Alumni

Health care worker taking a patient's blood pressure in a clinic

Should I take the COVID vaccine as a minority?

Anita Pandit, MS ’16

How are managing mental health and receiving a COVID vaccine similar? They both require minorities to have some level of trust in health sciences and the people administering their health care. Alum Anita Pandit walks us through the good and the bad reasons not getting a vaccine—and why she will be getting one.

A doctor consults with mother and children about HIV/AIDS at Pepo La Tumaini Jangwani, HIV/AIDS Community Rehabilitation Program, Orphanage and Clinic. Nairobi, Kenya, Africa

The Future of Universal Health Coverage in Africa

Utibe Effiong, MPH ’14, Fejiro Nwoko, and Uju Okeke

While COVID stretches already stretched health care systems across Africa, the future of Africa’s health care insurance systems is full of opportunity, promising improved coverage and creative care delivery across all sectors of society.

Katherine Hoffman at her desk in the biostatistics and epidemiology division at Weill Cornell Medicine.

On the sidelines: New York's COVID-19 outbreak from the eyes of a Biostatistician

Katherine Hoffman, MS ’18

It's March. An early-career biostatistician at a large medical facility, alum Katherine Hoffman is living through New York City’s explosive COVID-19 outbreak. As the statistician for a pulmonary and critical care team, she is quickly pulled into COVID-19 work. Her hospital is running out of ventilators. She is told to drop all other research projects for COVID-19 work. This is her story.

A black mother stands on a beach while holding her infant

Infant Mortality among Black Babies

Utibe Effiong, MPH ’14, Ekemini Hogan, and Obasi Okorie

It’s a painful statistical fact that Black babies die at higher rates than White babies—a fact all the more painful and tragic for those living with the realities of infant mortality. The difference in death rates is shared by developing and developed nations alike. But the trend can and must change.

René Pitter, MPH '09, finishes the Race against Hate

Movements toward Health and Each Other

Renée Pitter, MPH ’09

An effort to spread health positivity among Black Michigan alums became a huge success. In the face of so many stories about health inequities and trauma in Black communities, a growing group of Black alums is moving their way to connection, awareness, health, and healing.

Mosquito sitting on a leaf

Do Africans Want Genetically Modified Mosquitoes?

Utibe Effiong, MPH ’14

Genetically modifying mosquitoes to control infectious disease is not a new idea. But all consequences—the good and the bad—of such an intervention must be adequately vetted. And importantly, argues physician and alum Utibe Effiong, local communities should have a say in the process.