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Bachelor's student Sahana Raja spent her summer at a global public health internship in Tamil Nadu, India, the region where her parents were born. She describes learning about healthcare and poverty, maternal health, and a calling to serve.
Swati Sriram is graduating with a Master of Public Health in Environmental Health Sciences from the University of Michigan School of Public Health. She is a recipient of the National Science Foundation International Global Scholarship. This is her speech, addressing the audience at the annual Michigan Public Health Scholarship and Awards Dinner.
Public health is a field of stories. So we, as public health professionals, have a responsibility to be good storytellers. We teach a class that covers skills we need to be successful health communicators. We chose some of our favorite public health stories from this semester to share with you.
“In my year and a half working at a nursing home, I bonded with many residents while also watching many of them pass. The relationships I formed were very personally impactful, but I realized that we could be doing more to address the systemic issues affecting nursing homes.”
“I stepped into the all-familiar Michigan Medicine hospital. This time, however, my perspective was more than a little bit different. I had wandered these halls just weeks prior—not as a patient, but as a medical student. Now, I entered as an expectant mother.”
“Growing up, I was always the smallest child in the class. Not only was I short, but I was also thin, sometimes surprisingly so. Doctors were always scaring my parents by telling them that I was falling behind the “normal” growth chart and encouraging them to make me eat more.”