Read about SPH people, research and impact.
SPH Blog
Each year, the School honors two outstanding graduate students – one doctoral and one master's – for their academic excellence and commitment to public health. This year's winners of the Gilbert S. Omenn Award for Academic Excellence are Miriam Calkins, who received a PhD in environmental and occupational hygiene, and Katrin Fabian, an MPH graduate in global health.
Eric Larson is driven to find ways to prevent the onset of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementia, and to delay cognitive decline in old age.
Heather Fowler grew up with dogs, reptiles, hedgehogs and a guinea pig named Mr. Guinea. She worked with exotic birds in Hawaii during college and trained to treat small pets in vet school. After meeting an officer from the Epidemic Intelligence Service of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Fowler, then a veterinary student, started to think seriously about how public health and animal health converge.
After more than 30 years working on legal issues related to the delivery of health care services, Jeff Sconyers is now using his vast experience and knowledge to make policy and ethics come to life for students at the University of Washington School of Public Health.
Unable to find work in the male-dominated field of chemical engineering in her home country of Thailand, Nuttada Panpradist changed course and, in the process, discovered a passion for global health and innovation.
Abandoned by her mother at age four and emotionally starved until 18, Anne McTiernan overcame adversity and obesity to earn a PhD in epidemiology and an MD in internal medicine. Today, she is a pioneer in women’s health research designing studies that aim to reduce the 25 percent of cancers caused by excess weight and sedentary lifestyles.
Anne-Marie Gloster grew up eating fish sticks that came frozen in a box, and it wasn’t until she was 20 that she was exposed to good food. Now, Gloster is designing food and nutrition classes and teaching the first cooking course at the UW since home economics was removed from the curriculum 30 years ago. Hear more about her love of food and cooking.
How did you find your place in public health?
My aunt, Dr. Ruth Nduati, got her MPH in epidemiology from the UW School of Public Health and is now an affiliate associate professor in the Department of Epidemiology. She is my role model—a physician and trained epidemiologist who works in HIV/AIDS research in Kenya. She played a significant role in my decision to pursue a career in HIV research.
Wendy Barrington is passionate about promoting health equity and credits her social justice orientation to her African-American and white background. Her experience living in different places -- from suburban Oregon and California to rural New Mexico -- has also spurred her interest in neighborhoods and health.
Promoting health at the workplace makes sense – after all, more than half of the adults in the U.S. go to a job every day. Peggy Hannon, new director of the School’s Health Promotion Research Center, helps companies adopt wellness programs that improve employee health while also reaching out to those workers most likely to suffer from health inequities. Stress, she says, is another hot workplace topic.
Thomas Fleming was bound for the priesthood, but changed his career pathway when he was inspired by a gifted math teacher and then by a fellow math student who later became his wife. Fleming went on to become a leading biostatistician and a prominent advocate for rigorous evaluation of the benefits and risks of new drugs, biological products and devices.
Why is the Public Health Major so popular?
So many students are interested in health and want to make a difference. We’re giving them broader options to think about how they might be involved in the wellness of their families and their communities beyond traditional ideas of being a physician or clinician.
What is your vision for the department?
My vision has to have a historical aspect to it, as I’ve been on faculty for 25 years and was a student for five years before that. What’s always impressed me is the quality of teaching, particularly epi methods, as well as the quality of research.
Victoria Breckwich Vásquez’s lifelong endeavor has been to understand the challenges faced by her mother, a single mom from Peru who became a nurse in Los Angeles. Today, Vásquez channels her passions into improving the health of Latino communities, including a little-studied group of forestry workers in southern Oregon who are vulnerable to on-the-job injuries.
What impact is the Affordable Care Act having on the way you prepare MHA students as future health care leaders?
The fun thing right now, I think, about the whole Obama-care idea is that it’s forcing the system to think about health care differently. We’ve been paid for years to do things, to treat things – and we’ve gotten really good at that.