Molly McCarthy: Excellence in Public Health Honors Thesis
Seattle native Molly McCarthy arrived at Brown interested in biology and health. She combined her love for research, epidemiology, statistics, and math by pursuing a concentration in public health. Much of her work at Brown focused on perinatal epidemiology. She used data from the California Department of Health to investigate associations between socioeconomic status and low birth weight and infant metabolic profile. She found that socioeconomic status and low birth weight do interact and influence infant metabolite levels. She also found a dose response relationship between the level of socioeconomic status and the metabolic profile, with infants born to mothers with the lowest socioeconomic status showing significant differences in 41 of 42 metabolites compared to infants born to mothers with the highest socioeconomic status.
Molly will be teaching English in Japan for a year before returning to Brown to complete a Master’s degree in Biostatistics. She believes acquiring those quantitative skills will move her closer to her goal of becoming an epidemiologist.
Drew Hawkinson: Excellence in Public Health Honors Thesis
Drew transferred to Brown from the University of Pennsylvania during his sophomore year. He found Brown to be “a better fit” and that studying public health was a way to combine his interest in biology and health with his interest in the social sciences. His thesis project—for which he collected original data—“An Exploration of Knowledge, Perceptions, and Barriers of HIV Risk and Prevention between Younger and Older Men Who have Sex with Men,” was advised by Professor Jacob van den Berg. He found that younger men and older men have similar knowledge of HIV prevention, but that there are differences in perceptions and barriers for PrEP, and that public health interventions are needed to increase positive perceptions of PrEP among older men, and to decrease barriers to PrEP uptake among younger men who have sex with men. Drew also found that social interventions are needed to foster greater intergenerational communication about HIV risk and prevention strategies. Drew plans to pursue his first love, theater, after graduation. His experience so far is limited to Brown productions and high school theater but he hopes to become a professional theater producer. And he’ll bring his public health training with him. “I think there’s an awesome opportunity to combine health and theater,” Drew said, clearly a true Brunonian!
Elizabeth Carlson: Excellence in Public Health Honors Thesis
Elizabeth double concentrated in Public Health and Religious Studies and her thesis project perfectly combined those two interests. “A Literature Review of Church-based Health Promotion Programs Related to Cardiovascular Disease, Mental Health, and Prostate Cancer in African American Church Communities,” was originally inspired by a guest lecture given in “Introduction to Public Health” when Elizabeth was a first-year student. That lecture "planted a seed in my head,” Elizabeth said. Three years later, Elizabeth reviewed over 700 published academic articles, and found 41 church-based health promotion programs to focus on with the support of Professors Jennifer Nazareno and Andre Willis. She was interested, not just in the public health interventions themselves, but in how these studies engaged with church communities. Her project revealed a widespread commitment to community engagement but also a lack of analytical nuance in study discussions on the intersections between religion and health in the Black Church. Consideration of church size and denomination, for example, tended to be absent from the studies. “If we’re really trying to pursue community-based participatory research,” Elizabeth said, “public health researchers and religious studies scholars should be talking to each other.” The fields are not as dissimilar as you might think, she explained. “They both deal with people, and they are both concerned with why people believe what they believe, and why they do what they do.” When not pursuing her academic interests, Elizabeth was a Meiklejohn, worked with Brown-RISD Hillel, and helped to run Brown’s Health Hackathon. She’s now heading home to Chicago to work at PwC in healthcare tech consulting.
Reagan Menz: Excellence in Public Health Honors Thesis
Reagan has always been a dancer, but she knew she didn’t want to pursue dance professionally. When she heard about an Artists and Scientists as Partners course at Brown, a year-long weekly dance class for those with Parkinson’s and for individuals with movement challenges, she jumped at the chance to experience first-hand how dance could impact health.
Moved and excited by the experience, Reagan continued to pursue this interest with her thesis project, “Examining the Effects of Dance on Cognitive Function in Older Adults: A Systematic Review." She found 18 studies that met the eligibility criteria and were included in the review. Although studies varied greatly in their populations, interventions, and outcome measures, most of the studies (66%) reported improvements in cognitive function among participants who received the dance intervention compared to controls.
Reagan plans to attend medical school but will take a year first to work in some capacity for Dance for Parkinson’s Disease, which offers dance classes for people with Parkinson’s disease in Brooklyn, New York.
Georgiana McTigue: Outstanding Community Service
It was “Introduction to Public Health” taught by Professor Abigail Harrison in her first year at Brown that made Georgie a public health concentrator. She worked with another global health researcher, Jennifer Pellowski, on her thesis project, “Family Planning Practices and Intentions among Pregnant and Postpartum Women Living with HIV in Cape Town, South Africa.” The project earned her a first runner-up finish for Best Undergraduate Poster at Public Health Research Day.
Georgie’s service activities at Brown include being a teaching assistant, a University tour leader, and a Rhode Island Free Clinic intern and volunteer. She is also a Medical Scribe and a member of Fusion Dance Company and Mezcla Latin Dance Troupe. Georgie completed a summer internship in 2017 with the Clinton Health Access Initiative focusing on the organization’s global family planning strategic plan and funding priorities.
This summer, she will intern with the US State Department as a Pamela Harriman Foreign Service Fellow, engaging with important global public health issues and diplomacy, with a particular focus on global women’s reproductive rights, before returning to Brown to complete the 5th-year MPH program. She plans to continue her global family planning project for her MPH thesis and will begin applying to medical school within a year of completing the program.