Description
The 2022 Student Think Tank of the American Journal of Public Health is hosting a virtual symposium on the theme of Peace as a Fundamental Determinant of Health. The symposium will engage with key lessons learned from the 2022 call-for-papers wherein students from all corners of the world were invited to share their personal narratives, research, and lived experiences through storytelling on how conflict, instability, and displacement (international, domestic, and regional) have shaped their understanding of public health and the sustainability of policy, research, and programmatic responses.
Contributors
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Luissa Vahedi
Luissa Vahedi is a Social Epidemiologist and current Doctoral candidate in Public Health Sciences. Her research, scholarship, and policy work applies the methods and frameworks of social epidemiology to address complex global health issues including, gender based violence, mental health, and infectious disease in fragile settings.
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Tyana Ellis
Tyana Ellis is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Studies at the University of Richmond. She works to bridge Health Communication and Public Health in her research on health disparities amongst vulnerable populations.
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Alexander Blum, MPH
Alexander Blum, MPH is a fourth-year medical student at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He completed his undergraduate studies at Brown University in 2016 and earned a Master’s of Public Health from the Bloomberg School of Public Health in May 2022. Before and during medical school, he has spent time pursuing clinical and research endeavors in partnership with communities in India, Bangladesh, and Tanzania. Alex aspires to pursue a career in academic medicine that combines his interests in service, neglected disease, and the development of procedural care capacity in underserved settings.
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Alli Gillespie
Alli recently earned their Master of Social Work and Master of Public Health from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, completing an individualized concentration in Gender, Migration, and Humanitarian Response. During her time as a graduate student, Alli co-authored numerous published journal articles, provided psychosocial support services to humanitarian field workers, and assisted in case management for refugee arrivals at a local resettlement agency. Alli’s research builds upon their prior studies in Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University and their past work in Field Human Resources at Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF).
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Asli McCullers
Asli McCullers is a Masters in Public Health student at University of Delaware on the Epidemiology track, where she is also a Graduate Research Assistant and Social Justice Peer Educator. Asli is excited to shape the future of health equity by disrupting the pathway to health injustice through the lens of marginalized young adults. As a child of disabled military veterans, Asli is also interested in using her voice to amplify the stories of minoritized military personnel through research, advocacy, and policy. Additionally, Asli is a Health Equity Research Associate at MedStar Health Research Institute and Program Intern at Black Women’s Health Imperative.
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Brett Zimmerman
Brett Zimmerman has been a firefighter/EMT with Portland Fire and Rescue since 2010 and is currently in the Master of Public Health program at Simmons University with a focus on health equity and social justice. Current professional interests are alternative 911-response models and integrating community health into emergency response systems.
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Susan Awor
Susan Awor is an emerging public health researcher from Sub-Saharan Africa and Global Health Fellow at the University of California Berkeley, passionate about supporting vulnerable communities to achieve better health outcomes. She is particularly interested in social determinants of health which are the underlying, contributing factors of health disparities that place people and communities at risk. Her current role involves the application of epidemiological methods to identify opportunities for prevention of adverse outcomes following female genital fistula repair in Uganda.