Award-Winning Students
The Office of Public Health Practice and Training recognizes masters and doctoral students each year for outstanding public health practice contributions. These awards are given in recognition of a practice effort that has made or has great potential to make a sustained impact on a health-related outcome. Meet our award-winning students below.
Excellence in U.S. Public Health Practice
Arianna Campbell (Masters)
Partner Organization: Marshall Medical Center
Arianna collaborated with Marshall Medical Center to develop and implement a hospital-wide stigma reduction campaign to educate staff and providers and provide a framework for hospitals to address stigma and eliminate health care worker discrimination against people who use drugs.
Aneri Pattani (Masters)
Partner Organization: Kaiser Health News
Aneri worked with Kaiser Health News to create a free online course guiding journalists on how to safely report on suicide.
Rachael Molitor (Masters)
Partner Organization: Maryland Department of Health, Office of Population Health Improvement
Rachael developed a strategic plan to implement the first specialty certification for community health workers (CHW) in Maryland in Chronic Disease Management: Diabetes, as part of the PHASE internship program. She researched the national status of CHW specialty certifications, held stakeholder meetings to obtain feedback, and helped draft regulations to establish CHW specialty certifications.
Roopa Kalyanaraman Marcello (Doctoral)
Partner Organization: New York City Health + Hospitals’ Healthy Beverage Initiative (NYC H+H)
Roopa developed and was instrumental in launching NYC H+H's Healthy Beverage Initiative, which eliminated all sugar-sweetened beverages from NYC H+H, the largest public health care system in the country. She is evaluating the implementation and impact of the initiative for her dissertation to help inform similar initiatives at other health systems across the nation.
Deepa Joshi (Masters)
Partner Organization: Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)
Deepa worked with HRSA to analyze the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act’s (FERPA) impact on child fatality death reviews. She reviewed the FERPA statute, data from the child fatality Case Reporting System and conducted key informant interviews with numerous stakeholders to explore local, state and federal interventions to address barriers for collaborating with schools and accessing school records.
Gia Naranjo-Rivera (Doctoral)
Partner Organization: Peace in Schools (Portland, OR)
Gia worked with Peace in Schools in Portland, Oregon to develop, implement, and evaluate a program for the integration of mindfulness into public education to address mental health and trauma in adolescents.
Kristy McCarron (Masters)
Partner Organization: YMCA of Metropolitan Washington
Kristy worked with YMCAs nationwide to address food insecurity among children by implementing a behavior change program and building a year-round farm stand. She also coached anti-hunger programs, created a Teaching Kitchen Cohort among Ys to share best practices, and produced a resource for teaching kitchens called the Teaching Kitchen Toolkit.
Raimee Eck (Doctoral)
Partner Organization: Maryland Public Health Association
Raimee served as President of the Maryland Public Health Association, the largest public health advocacy organization in the state. In this role she led advocacy efforts for policies to improve public health in Maryland.
Margaret Hannah (Masters)
Partner Organization: One Tent Health (Washington, DC)
Margaret worked with nonprofit One Tent Health to train volunteers about how to approach HIV counseling, disadvantaged populations, and survivors of sexual assault. She also led a project focused on HIV testing and linkage to care.
Excellence in International Public Health Practice
Pranab Chatterjee (Doctoral)
Partner Organization: Sambhavna Trust Clinic
Pranab collaborated with the Sambhavna Trust Clinic to estimate the additional mortality experienced during COVID-19 by gas-exposed populations impacted by the Dec. 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy and highlight the Bhopal survivors’ lived experiences through community interactions and public health storytelling techniques.
Bilal Khan and Charlie Jeong (Masters)
Partner Organization: Acasus
Bilal and Charlie partnered with Acasus to investigate the adaptation of immunization service delivery for children in the province of Sindh in Pakistan to maintain services during catastrophic flood events.
Baldeep Dhaliwal (Doctoral)
Partner Organization: Johns Hopkins International Vaccine Access Center
Baldeep collaborated with the International Vaccine Access Center, community health workers, and community members in Mewat, India to co-design and implement a vaccine acceptance and misinformation program.
Melinda Kelly (Masters)
Partner Organization: Inter-Agency Working Group on Reproductive Health in Crises (IAWG)
Melinda partnered with the IAWG Newborn Initiative to write a cross-sector brief to improve integrated service delivery of maternal and newborn health (MNH) services with other sector services to improve MNH in fragile or conflict-affected countries.
Bolanle Akinyele (Masters)
Partner Organization: Revolving Hearts Foundation
Bolanle collaborated with the Revolving Hearts Foundation and Issachar Generation, a local Nigerian NGO, to create and implement the Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Peer Educator’s Program, a train-the-trainer model that has engaged 2000 students across four schools to advance bystander CPR in Nigeria.
Roshan Khatri (Doctoral)
Partner Organization: Headwaters Relief Organization
Roshan worked in partnership with Headwaters Relief Organization to use applied storytelling as a public health intervention to engage and educate Nepalese children, families, and communities on human trafficking and its impact on its victims.
Kaley Marcis Waring (Masters)
Partner Organization: HealthServe, Singapore
Kaley helped HealthServe create an effective, ethical, and culturally appropriate mental health screening program for low-wage migrant workers living in Singapore. She helped create a tailored screening instrument to incorporate local idioms and conceptualizations of mental health and ensure patients are connected with the most appropriate level of care.
Assanatou Bamogo (Masters)
Partner Organization: African Crossroad Development
Assanatou worked with nonprofit African Crossroad Development and the Women’s Association of Ouargaye on a campaign to increase awareness of chronic disease prevention and screen for cancer and other non-communicable diseases among rural communities in Burkina Faso.
Radha Rajan (Doctoral)
Partner Organization: Johns Hopkins Center for Communications Programs, Indonesia
Radja worked on the development and implementation of a mobile app, SKATA, to promote family planning in Indonesia.
Tam Wai Jia (Masters)
Partner Organization: Kitesong Global
Tam Wai Jia established Kitesong Global, an international social venture to raise funds for and awareness of issues related to the empowerment of underserved women and children.
Excellence in Baltimore Public Health Practice
Carla Tilchin (Doctoral)
Partner Organization: PIVOT
Carla collaborated with PIVOT to improve organizational capacity to track and evaluate participant needs and outcomes and inform program implementation and investment decisions to better support women being released from incarceration for reentry and employment in Baltimore City.
Augusta Gribetz (Masters)
Partner Organization: Charm City Care Connection (CCCC)
Augusta partnered with CCCC to implement a new service model to provide evidence-based low-threshold buprenorphine treatment to CCCC clients on-site and via on-street outreach.
Premikha M (Masters)
Partner Organization: Franciscan Center
Premikha collaborated with the Franciscan Center to develop a Client Choice Food Pantry and Clothing Program to promote healthy lifestyles to economically disadvantaged persons with chronic diseases in Baltimore.
Mudia Uzzi (Doctoral)
Partner Organization: Greenmount West Community Association
Mudia collaborated with the Greenmount West Community Association to increase mask access and education in Baltimore City’s Greenmount West Neighborhood.
Alexander Blum (Masters)
Partner Organization: HEAL Clinic
Alex partnered with the HEAL (Hopkins Esperanza Center and Loyola) Clinic to establish an evaluatory clinic to provide physical and psychological evaluations for asylum seekers, in addition to collaborating with the Asylum Medicine Training Initiative (AMTI) to create a standardized forensic evaluation training curriculum.
Sara Lupolt (Doctoral)
Partner Organization: Safe Urban Harvests Project
Sara collaborated with the Baltimore Office of Sustainability, the Farm Alliance of Baltimore, the UM Extension – Baltimore City, the Parks and People Foundation, and the USDA on the Safe Urban Harvests project to advance soil and agriculture knowledge and policies to promote urban agriculture.
Ainelen Radosevich (Masters)
Partner Organization: Centro SOL
Ainelen worked with Centro SOL to develop and advance ‘The Latino Childhood Healthy Weight Community Action Plan’, a patient and family centered weight management proposal that takes a community-based approach to addressing the ecological determinants of childhood obesity.
Emma Ghazaryan (Masters)
Partner Organization: Vision for Baltimore
Emma worked with Vision for Baltimore, which provides school-based eye care for public schools in Baltimore. She assessed current quality assurance measures and developed a quality assurance protocol based on other successful school-based programs.
Noa Krawczyk (Doctoral)
Partner Organization: Behavioral Health Leadership Institute
Noa helped the Behavioral Health Leadership Institute establish the Project Connections Buprenorphine Program, an opioid treatment model aimed at saving the lives of high-risk individuals in Baltimore.
Anja Fries & Monica Guerrero Vazquez (Masters)
Partner Organization: Centro SOL
Anja and Monica identified a set of pressing issues affecting the local Latinx community and worked with Centro SOL to plan and coordinate a variety of programs and projects, including one to address stress associated with uncertainty over the DACA program.