Our talented students make the world a better place
Public health scholarship students, 2018
We have amazing students! At the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health (MEZCOPH), we are so impressed by the accomplishments of our students, by their determination to improve the lives of others and bring health equity to all our communities. Today, as part of our “20 Days for 20 Years” celebration for the 20th Anniversary of the College, we honor our students, the young men and women who are on their way to becoming the public health leaders of tomorrow!
More Students, More Degrees
When the College was founded 20 years ago, it offered only the Master of Public Health (MPH) degree. There were 37 students in the first graduating class. Since then the student body has grown to more than 1,500 students in undergraduate and graduate degree programs. The College’s degree offerings have expanded significantly to include the DrPH program; PhD programs in Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Environmental Health Sciences, and Health Behavior Health Promotion; the Bachelor of Science (BS) program with a major in Public Health for undergraduates, the online MPH program, the online BS program, and graduate certificates.
Impressive Diversity
Our students come from a wide range of backgrounds, and from other states and nations. Compared to other colleges of public health and colleges within the University of Arizona Health Sciences, MEZCOPH has among the largest proportion of Native American and Latinx students and faculty. Currently 40% of matriculated graduate students are from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups.
In 2010 students created the American Indian and Indigenous Health Alliance (AIIHA) student club. An organization that welcomes both undergraduate and graduate students, the AIIHA club seeks to enrich the educational and professional experience of Indigenous students at UArizona by offering diverse avenues of support that are responsive in meeting the needs of Indigenous students.
Our Students Take Action
Social Justice Symposium group, 2013
Our diverse students stand out as passionate champions of health equity, and towards that end they have pushed for change, including the creation of student-run clubs and events that provide support and raise awareness.
In 2007, MEZCOPH students initiated the 1st annual Social Justice Symposium to inspire action, foster innovative strategies to promote social equality and improve the public health. The Social Justice Symposium has continued every year since then, and functions as a venue to raise awareness, expand consciousness, clarify assumptions and exchange critical analysis about how social injustice impacts health outcomes. In April 2020, the College hosted the 14th Annual Social Justice Symposium, “Fostering Mental Health Together: Intersectional Approaches for Resilience,” on Zoom due to the pandemic. Hosting over 300 participants, the students held a successful all-day event remotely, the first of its kind!
Last year, 13 dedicated students planned the Symposium as an in-person event, and three weeks prior to the event, they suddenly had to pivot to an online format or cancel. The students chose to persevere and hold the event online, although 7 months ago they had no prior knowledge about how to host an event on Zoom! The students ended up hosted a very successful all-day virtual event with over 300 participants in attendance! This shows how our passionate and resilient students respond to adversity!
Our students are also involved in other committees in the College, including the Students of Color Advisory Group (SOCAG) and the Student Affairs Committee (SAC).
Public health students visit the US/Mexico border, 2012
Service Learning and Internships
To experience real-world engagement with people and places that face public health challenges, our students all participate in Service Learning programs. The field-based model immerses students, faculty and community partners directly in rural, border and urban communities which are facing huge health disparity issues. Together we implement programs that directly support community efforts to address these disparities. Each service activity is structured around reflection questions which provide the framework for understanding the role of public health in the elimination of health disparities.
Community engagement is a key part of public health education at the College, and all students participate in our internship program that brings them out of the classroom and into research and practice of public health. Additionally, the internship experience provides an excellent opportunity for students to obtain applied experience working in the public health field and further clarify their career goals, while serving the surrounding community.
Student Aid for Field Epidemiology Response (SAFER)
Developed as part of an MPH internship in Fall 2004 and Spring 2005, the Student Aid for Field Epidemiology Response (SAFER) team has become a well-established student organization/course within the College. The organization's goal is to provide training and infrastructure for graduate students to work with state and county public health practitioners on short-term outbreak investigations or short-term, high need problems. Training is provided through a class that covers the basics of outbreak investigations and brings in speakers who share their real-world experiences with the students. Students have assisted various agencies on multiple outbreaks since the team's creation, including crucial contact tracing work to support Pima County Health Department during the COVID-19 pandemic.
MEZCOPH Student Ambassadors
The MEZCOPH Student Ambassadors
Our MEZCOPH Ambassadors are students who volunteer to reach out, engage others, and promote the value of public health education. The Office of Student Services and Alumni Affairs (OSSAA) coordinates an undergraduate Ambassador program as well as a graduate Ambassador program. With a competitive application process, ambassadors proudly represent the College’s student perspective to prospective students and their families, the University of Arizona and Tucson communities.
Student Profiles
We have so many gifted students that we can’t include them all here, but we have provided a selection of outstanding students from a variety of programs and backgrounds to give you a sense of our diverse degree candidates, the focus of their studies, and what inspires them about the power of public health. Please explore what our students bring to the world!
Thanks to our students for all they do to promote health and wellness in communities across Arizona and globally!
Abidemi Okechukwu
Home/Hometown: Nigeria
Degrees Held: Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MB.BS), Master of Public Health (MPH)
Degrees Earning: Doctor of Public Health, Maternal and Child Health program, 2nd Year
Academic Project: Currently working with the Center for Border Health Disparities within Health Sciences as a graduate research assistant.
How do you see the benefits of public health in your community?
"Public health provides the leadership, public health promotion and interventions that are necessary for collective impact within communities. A case in point is the COVID19 outbreak. Country governments have looked to public health for direction, education and interventions. For most people who are not in the public health community, the pandemic helped them to understand, for the first time, the role of public health specialists."
Allison Rascon
Home/Hometown: Tucson, AZ
Degrees Earning: Bachelor of Science in Public Health, Health Systems Theory and Practice. She is in her third year and is also obtaining minors in Spanish and Government & Public Policy.
Internship:
"I will begin my internship this summer and my Honors thesis in Fall 2021. I hope to frame my thesis and internship around eliminating health disparities and achieving health equity through policy change."
Involvement: President of the Public Health Undergraduate Network (PHUN), MEZCOPH Undergraduate Ambassador
Professional and Academic Awards and Recognition:
• Chicanos Por La Causa / Zuckerman Family Foundation Scholarship Award
How do you see the benefits of public health in your community?
"I see the benefits of public health in every aspect of my everyday life: through the quality of the air I breathe, the seatbelt I put on before I drive to school, and my evening run around a track at a nearby park. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the benefits of public health are clearer than ever as I see my fellow community members wear masks and practice social distancing. I am so lucky to wake up safe and healthy due to the tireless work of countless public health professionals in my community."
What inspires you about public health?
"What inspires me the most about public health is its ability to change the course of history for the better. Working in Public Health allows you to not only save lives within your generation, but for generations to come."
Hannah Scott
Home/Hometown: Upstate New York
Degrees Held: Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology, Minors in Spanish and Global & Regional Studies
Degrees Earning: Master of Public Health, Public Policy & Management Student
Internship: Hannah completed her internship at the Colibri Center for Human Rights. Colibri works with the families of disappeared migrants who were lost while attempting to cross the southern border. She worked with the Family Network to collect the stories of these families. Additionally, she investigated the Migrant Protection Protocol policy and wrote a policy brief about this policy and its negative effect on migrants.
Involvement: Hannah is a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, Guatemala and Paul D. Coverdell Fellow. During her time at MEZCOPH, Hannah has interned at Casa Alitas, the asylum seeker shelter in Tucson. With Casa Alitas, Hannah has provided direct service to asylum seekers and created an advocacy toolkit for supporters to use to advocate for asylum seekers. Hannah is also a Graduate and Professional Student Council (GPSC) representative for the College of Public Health.
Professional and Academic Awards and Recognition:
• Recipient of a Western Region Public Health Training Center grant
• Paul D. Coverdell Fellow 2019-2021
How do you see the benefits of public health in your community?
"I see the benefits of public health in my community when people wear masks, seatbelts and know how to wash their hands. Public health is the sometimes invisible thing that protects us all. A community who embraces public health is a community made up of people that care about one another."
What inspires you about public health?
"Public Health uses a social justice framework to tackle issues affecting populations."
Mario Trejo
Home/Hometown: South Central Los Angeles, California
Degrees Held: Master of Public Health (MPH)
Degrees Earning: DrPH Epidemiology student
Academic Project: "My dissertation involves analyzing clinical trial genomic data to examine the association between genetic variation and colorectal adenoma recurrence."
Involvement: "During my time at MEZCOPH I have had the pleasure of working with the Casa Alitas migrant shelter, and the Big Brothers Big Sisters Program. Currently I am a Grad Student Ambassador and co-instructor for the Border Health Service-Learning Institute."
Professional and Academic Awards and Recognition: "During my time at MEZCOPH I have received multiple travel awards, conference presentation awards, the Peace Corps Coverdell Fellowship, the Cancer Epidemiology Education in Special Populations Training Program, the Outstanding MPH Graduate Award, the Initiative for Maximizing Diversity Fellowship, and the Digital Scholarship and Data Science Fellowship. Most recently I’m a recipient of a very prestigious Human Genetics Scholars Initiative fellowship with the American Society of Human Genetics."
What inspires you about public health?
"What inspires me most about public health is its ability to promote health from a variety of disciplines."
Nataniel Tsai
Home/Hometown: Avondale, AZ
Degrees Earning: 4th year double major in Bachelor of Science in Public Health and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science.
Internship: "I am currently interning with the Health Promotion Team at UArizona Campus Health. I am also working on an Honors Thesis under Dr. Keith Joiner regarding the regulatory environment for pharmaceutical benefit companies."
Involvement: Nataniel is a MEZCOPH undergraduate ambassador, Honors student, and double major. He also participated in the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Consortium (UROC) Summer Research Institute (SRI) last summer.
What inspires you about public health?
"I love the interdisciplinary approach that public health takes and I am very interested in working in healthcare policy or healthcare litigation."
Rodrigo Valenzuela-Cordova
Home/Hometown: Tucson, AZ
Degrees Held: Bachelor of Science in Public Health, Health Deliveries, with a minor in Spanish
Degrees Earning: Master of Public Health, Health Behavior Health Promotion
Internship: "I am currently completing an internship project focused on understanding the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the social determinants of health of Mexican-origin individuals previously enrolled in a non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and nutrigenetic study."
Involvement:
• Graduate Research Assistant for the Arizona Research Prevention Center (AzPRC), working in collaboration with the Maricopa Community Health Center in the collection, management, and assessment of data for the Santa Cruz County Overcoming Addiction Consortium, a project funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA).
• Graduate Research Assistant for the Center for Border Health Disparities (CBORD). In this capacity, Rodrigo supports the activities for the Nosotros - “Comprometidos a Su Salud” (Committed to Your Health) program by assisting in various research projects through outreach, assessment, and data management.
• Co-Chair of the 2020 14th Annual Social Justice Symposium
• MEZCOPH Graduate Ambassador
Professional and Academic Awards and Recognition
• Hispanic Women’s Corporation/Zuckerman Family Foundation Student Scholarship Award - Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health (MEZCOPH) (August 2020)
• Student Transformative Experiences to Progress Under-represented Professions (STEP-UP) Intern, UArizona Cancer Center (Summer of 2020)
• AZ-HOPE Graduate/Professional Scholar, UArizona Health Sciences Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) (January 2020-Present)
• SueBob Scholars Endowment Scholarship, MEZCOPH (September 2019)
• UAHS LGBTQ+ Interest Group Student Leadership Award, UArizona Health Sciences Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) (December 2019)
What inspires you about public health?
"What inspires me most about public health is the sense of community and compassion that radiates throughout the profession. The fact that public health tends to take a holistic approach when understanding and addressing health inequities and community health is absolutely astonishing. This profession has the ability to enact change and encourage action for social justice and health equity on a large scale while collaborating with other professions including medicine, pharmacy, nursing, law, psychology, and social work, to create programs, interventions, policies, and medical advances."
Amanda Wilson
Home/Hometown: Gilbert, AZ
Degrees Held: Master of Science
Degrees Earning: Amanda recently completed the Environmental Health Sciences PhD program and will be a Fall 2020 graduate! During her time at MEZCOPH, Amanda was an esteemed student researcher. Recently, Amanda received a position at the University of Utah as a post-doctoral researcher once she officially graduates.
Academic Project: "My work involves bringing together a variety of data and simulation modeling techniques for investigating healthcare professionals’ exposures to microbes. During COVID-19, I have worked on simulations for comparing mask materials in their ability to reduce infection risk, developing a risk-scoring system with others from University of Arizona for the Covid Watch app, and estimating COVID-19 risks for healthcare workers for a variety of personal protective equipment, hand hygiene, and administrative control scenarios."
Professional and Academic Awards and Recognition:
• 1st place in International Society of Exposure Science student poster competition in 2020
• University Fellow in the 2018-2019 cohort
• National Science Foundation Bridge to Doctorate Fellow, 2016-2018 cohort
• Featured in Hispanic Engineer & Information Technology Magazine in 2018
• 1st Place in Graduate Oral Presentation in Ecology, Environmental, and Earth Sciences at the Emerging Researchers National Conference in STEM in 2018
What inspires you about public health?
"The thing that inspires me about public health is that the discovery of science in this field leads to very real improvements in peoples’ lives and the answers often sit at the innovative and unexplored intersections of so many rich and diverse methodologies."
Thank you MEZCOPH Students
We want to express our appreciation for all the time, ability, and passion that our students bring to the College and to the promotion of public health programs and projects that improve the health and wellness of so many people!
Thank you to our presenting sponsor Arizona Complete Health!
