Gwenyth Lee, New PhD Student in Global Disease Epidemiology and Control (GDEC)

A few years ago Gwenyth Lee thought she would now be conducting experiments in a chemistry lab, or maybe working her way through medical school. Returning from a public health internship in Peru was certainly not on the horizon. Even three years ago, she didn’t foresee herself entering a PhD program. But now, a trainee under Joanne Katz’s International Maternal and Child Health grant, she starts the year knowing this is exactly what she wants to be doing.

Like many students, Gwen was a Peace Corps volunteer before enrolling in the MHS program. And like many others she had a background in the sciences. But there was no set course that would lead her to Hopkins or to public health. In fact, her decision to volunteer in Cameroon meant that she was putting medical school, which she had been accepted to, on hold. The Department of International Health at the Bloomberg School wasn’t even on her radar, yet.

Peace Corps in Cameroon

Her main assignment in Cameroon was to teach chemistry and biology at a secondary school. Teaching in the classroom, however, didn’t seem to be enough, so she sought out other ways to serve. She discovered that local youth health groups needed mentors to help run their programs. These groups were designed to help young people learn decision-making skills so they could make safe and healthy choices as adults.This approach—developing skills rather than teaching only facts—appealed to her. Gwen ended up leading several youth groups, including one that wrote and produced its own telenovela-like melodrama that the young people performed at local fairs and events. The drama proved to be an entertaining format for sparking discussions about sensitive health topics affecting youth.   

Colleagues who noticed her enthusiasm told her that she might be interested in a career in public health, a field she knew very little about at the time. The more she learned and saw firsthand what public health was all about, the more she was drawn to it. And so, as her time in Cameroon came to an end, she decided to apply to the Hopkins MHS program in Global Disease Epidemiology and Control (GDEC).

MHS at Hopkins

The MHS program was an ideal degree for Gwen: she could still make use of her science background, but it also afforded her more hands-on application, something she realized she wanted during her time in the Peace Corps. After finishing her coursework, her internship took her to Peru, where she was able to conduct her own research study—a daunting challenge but one that would help her decide which direction to go in next. The internship proved to be another pivotal moment in Gwen’s career path. While she was invigorated by the hands-on opportunities of public health, she saw that she loved the research aspect of it as well.

Gwen’s research project assessed the relative accuracy of daily versus bi-weekly survey tools for monitoring childhood diarrhea in Peru. She worked within a larger multi-site project run by Professor Bob Gilman, GDEC. Gwen developed a research plan and daily survey tools whose results could be compared to the bi-weekly data. She also organized the staff and helped collect the data in the field. The data are still being analyzed, but they indicate that the recall bias is more pronounced for symptoms in younger children and for more severe symptoms. 

Advice for New Students

Although she’s a new PhD student, she is an MHS grad and was willing to offer some advice to new students. First and foremost, she recommends talking—to professors, other students and to visiting scholars and speakers—because it’s a great way to figure out what your interests are and to find opportunities for pursuing them. In the same vein, she thinks work-study is an excellent opportunity to see how coursework relates to real world situations. “Even if you’re not analyzing the data yourself, you’re working next to people who are. And that makes the coursework seem all the more real,” she explained.

Gwen’s desire to work in a more applied field like public health has, she noted with a sense of irony, taken her nearly full circle back to research. But the experiences in the field are what drive her now and she is looking forward to combining research and practice whenever she can. 

(September 2008)