Public Health Insights

August 2026 · 20 min read

Comprehensive Ethnographic & Community Assessment at Sankofa Health and Wellness

A summer of field notes turned into an ethnographic narrative of belonging. Grounded in CBPR, the PEN-3 Cultural Model, social determinants of health, and the Health Impact Pyramid, the assessment shows Sankofa functioning as social infrastructure, not just a place where wellness classes happen, and names the structural tensions around insurance, behavioral health, burnout, and sustaining a small Black community organization.

August 2026 · Toolkit

Health Literacy & Patient Self-Advocacy Toolkit

A practical, evidence-based toolkit for patients and community members. It breaks down how to read health information, prepare for appointments, ask clearer questions, and follow up with confidence. Built around the eHEALS framework and written in plain language for low-literacy and low digital-access populations.

July 3, 2026 · 12 min read

Health Literacy Portfolio: Cardiovascular Health and Black Health Disparities

A curated portfolio built around one question: how does cardiovascular information actually reach Black communities, and where does it fail. I evaluate eight artifacts across scholarly research, hospital web education, social media, and patient-facing materials using the CDC Clear Communication Index, then argue that surgical mastery means little if a patient cannot give informed consent or read their own discharge instructions.

2026 · 13 slides

Opioid Treatment in Maryland Jails: A Public Health Ethics Analysis

A presentation on medications for opioid use disorder behind bars. Overdose risk after release runs up to 129 times higher than in the general population, and Maryland's House Bill 116 made jail based screening and treatment law. I work through what universal MOUD would do for survival, recidivism, and continuity of care, and argue through justice, beneficence, respect for persons, and reciprocity that failing to implement it is not a policy gap but an ethical failure.

June 2026 · 6 min read

The Politics of Trauma: Somatics, Healing, and Social Justice

A discussion leader report on Staci K. Haines and her argument that trauma is never only personal. It is produced and sustained by the systems people live inside of, and it lives in the body long after the event has passed. Healing, then, is a collective responsibility held by communities, institutions, and movements, not a private task.

June 7, 2026 · 5 min read

How Can I Become a Change-Maker in Everyday Life?

I used to picture change making as legislation, protest, or a title. Reading Haines, brown, Menakem, Williams, and Ponder together reframed it. Change begins with personal awareness and shows up in ordinary moments, in the way I speak up, listen, and stay accountable when it is uncomfortable.

June 18, 2026 · 5 min read

Healing, Liberation, and Wholeness: A Reflection

Contemplative practice, radical dharma, and pleasure activism make one shared claim: healing is not a private benefit. Thriving, creativity, and celebration are not distractions from justice work, they are part of it. A question I keep returning to is how we help communities flourish, not simply suffer less.

2026 · 8 min read

Impending Epidemic of Zoonotic Infectious Diseases Driven by Globalization, Climate Change, and Human-Animal Interactions

A forecast paper arguing that zoonotic spillover will rise over the coming decades as faster trade and travel, shifting ecosystems, and land use change push humans, livestock, and wildlife into closer contact. I trace who absorbs the harm first, why structural bias widens the gap, and what centralized, equity-focused surveillance and social protection would need to look like to blunt the next outbreak.

September 26, 2025 · 6 min read

Dichotomous Transparency: A Comparative Analysis of the U.S. and Australian Healthcare Systems

The United States spends more on health care than any nation on earth and still trails on outcomes. This paper reviews the organization, financing, and regulation of the U.S. system, sets it beside Australia, compares outcomes across four measures, and names two structural changes I would make and what it would take to implement them.

February 8, 2026 · 6 min read

The Raw and Uncut: The Health Behavior Model

The Health Belief Model is a useful frame, but it is rooted in Western individualism and assumes people make clean, rational choices. I argue it should be used critically and paired with social theory that accounts for culture, history, and the conditions people actually live inside of.

2026 · 9 min read

Navigating a Corrupt System: Structural Stigma, Minority Stress, and the Trajectory of Depression Symptoms among Minorities

This paper links a specific behavior pattern, rumination, hypervigilance, and behavioral avoidance, to clinical depressive symptoms among sexual minorities and undocumented immigrants. I synthesize the longitudinal evidence on structural stigma, critique the methods behind it, and read the findings through Minority Stress Theory, Jones's levels of racism, and intersectionality.

2026 · 6 min read

The Impact of Immigration Policy Discourse on Health: A Minority Stress Perspective

Policy does not have to pass to make people sick. Using Minority Stress Theory, this paper examines how the 2025 to 2026 immigration policy cycle and the rhetoric around it operate as distal stressors, how anticipation of enforcement becomes chronic proximal stress, and what that does to care seeking among undocumented communities.

2026 · 7 min read

Take Home Midterm: Applying the Transtheoretical Model to Physical Inactivity in Nursing Homes

Programs exist in most nursing homes, and residents still do not use them. I apply the Transtheoretical Model to physical inactivity among elderly residents, mapping stages of readiness against the real barriers of pain, fatigue, and fear of injury, and what a staged intervention would look like.

April 15, 2026 · 10 min read

Effectiveness of Reducing Marijuana Use Through a Peer-Led, School-Based Program among Racial Minority Adolescents in D.C.

A team program proposal built around one finding: adolescents who start cannabis early carry the highest risk of cannabis use disorder, and Black and Hispanic youth in D.C. absorb that risk unevenly. We designed a peer-led, school-based prevention model, grounded it in behavioral theory, and mapped the evaluation plan that would tell us whether it worked.

2026 · 6 min read

Individual Community Needs Assessment: Marijuana Misuse in Washington, D.C.

Legalization changed access, not the underlying need. This assessment pairs qualitative work, key informant interviews with a community substance use counselor, against D.C. youth surveillance data to define the problem, name the barriers to treatment, and identify where prevention resources are actually missing.

2026 · 4 min read

Reflection on Ethical Pressures in Medicine

Ethical lapses in medicine rarely come from an absence of values. They come from hierarchy, fatigue, and time pressure. I write honestly here about the pressures I expect to face as a trainee, my own tendency to push past exhaustion, and the mentorship and institutional supports I plan to lean on to keep my judgment intact.

2026 · 4 min read

Reflection on Data Sharing Philosophy

Data should be shared responsibly, not universally. Open science accelerates discovery and builds trust, but de-identification is not a guarantee, re-identification is a documented risk, and stripped context invites misuse. I argue for a standard that weighs benefit against consent, privacy, and the population the data came from.

2026 · 4 min read

Reflection on Authorship in Medical Research

Credit in research is an ethical statement, not a courtesy. Working through the ICMJE criteria, I look at what actually earns authorship, why honorary and ghost authorship distort the record, and what accountability should mean for everyone whose name appears on a paper.