Assignments

For this SDA, I reached out to a bunch of professors at UAlbany's School of Public Health. If I could go back and change how I handled this assignment, I would try to spend more time on LinkedIn and search for other professionals in the Public Health fields. Since I couldn't find many others outside of academia, my information is pretty one-sided. Regardless, my interviews went successfully and I was able to learn a lot about them, their work at UAlbany, and their field work, for not only my research project this year, but also for myself as a Public Health major. 

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I first interviewed Ms. Cate Teuten Bohn, Clinical Practice Associate Professor who teaches Intro to Public Health. Ms. Bohn is from the area as she lived in Voorheesville and swam in the Guilderville team. When she went to Fordham to complete her undergrad, she got interested in public health as she often did community service and took part in HIV work and advocacy in the Bronx. From Fordham, she went onto Berkeley School of Public Health where she worked at a reproductive and sexual health clinic. When she came back to the east coast, she became Albany County's first emergency coordinator where she worked on reviewing and following through with federal policies (which were mostly military based due to the 9/11 attacks.) Ms. Bohn has field experience mostly with children and families. 

Currently, she is the NY KIDS COUNT Director at the NYS Council on Children and Families working on the Census 2020 Gov's working group as there is a persistent undercount of children under 4 years old. Ms. Bohn focuses on emergency childcare programs for first responders & medical care workers alongside other assignments on a grant for early childhood. I work on race equity projects in maternal/child health and for children of incarcerated parents and other formerly incarcerated folks. 

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My second professor, Dr. Christine Bozlak, is an associate professor of Health Policy, Management, and Behavior.  At the graduate level, she teaches courses in childhood obesity prevention, adolescent health, a program development in health promotion, and an introduction to maternal and child health. Dr. Bozlak studied Exercise Science and Wellness at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. After, she worked in public health in Boston and then attended the University of Massachusetts-Amherst to obtain my Master of Public Health degree in Health Policy and Management. She worked as a fellow in the Illinois Governor’s Office where she worked on state public health initiatives, and then completed her PhD in Community Health Sciences with a focus in Maternal and Child Health. In Chicago, Dr. Bozlak worked at a childhood obesity prevention coalition that was based at a children’s hospital working on policy initiatives to help children have more access to healthy foods and physical activity opportunities. 

With both my professors, we talked about how quality of life is affected by different groups like adolescents, adults, and pregnant women. Social determinants of health are critically important when it comes to maternal and child. Some factors that influence health and quality of life include poverty, racism, lack of quality education. For example, Dr. Bozlak talked a lot about how children at risk of obesity may be a result there being a lack of accessibility of safe playgrounds which restricts them in engaging in healthy physical activity and social interactions.

Same thing for healthy food access – if children are living in communities that are “low food access areas” (sometimes called “food deserts”) then they’re at higher risk of poor health since grocery stores and other food vendors do not see their community as profitable enough for them to locate there. This stuff might sound simple and obvious but often times the chain reaction and impact of small actions aren’t taken seriously. Ms. Bohn worked with pregnant women who had histories of drug abuse and the causes of their actions was PTSD with childhood trauma and sexual abuse. She worked at getting them treatment programs and access to maternal health clinics.