Interested in a public health career in research, particularly in quantitative data analysis? Learn from 3 faculty in the Department of Public Health who have effectively applied their skills to learning about and addressing public health challenges!
Faculty Presenters: Fumika Matsubara, Rochelle-Jan Dionisio Reyes, Nancy Carmona
Moderator: Juliana van Olphen
Students and faculty from campuses across CSU met for the CSU Health Policy Conference, held April 10-12 in Sacramento. Students majoring in public health or related health sciences were joined by faculty to get a unique opportunity to see firsthand how public health policy is made and shaped. The conference included meetings with state legislators, administration officials, policy advocates and staff from the state Department of Public Health. Below are some of the students’ impressions:
Despite living in Sacramento for several years, I had almost no exposure to state policy. Several speakers throughout the conference told us that as Californians, we should take ownership of our state government — but government is also an insular world. I’m grateful to the community organizers that told us to stay determined and take up space. In the end, I felt empowered by our visits to legislative offices. I was inspired by the people we met who showed up every day to fight for more just policies in incremental ways.
I was pleasantly surprised to hear from both policymakers and state public health leaders that mental health was a growing priority in health policy. I strongly believe that mental health must be addressed through prevention in addition to individual services, but I have not seen this reflected in the structure of public health departments. I’m hopeful that a change is coming — led by some of the passionate students who attended this conference.
The Public Health Conference in Sacramento gave me a realistic perspective into the policy making world of California’s government. Having the opportunity to speak to elected officials, policy advocates and politicians changed my opinion on how private problems become a statewide issue to address. Prior to the conference, my knowledge on policy making was limited to what I learned in class and what we I read about in media. I went into the conference expecting to gain insight on how policies are made. The conference motivated me to continue advocating for issues I feel are important to myself and the community but also provided me with a reality check on bureaucracy.
I am very grateful that I was afforded the opportunity to attend the 10th Annual Health Policy Conference hosted by the California State University system. I thought of it as a culminating experience before my graduation to learn about the legislative process within public health policy in state legislature.
The highlight of the trip was getting to understand better how the state budget is approved in California, which is an expression of the society and the citizens it represents. I would recommend this conference to future public health students including students majoring in government, political science or simply those who are curious about how the day to day in workings of state government happen. It was also a great networking opportunity, and thanks to SF State for organizing it. Go Gators!
My academic career as a public health student here at San Francisco State University has emphasized heavily on the importance of community-based organization and the power of activism. I had very limited knowledge about the politics and inner-workings of our state’s legislative system. When I was offered to go to the CSU Health Policy Conference, I was really ecstatic to be a part of this trip. Having said that, I really did not know what to expect. Over the course of two days, I have been blown away and learned so much of what goes on in Sacramento. The people that were brought to speak to the CSU students had intimate knowledge of the conversations that are being had with our state leaders or were elected politicians themselves. I felt especially privileged to listen to was the Mayor of Sacramento, Darrell Steinberg. Listening to Mayor Steinberg recall his career and talk about specific legislations he pushed for really put into perspective on how much passion is needed within this field. Personally, I was intimidated and nervous due to how official the whole experience was with the assembly members and their staff. Still, that whole experience might have been some of the coolest opportunities I have had as a student.
Pictured (left to right): left to right: Greta Erlingis, Shelby Smith, Taelor McDonald, Gator, Serena Padda and Miya Valdehuesa
Becoming involved in a student organization helps enrich a student’s experience at San Francisco State University. One such example is the Health Education Student Association (HESA), which offers a way for faculty, alumni and students to connect and create a community. HESA is affiliated with SF State’s Department of Public Health and serves all the students on campus to promote student health, wellness, and overall well-being.
Taelor McDonald is the president of HESA, with Greta Erlingis serving as vice president. McDonald and Erlingis are both Public Health majors and Women’s Health minors. McDonald sees the mission of HESA as “bringing a little light back to students' lives when they are feeling overwhelmed.”
In the wake of remote learning necessitated by the COVID pandemic, McDonald believes making meaningful relationships inside and outside of a student’s cohort has become more difficult. Erlingis feels that connecting with other students during the events HESA organizes gives a sense of community, that everyone is in the college experience together, and helps prevent burnout.
Making personal connections helps academics by creating healthy social behaviors that were lost during COVID. HESA was an important factor for Erlingis to find a place within the cohort, “It is comforting to know that people want to study this and people are passionate about helping others.”
McDonald built a community with her peers by being involved in HESA. Creating study groups, having familiar faces in class and having people asking questions about HESA — not necessarily people involved in the organization — helped McDonald hone her love for leadership. She is now sure that she wants a career in leadership. SF State is a commuter school where students have to try a little harder to find their community. Having HESA creates a community for students, which means a lot to McDonald, “A big part of what public health is, is helping communities and bringing people together in order to improve a common issue.”
Spreading positivity during the transition to campus is something Erlingis feels has been vital to campus relations. HESA uses affirmation boards and focuses on mental health to better the lives of students on campus. Events are always meant to be uplifting for the campus community.
McDonald feels that participating in activities as a group, especially affirmation boards, has improved her mental health. Students in HESA believe that taking care of your mental health is paramount to having a successful college experience. These activities are ways that HESA takes care of the mental health of students in the Department of Public Health.
During events, connecting with students helps prevent those in their cohort from dropping out. The way they see it, everyone uplifts each other and knows that when someone is going through a hard time there is someone they can talk to. The mentality of “We are all in this together” reassures the cohort and reminds them they are not alone.
The senior members of HESA are all graduating at the end of this semester. HESA does not require any prerequisites for application. Elections happen at the end of every semester, anyone interested can send HESA a direct message on Instagram for more information, or email Taelor McDonald at tmcdonald@mail.sfsu.edu or Greta Erlingis at gerlingis@mail.sfsu.edu.
Makayla Wai-Lan Scott (center) with classmates Kenya Salgado (left) and Citlalli Aguilar Velazquez (right) in front of Terra Nova High School, where they gave a presentation to high school students
San Francisco State University offers more than 100 undergraduate majors — and the opportunity to change majors if students change their career goals.
Makayla Wai-Lan Scott is a senior who switched her course of study from Pre-Nursing to Public Health. She had some anxiety about getting into the Nursing major when she was completing her prerequisites. To quell her anxiety, she looked at other majors in case she did not get into Nursing, and she found herself drawn to Public Health. Scott said of her decision to switch majors, “A Public Health alumna shared with me what she studied, and I thought this feels more aligned with me and what I wanted to do working as a nurse.”
The social justice aspect of public health appealed to Scott. As a nurse, she wanted to help with health equity for all patients. In public health, students get to look at problems through an intersectional lens in an effort to reach health equity. Adding more diversity in the public health field will result in better patient care for coming years. In this major, students learn to see problems as a whole — they look at all aspects of care in order to see how they intersect.
“It’s public health and we are going through a public health crisis,” Scott said. Starting the public health program during the pandemic was a unique experience. Public health was a driving factor of the pandemic and Scott felt that throughout her time at SF State. Scott feels the professors understand the work-life-health balance that has become so important these past few years. The projects that professors chose felt personal for her because of the pandemic and she found it easy to relate to the courses when the subject matter impacts everyday life.
Scott has had a positive experience since switching from Pre-Nursing to Public Health. She appreciates how professors make it clear that they care about the subjects they are teaching and make courses interactive. All of the professors in the Public Health major coordinate with each other to make each semester easier for their students; large assignments for different courses very rarely overlap. Professors, when possible, will communicate with each other to ensure major projects do not overlap and overwhelm students. The courses use a scaffolding structure for large assignments, where assignments are broken down for students to work on throughout the semester.
The internship SF State helped Scott get has helped prepare her for graduation. She has been working as an Alcohol and Drug intern at the Daly City Youth Health Center. Medical, mental, and support services are provided for teens and young adults at the Daly City Youth Health Center. Scott was a part of creating a curriculum for middle and high school students about vaping. This internship has been personal for her, “I saw a lot of my friends turn to vaping to cope despite knowing about the effects”. Scott feels like she is ready to enter the career field thanks to the support that her advisor and professors have given her.
Scott said, “I am grateful I went to SF State. I feel like I am actually cared about at SF State. That came from making the connections that I did in SOAR and with my advisors and people in the Public Health cohort.”
Makayla Wai-Lan Scott
Public Health Lecturer Jessica Wolin is part of a team researching the effectiveness of programs addressing homelessness among California college students. In a Kresge Foundation video posted June 29, she discusses College-Focused Rapid Rehousing, a model that incorporates community-based support services tailored to students.
“What’s unique about this model on our college campuses — both at the community college level and at the Cal State level — is we’re trying to go beyond the traditional approaches that we’re using to address student homelessness,” Wolin said. “The College-Focused Rapid Rehousing model provides students with a direct entry into permanent housing. ”
Lecturer of Public Health Deborah Craig received the Berkeley Film Foundation’s 2022 Saul Zaentz award, named after the Academy Award-winning producer of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” “Amadeus” and other works.
The Berkeley Film Foundation supports filmmakers from Berkeley and several other East Bay cities and has funded recent documentaries, including Sundance winner and Oscar nominee “Crip Camp,” about the disability rights movement, and “Belly of the Beast,” about forced sterilizations in the California prison system. Craig has been working for several years on a feature documentary about San Francisco State University professor and lesbian activist Sally Miller Gearhart. The Gearhart project is now in post-production, and this new grant gives the team a great injection of moral support and funding to hopefully finish a rough cut by the end of 2022.
With support from CHSS, Associate Professor of Public Health David Rebanal accompanied a delegation of SF State undergraduate and graduate Public Health students to the California State University (CSU) Health Policy Conference.
The annual conference had to be canceled the past two years due to COVID-19. The Northern California CSU programs met in-person at Cal State East Bay Campus on April 19, 2022, while Southern California CSU programs met at CSU Los Angeles. In addition to the SF State delegation, participants came from the CSU campuses of East Bay, Chico, Sacramento, Fresno, Stanislaus and Monterey Bay. The morning agenda consisted of a both sites hearing speakers remotely and in-person, which included remarks from California Health & Human Services Agency Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly and other public health and legislative officials. This included discussion about a range of public health responses, from COVID-19 to youth mental health and racial health inequities. More than 200 CSU students and faculty attended the conference at each location, interacting with public health leaders, faculty, and students from around the region.
One SF State Public Health student, Victoria Lacuesta, reflected, “A highlight of the day was hearing from four public health professionals from different counties (Contra Costa, Alameda, San Mateo, and Santa Cruz). Knowing how they collaborate to solve issues in each county puts in a different level of working together to solve issues that we face today. It also tells you that making connections and building trust is key to success.”
Another SF State student, Georgean Morado, said, “It was nice to hear their ideologies around community and how they work with the community. I also enjoyed hearing about how behavioral health is important and key for the future of public health.”
Student attendees were Mikaela Beltran, Trinity Dubrow, Lia Duncan, Susana Carolina Gonzalez, Kohinoor Joshi, Victoria Lacuesta, Mireya Lopez, Georjean Morado, Nikkia Patterson, Nicolette Stanbridge and Willy Popoca Soto.
Professor Emma Sanchez-Vaznaugh
A new study reports that obesity disparities are larger between segregated schools than within racially integrated schools. The authors, including Professor of Public Health Emma Sanchez-Vaznaugh, published the findings in the journal Obesity. They evaluated childhood obesity disparities in publicly available data from a physical fitness test administered to fifth, seventh and ninth grade students at more than 8,900 California public schools. Disparities in obesity between Latino, Black and Filipino children compared with White children were larger between segregated schools than disparities within integrated schools.
Obesity prevention interventions targeting integrated schools with children of color or schools located in socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods may be beneficial in curbing the child obesity epidemic, the researchers conclude.
Source: CampusMemo
As part of a longstanding tradition, each of the University’s six academic colleges selects an undergraduate and a graduate student to represent their classmates and wear their college’s academic hood during the ceremony. Read below about the students selected for the honor of wearing the College of Health & Social Sciences academic hood. More details about the ceremony are available on the Commencement website.
Late in her senior year of high school in Valencia, California, Davina A. Wizzard (pictured above, left) had a nerve-wracking experience: She learned that her brother had been pulled over by police for a “routine stop.” The fear of what those stops could result in set her back to the summer of 2016. The horrifying stories she’d read online — about Black motorists and pedestrians killed by police during “routine stops” — had stayed with her.
For Wizzard, the experience was an awakening that shaped her college career at SF State. She sought out a job with the University’s Division of Equity and Community Inclusion, ultimately creating and coordinating programs on inclusion, diversity and the upliftment of marginalized communities. Those activities didn’t detract from Wizzard’s academics, however, and she graduated in three years with majors in Criminal Justice Studies and Creative Writing and a minor in Africana Studies, Summa Cum Laude.
Wizzard has begun applying to law schools so that she can continue her work for justice and inclusion in the nation’s courts.
Born and raised in Oakland, Azisa “Zi” Todd (pictured above, right) says she has the Oakland public education system to thank for grounding her in the principles of academic and community organizing. Upon graduating from high school, Azisa went to University of California, Los Angeles, where she served as a member (later director) of BlaQue, UCLA’s Black LGBTQ+ organization. Azisa developed and facilitated mandated anti-racism/Blackness workshops at UCLA, organized cross-campus conferences and spoke across the state. After graduating with a B.A. in Gender Studies, she decided to jump back into academia — and back to the Bay Area — to pursue a Master of Public Health at SF State.
As a graduate student, Azisa was instrumental in supporting the redesign of a cross-college minor in Feminist Health Studies. She also serves as an education and training coordinator within San Mateo County, leading LGBTQ+ awareness trainings for health systems and local organizations.
Azisa’s public health interests are in LGBTQ+ health and wellness, the intersectionality of Black and LGBTQ+ experiences, and community health education and training. She hopes to earn a Doctor of Public Health and share what she’s learned with college-level students.
In times of duress, many individuals turn to nature for solace. It is a classic form of self-care that has become increasingly important during the pandemic. However, this seemingly simple intervention is not always accessible to Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) communities — communities that are already challenged by well-documented health inequities.
Now a team of San Francisco State University scientists will be studying the impact of nature on the health of those communities thanks to $2.7 million in grant support from a new National Institutes of Health (NIH) initiative.
“We’re really interested in the psychosocial aspects of chronic disease and stress and people’s habits, and all of this relative to this intervention of walking in nature,” explained San Francisco State Professor of Psychology Charlotte Tate.
Although nature is an ancestral healing place for many communities, these spaces can be unwelcoming, unsafe or triggering for people of color. By collaborating with community members, Tate and her colleagues hope to help reclaim natural spaces and mitigate growing health disparities. This study builds upon an earlier project that was co-led by SF State Professor of Biology Leticia Márquez-Magaña that reported the health benefits of walking for Latinx communities.
Using a transdisciplinary approach, researchers will collaborate with transitional-age Black, Latinx, Pilipinx and Pacific Islander youth to document their experiences and biologic metrics. The data will then be assessed at psychological, biological and epidemiological levels, looking at a range of measures from how the intervention affects mental health to changes in molecular biomarkers.
“I think part of our intentional approach is not just to study people as experimental subjects, but really to [use an approach that is] very consistent with an anti-racist and critical race theory approach to raise their critical consciousness while participating in the research,” said SF State Assistant Professor of Public Health David Rebanal. He and Tate also underscore that the project is led by diverse BIPOC researchers who are focusing on their own communities.
The five-year project (grant #OD033243-01) is one of 11 supported by the NIH’s Common Fund’s Transformative Research to Address Health Disparities and Advance Health Equity initiative, a new program supporting highly innovative, translational research projects, which if successful will prevent, reduce or eliminate health disparities and advance health equity.
It’s not lost on the researchers how innovative — and messy — this research will be. More often than not, public health, biology and psychology research are kept on their own tracks, so there is no template for this sort of collaborative interdisciplinary project, Tate says. Rebanal agrees, adding that working directly with individuals in the community means their experiments will also be less controlled than a traditional biomedical study.
Although it is going to be a learning experience, the researchers hope their study will lay the foundation for future projects and an acceptance of transdisciplinary work as critical to the future of biomedical research. For BIPOC populations to have effective health interventions, Rebanal says, they need solutions that come from within their own communities.
“You know, [this proposal] was risky in some ways because it’s one thing to strive for equitable health opportunities, but it’s another thing to be anti-racist,” said Rebanal. “I think that the next level for this kind of work is to figure out what can we do that’s anti-racist, not just inclusionary.”