facilities. After first-hand experiences witnessing the disparities in urban resources, she committed to remaining educated on issues of equity  specifically, with the intention of building capacity to expand the access marginalized peoples have to a space that is both welcoming and comfortable to be in and receive services from.

For Jessy, this commitment to justice and engagement has made the HEM curriculum a perfect fit. Within public-interest design, social equities will always come first and foremost, which the School of Public Health has also made a keen priority. Jessy hopes to continue her education in the field as a Planner broadening opportunities and attention to marginalized communities, that are long-overdue, as well as a sense of peace from and agency in understanding public process.

Ryan Grist

Ryan Grist is a Master of Integrative Health and Wellbeing Coaching student at the Center for Spirituality and Healing. His desire to explore his cultural and familial roots led him to focus his health equity studies on the cultural histories and traumas that contribute to the systemic inequities present in our society today. He has long been interested in the connection between personal and societal wellbeing. As an undergraduate, he studied Community and Environmental Sociology at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Engaging in the Health Equity Minor through the University of Minnesota School of Public health has provided him with the opportunity to connect the individual healing work he facilitates as a health coach to the larger social and cultural changes our society is undergoing. As a life-long learner, he plans to continue deepening his study, reflection, and engagement in cultural self-study to further understand his role in co-creating a just and equitable future. He is committed to bringing his full and flawed humanity to his role as a health coach as he continues to unlearn the oppressive forces of white-body supremacy, patriarchy, and settler colonialism that his culture has instilled in him as a white, cisgender, able-bodied male. He is grateful to all those who have guided him on this path.

Megan Hadley

Megan Hadley, NBC-HWC will complete the graduate program in Integrative Health and Wellbeing Coaching in May of 2021 through the Earl E. Bakken Center for Spirituality and Healing (CSPH). She holds a B.A. in Theater from St. Olaf College. Megan has been a health coach through her coursework at both the VA Medical Center and Whittier Clinic of Hennepin Health. Outside of coursework, Megan has coached on a volunteer basis with the University of Minnesota (UMN) Medical School, Health Sciences Education Center, and Northwestern Health Sciences’ Integrative Clinic of Minnesota based in the Phillips Neighborhood of Minneapolis. She is currently a contract health coach with PACT for Pain, a transformative care program for people with chronic pain that was started by a UMN Dentistry faculty. Additionally, she has a private coaching practice where she offers accessible coaching for people incorporating environmental and community wellbeing practices into their vision for health and vitality.

Megan became interested in the Health Equity coursework after meeting Dr. Craig Hassel who co-teaches at CSPH on the topics of cultural awareness, knowledge, and health. Better understanding how equity and wellbeing intersect has expanded her insights as a coach about how to personally and ethically approach community-based work as well as general wellbeing as a cis-gendered white woman with various western European root cultures in her heritage. This continual self-study of equity work combined with intentional community connection will lead to much more learning, un-learning, and advocacy work within her field.

Outside of school, Megan is a gardener, singer and ukulele serenader, as well as both a cat and chicken mom.

Elizabeth Hart

Elizabeth is a second year student in the University of Minnesota School of Public Health pursuing her Master of Public Health (MPH) in Maternal and Child Health, with expected graduation in May 2021. Prior to her graduate studies, she attended the University of MN, where she received a B.A. in History (‘19) with a concentration in Gender History and a minor in Public Health.

She has had a long standing interest in going into the healthcare field, and during her undergraduate classes she found that Public Health perfectly intersected her love for social justice with population health. Her interests lie mainly in the field of reproductive health, and both her work and classes have reinforced this passion. She was drawn to the Health Equity minor after her first semester of graduate school, where she found herself diving into the issues of maternal mortality and morbidity, as well as the lack of access to quality reproductive care individual’s across the U.S. face. These issues disproportionately affect Black, Indigenous, and women of color, and she hopes to work to address the hundreds of years of racial injustice that has been pervasive within the healthcare system.

She currently works as a Patient Advocate at a reproductive health clinic that provides both gynecological and abortion services, as well as working on maternal and infant related health projects at the Minnesota Department of Health. In her work, she tries to always apply the lens of health equity to the problems faced by both patients at an individual level, and populations at the state level. She plans to one day go into the medical field where she wants to work to address the structural factors that are preventing BIPOC individuals from receiving the highest quality & culturally humble reproductive care they can receive.

Gabbi Horsford

Gabbi Horsford will be graduating in May 2021 with a Masters of Public Health in the Community Health Promotion program and a minor in Health Equity. Before attending the University of Minnesota for graduate school, Gabbi attended the College of Saint Benedict where she received a bachelor’s in Psychology with a minor in Exercise Science. Her time there helped to shape her passion for women’s health, specifically for Black women.

Gabbi has had a wide range of experiences during her time at SPH. She was a research assistant on a project exploring relationships between police and young Black men, a research assistant on the UMN/MDH COVID Modeling project, did research on equitable enforcement of alcohol policies, worked as a graduate assistant for the Division of Epidemiology and Community Health’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Action Team, and interned for Association of Nonsmoker’s Rights (ANSR) on tobacco policies in Minnesota.

Gabbi was drawn to the Health Equity minor because she believes that equity is an important part of every conversation, especially within public health. She believes in the importance of community-owned research and programs, and that policies and programs should be designed with cultural and racial humility. In the future, Gabbi aims to work on projects that focus the health of resilient communities in Minnesota. She is passionate about the way that race, gender, sexuality, and class intersect to have a profound impact on health outcomes.

Outside of school, Gabbi is a certified yoga instructor. She loves relaxing with her partner and her Chihuahua mix, Ollie, or spending time in her happy place, Trader Joe’s.

Marleny Huerta-Apan

Marleny Huerta-Apan is a Master of Public Health student at the School of Public Health, graduating May 2021. Prior to coming to the University of Minnesota, she spent two years working as an Assistant Director of Admission for the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University where she worked specifically with first generation, low-income students. A Bennie herself, Marleny graduated in 2017 from Saint Ben’s with a degree in psychology.

Marleny was drawn to the Health Equity Minor through her lived experience of health disparities for her and her family. She believes that health is a human right and all too often people experiencing gaps in their health are those who are systematically forgotten in both policy and language. Marleny is interested in the ways in which policy and health can work together to create change and improve the well-being of all marginalized communities.

Initially, Marleny wanted to pursue medicine and help treat unserved communities. However, thanks to her mentors and friends, Marleny found out about public health and realized that prevention and advocacy were where she was called to be. Moving forward, Marleny’s minors in public policy and health equity have created a strong foundation and her hope is to use those in positions of leadership in Minneapolis and influence systems.

Genelle Monger

Genelle Monger is a Master’s in Public Health in Maternal and Child Health Candidate with plans to graduate in August of 2021. She currently is a Health Graduate Fellow at the Minnesota Department of Health’s Center for Health Equity where she assists in the management and administrative needs of the Community Solutions Fund. Genelle also works as a Community Health Initiative Consultant and assists Hennepin Healthcare in evaluating their African American focused Virtual Doula Project. Lastly, Genelle serves as the Community Liaison Lead at Heart of the Customer where she connects healthcare systems, Heart of The Customer staff, and Black community members to help document and improve the Black Expectant Mother’s experience.

Genelle has been interested in public health for as long as she can remember, even though at the time she did not know what public health was. She comes from a family of advocates that emphasized the importance of vaccination, clean water, safe neighborhoods, and physical activity. Throughout her journey to her Masters degree, Genelle has been reminded how important health equity is in public health. Even though she believes that an equity lens should be used throughout public health she has quickly learned that is not always true. The Health Equity minor has allowed Genelle to expand upon her knowledge and skills that originally sparked her interest in public health.

Ingie Osman

Ingie will be graduating in May 2021 with a Master of Public Health in the Community Health Promotion program and a minor in Health Equity. She completed her Bachelor of Science degree in Biology with a certificate in Global Health at the University of Wisconsin—Madison in May 2018. Prior to coming to the University of Minnesota, School of Public Health, Ingie completed a year of service with the AmeriCorps National Health Corps in Pittsburgh, PA, where she served as a health care navigator at the Birmingham Free Clinic. This experience was fundamental in helping her learn more about the many systemic barriers that prohibit people from living healthy lives and helped shine a light on the failures of many systems that we have in place today. This fueled her passion to go into public health, where she hoped she could be a part of work that aimed to find upstream solutions that achieve health equity for all.

Ingie’s research and academic interests revolve heavily around the impact that justice-involvement has on individual and community health. She currently works as a Graduate Research Assistant with the Department of Sociology and Teaching Assistant in the School of Public Health, and also volunteers with the Hennepin County Jail. As part of her Graduate Research Assistant position, Ingie is involved with the Adults on Probation study, which aims to understand more about the intersection of probation supervision and health here in Hennepin County in order to achieve changes in supervision practices that are more just and equitable.

The Health Equity Minor coursework has helped Ingie continue to develop her understanding of health disparities and inequities, working with communities, structural racism and colonialism, transformative justice, and has helped her continue to build the tools and skills necessary to address health inequities and advocate for those most impacted. She hopes to apply the knowledge and skills she has gained through her Health Equity Minor coursework to advocate for policies that improve the health and wellbeing of people who are justice-involved and, at a larger level, work to reimagine the systems that perpetuate systemic violence and harm.

Courtney Sarkin

Courtney is currently a PhD student in the Health Services Research, Policy, and Administration program in the Division of Health Policy and Management. As a Ph.D. student in the Sociology of Health and Illness track, she hopes to continue advancing social justice and health equity by addressing ethical, legal, and socioeconomic complexities generated and maintained by structural oppression within and outside the US healthcare system. She is a predoctoral fellow for the National Cancer Institute (NCI) T32 Cancer Disparities Training Program jointly administered by the University of Minnesota Medical School Program in Health Disparities and School of Public Health. 

Prior to joining the University of Minnesota, Courtney attended University of California, Berkeley and received B.A.s in Molecular and Cell Biology, Legal Studies, and Gender Studies. While at UC Berkeley as a Rose Hills Fellow, she conducted independent research on the healthcare experiences of lesbian and transgender breast cancer patients and survivors. She was motivated to pursue this research to explore how her mom, a lesbian breast cancer survivor, experienced diagnosis, treatment, and survivorship in their rural and medically underserved community. Having solidified her interest in health equity, she attended Harvard Medical School for a Masters in Bioethics. Her research focused on integrating cultural humility into medical education as a way to ensure culturally-sensitive care. 

Courtney pursued the Health Equity Minor to gain the tools, skills, and knowledge needed to dismantle oppressive policies and practices that create and maintain health inequities. Health equity continues to be at the core of how she envisions health services research, policy, and practice, and she is passionate about integrating community-based participatory research into her work. Her dissertation will use a mixed methods approach to explore how structural racism, ableism, and cisheterosexism influence the patient-provider relationship and shape LGBTQ2+ individual’s engagement with breast cancer screening and care. She hopes this and future research will contribute to equitable cancer prevention, screening, and care.

When she isn’t having discussions about social justice and health equity, Courtney volunteers as a Violence Prevention Educator for The Aurora Center for Advocacy and Education and enjoys walking her dog (and her cat occasionally), crafting, biking around Minneapolis, game nights, and caring for her abundance of plants.

Lai Jing Su

Lai Jing Su will be graduating May 2021 with a Master of Public Health in Maternal and Child Health with a minor in Health Equity. She completed her Bachelor of Arts in Spanish with a minor in Bioinformatics at the University of Florida. Currently, Lai Jing works at the Minnesota Department of Health in the Minnesota Immunization Information Connection (MIIC) department under Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Prevention and Control (IDEPC). She also works as a medical Emergency Department scribe for Emergency Care Consultants.

Lai Jing became interested in the Health Equity Minor to have better understanding on how to tackle policies and systems that further perpetuate inequality in the healthcare industry. She has improved her ability to recognize the various factors that lead to inequity

In her free time, Lai Jing enjoys fencing, biking, hiking, spending time with family and friends, and trying out new places to eat. Lai Jing especially loves to travel and learn about the culture.

Mary Wooten

Molly will be graduating in May 2021 with a Master of Public Health in the Public Health Practice program with a minor in Health Equity. She is a dual-degree public health and medical student, and will begin her 4th year of medical school at Des Moines University in June. She is currently a legislative advocacy intern at the Minnesota Psychiatric Society, where she advocates for policies that improve access to mental health treatment for Minnesotans. She is particularly interested in mental health, child development, and health care access.

Molly first became interested in health equity while working as a medical scribe in an Emergency Department, where she saw the stark differences in how doctors treated patients because of their race, background, and history of mental illness. During her first two years of medical school, she became highly involved in a student organization that advocated for and provided outreach to the unsheltered homeless population in the Des Moines area. She learned more about the health inequities people experiencing homelessness face, as well as the racial disparity in who experiences homelessness.

Molly was drawn to the Health Equity minor because of the focus on structural causes of health inequities in communities of color and asset-based approaches to community development. She has also been able to continue cultural self-study and examining her own privileges, in order to more effectively advocate for just policies that would improve health equity. In the future, Molly hopes to combine her medical and public health training to provide direct care and advocate for health equity for medically underserved communities.

Bridget Callaghan

Bridget is a Master of Public Policy student at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, graduating May 2020. Prior to coming to the University of Minnesota, Bridget spent four years working in Washington D.C. at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (formerly the Institute of Medicine) and at the Wyss Foundation, a philanthropic organization focused on land conservation, social justice, and democracy. Bridget graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with bachelors degrees in Community and Nonprofit Leadership and U.S. History.

Bridget was drawn to the Health Equity Minor to better understand the ways in which policies and systems perpetuate inequality in our society. She recognizes that many of the people experiencing the greatest health inequities today have been historically left out of the policy and decision making processes. Specifically, Bridget is interested in how civic engagement can be used as a tool to build capacity, reduce disparities, and advance health.

In her decision to pursue a graduate education, Bridget had a difficult time determining whether public policy or public health was the right fit. The Health Equity Minor has provided the perfect opportunity for Bridget to complement her policy studies, while opening doors to connect with students and faculty in the School of Public Health. In the future, Bridget looks forward to pursuing a career in addressing the social determinants of health through policy-based solutions.

Hannah D’Cunha

Hannah D’Cunha will be graduating in May 2020 with a Master of Public Health in the Community Health Promotion program, along with a minor in Health Equity. She completed her Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin Madison, prior to her graduate career at the University of Minnesota Twin-Cities. She currently works at the Minnesota Department of Health in the Zoonotic Disease Unit. She also works at the Hennepin Healthcare Research Institute in the Department of Medicine-Nephrology, where she has been assisting with the development of a social support intervention for kidney transplant candidates and their social support networks. She is currently a public policy intern at the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), where she advocates for policies to improve mental health care in the state of Minnesota.

Hannah became interested in Health Equity during her undergraduate career when working for the Community Resource Program as a Patient Navigator at the Northeast Family Medical Center in Madison, Wisconsin. During her time in the clinic she worked with populations who have increased barriers to health, and saw the direct impact of social inequity and its negative effects on health. After graduation, Hannah plans on attending Medical School with the goal of implementing health equity and cultural humility in a clinical setting.

In her free time, Hannah enjoys painting; running; reading; and spending time with her dog, Nacho.

Alexandra Gowdy-Jaehnig

Alexandra Gowdy-Jaehnig will graduate in May 2020 with a Master of Public Health in Maternal and Child Health and a minor in Health Equity. She holds a B.A. in Theatre Arts from
Hamline University. Following 10 years working as a stage manager, her interest in social justice and growing concern of the serious health disparities in Minnesota prompted her career switch and focus on health equity. Alexandra’s main academic and research interests include exposures, experiences and environments that impact child and adolescent health. As part of her Graduate Research Assistant position, she has worked on the TIDES-II/ECHO and TIDES Diversity Supplement studies which examine environmental exposures on children’s health and development. She also interned with MDH’s Child and Teen Checkups where she researched the health needs of justice involved youth and their referrals and usage of preventive care.

In her future work with children and adolescents, Alexandra hopes to address conditions and barriers early in life that result in health disparities. This demands that her upcoming efforts to achieve health equity are rooted in social justice, are inclusive of the impacted community, and are collaborative with other sectors (i.e. education, housing, employment, etc.).

Outside of school, Alexandra enjoys camping with her husband, running and playing cooperative board games like Pandemic Legacy and Fuse with friends.

Yasamin Graff

Yasamin Graff will be graduating in May 2020 with a Master of Public Health in Community Health Promotion with a minor in Health Equity. Prior to graduate school, she received her
Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, Sociology, and Human Services from the University of Minnesota-Morris. Yasamin is interested in mental health, historical trauma, and reproductive justice. While working towards her master’s degree, Yasamin has worked with Indigenous Peoples Task Force, Clean Water Action, and JustUs Health through the Community Health Initiative program.

Yasamin was drawn to the Health Equity minor through its curriculum that focuses on asset-based approaches in working with communities, how structural racism and colonialism are at the root of health inequities, and how systems continue to perpetuate health inequities. She appreciated that the curriculum acknowledged the roots of health inequities and trauma associated with that history, but that there is hope in the great potential in public health practices and policies that foster equitable health outcomes. Yasamin hopes to use her knowledge and skills gained from the Health Equity minor when working with communities to develop and implement culturally appropriate interventions and to advocate for policies that foster health equity.

In her free time, Yasamin enjoys baking, reading, and spending time with friends and family.

Teale Graylord

Ali Grimes

Ali Grimes is pursuing her Masters of Public Policy along with graduate minors in Urban and Regional Planning and Health Equity. Ali obtained her B.S. in Community and Nonprofit Leadership at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she was first exposed to community based participatory research methods and equity frameworks.

Prior to graduate school, Ali spent several years in the nonprofit sector, working to connect uninsured individuals and families with Medicaid, Medicare, and other social supports. In helping people navigate complex health policy, Ali observed many systemic barriers and the frustration that comes along with that. Listening to the voices of frustrated citizens piqued Ali’s interest in getting involved at a higher level. Ali’s goal in entering graduate school was to learn how to craft, advocate for, and evaluate health policy that does not stigmatize, burden, or needlessly interfere with the lives of those who use it.

The Health Equity minor has allowed Ali to work towards this goal by building a deeper understanding of health disparities. The coursework has encouraged Ali to think creatively and broadly about factors that contribute to inequality. She has improved her ability to recognize the sociological, historical, and political factors that lead to inequity, and will apply these understandings to all future endeavors. After graduating, Ali hopes to return to the world of health care policy and community engagement.

Outside of school, Ali enjoys spending time with loved ones, long bike rides, and live music of any kind. She is passionate about state and federal politics and spends a lot of time discussing this when she should be studying.

Joseline Haizel-Cobbina

Joseline Haizel – Cobbina, MBChB is a second year Public Health and Administration MPH student and minoring in Health Equity. She received her medical degree from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana, West Africa. She currently works as an International Health Fellow at Minnesota Department of Health’s International Health Unit. She is primarily working on the Malaria Prevention Project to create sustainable and equitable solutions to reduce the incidence of malaria among visiting friends and relative (VFR) travelers in immigrant communities in Minnesota. She also works as a teaching assistant for University of Minnesota School of Public Health. Her interests include child health, health equity, and cancer health disparities. Being a member of the Health Equity Work Group’s Community Engagement Subcommittee, she helps plan the annual Health Disparities Round Table event.

She was born and raised in the southern part of Ghana where to a large extent, healthcare, education, as well as basic amenities needed for survival was easily accessible which she thought was the same in all parts of the country. However, during her medical training and subsequently three-year clinical practice including working in rural parts of her home country, she came into contact with patients from different parts of the country and socioeconomic backgrounds. She then started observing the differences in health outcomes based on where people live in the country and their socioeconomic backgrounds. Being passionate about social justice, she decided to pursue an MPH degree to help address these health challenges. Learning about similar health disparities in the United States during her first semester of her MPH training further solidified her interest in social justice and Health equity.

Completing Health Equity Minor coursework has been an exciting journey even though some of the health issues discussed have been very troubling. She has gained a better understanding of health disparities and why they exist. The coursework has also guided her into thinking about how to address these disparities including engaging communities affected in finding solutions. After graduation, Joseline looks forward to applying the tools and knowledge in promoting health equity especially in the area of child health.

Nicole Havel

Nicole Havel is a second-year student in the Environmental Health MPH program with a concentration in Global Health. Nicole’s interest in the Health Equity Minor started when she
began to discover how looking through different lenses can provide a better understanding of holistic health approaches for individual and population health. She is interested in global health, refugee and immigrant health, historical trauma, health disparities in healthcare, social medicine, and community participatory research.

During her time as a graduate student, she was inspired by her coursework. Her study abroad experience in Mysore, India, focused on Global Health, Globalization, and Leadership. During her stay in India, Nicole learned how demographics and social determinants of health impact inequities. She learned how to incorporate different perspectives and ways of living into her educational framework and prospective career. Nicole’s interest in health equity was also enhanced by the Global Health in a Local Context course offered by the University of Minnesota. This opportunity provided Nicole with real world examples of how global health disparities occur in our own backyard. It also pushed her to critically think about systems and how they influence inequities within the Twin Cities.

Nicole is excited to see what the future has in store and make contributions to the Public Health field as a professional. She hopes to focus her work in the areas of health equity, community engagement, and global health.

Maggie Heurung

Maggie is a Master of Public Policy (MPP) student with a concentration in health equity and community engagement. Prior to her graduate studies, she obtained a BA in psychology and a certificate in global health from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. She currently works at a regional park system focusing on better engaging and serving underrepresented communities within it.

Her interest in health equity started with her work in the field of youth and community development. After working closely with youth of color in schools, parks, and community organizations, she witnessed how the social determinants of health can impact the wellbeing of communities. That is, she observed how low-income communities of color
continue to be marginalized, disinvested, and displaced, leading to a variety of health inequities. Through this experience, she became passionate about achieving justice and equity through community voice and self-determination.

The health equity minor (HEM) curriculum allowed Maggie to further explore the structural causes of health inequities. HEM provided a framework for analyzing the historical context of inequities while engaging marginalized communities throughout the process to provide their own stories and expertise. She is taking away the skills and knowledge of how to better hold herself accountable in this work and to address health inequities through multi-level community collaboration. In the future, she hopes to work with communities on issues of environmental and economic justice.

Jessica Maloy

Jessica Maloy is a Master of Healthcare Administration student expected to graduate in May of 2020. She chose to augment her MHA by completing the Health Equity minor because she feels passionate about building health systems that work for everyone. She became interested in health equity after working with the cardiovascular outreach team at the University of Utah Health System. It was there that she saw first-hand how accessibility to healthcare influences health outcomes, and saw novel solutions used to overcome those issues. The idea of creating novel solutions to address equity was exciting, and a significant reason she chose to pursue her MHA at the University of Minnesota. She is planning on using her understanding of health systems, and community needs, to advocate for novel solutions to some of most pressing equity challenges health systems are facing.

In her free time, she likes to spend time with her rescue dog Cooper, try out new restaurants, and collect tropical houseplants. She also enjoys exploring new cities, and experiencing new things.

Ramya Palaniappan

Ramya Palaniappan will be graduating in May 2020 with her Master’s in Public Health in Maternal and Child Health and a minor in Health Equity. She currently works at Minnesota
Department of Health’s Center for Health Equity and is a research assistant for Dr. Ruby Nyugen. Additionally, she is a policy intern at Move Minnesota.

She was introduced to public health in college through a public health nonprofit that focused on global health equity. This was the first time Ramya heard about social determinants of health and realized that where you live, work, play, and grow determines your health. Additionally, in college Ramya interned at a reproductive health clinic and began to look at health through a social justice lens. After college, Ramya worked at a day shelter serving women, children, and trans folks who were experiencing loss of home. Then she went on to work again at the reproductive health clinic as a patient services assistant. Through these experiences, Ramya found a passion for working on health inequities and with communities most impacted by these inequities, especially women.

When she came to the University of Minnesota, she thought all of public health was about health equity. Even though health equity should be a focus of every department of public health, this is not always the case, which is what drew Ramya to the health equity minor. The Health Equity minor has allowed her to better understand the structural underpinnings that inhibit people from reaching their fullest health. It has also connected her with peers who have similar passions regarding health equity and has allowed her to begin creating a tool kit to work towards health equity. In the future, Ramya hopes to work in a governmental, nonprofit, or foundation setting where she can work towards health equity by community organizing, project management, qualitative data analysis as well as engaging in advocacy work.

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