Janaya Greene

While reconnecting over free breakfast and coffee, students, faculty and staff learned about some of the support services that the college’s Office of Research provides, and student organizations shared overviews of their missions.

“The ‘Welcome Back’ event was a great opportunity to showcase what our organization is about, and it was a great way to gain new members,” says Reginald Scott, a fourth-year undergraduate student of public health sociology and president of the Multicultural Public Health Student Association. “We got a lot of exposure.”

Bosah, a second-year undergraduate student of environmental public health, was invited to the 2017 Propel Ohio Collegiate Leadership Summit at The University of Akron in November. She was joined by hundreds of other college students from colleges across the state to learn what factors lead to childhood poverty, and what she can do to address it in her own community.

Nineteen College of Public Health students traveled to Washington, D.C., over spring break for a crash course in public health policy and advocacy.

The trip was organized by CPH Dean William Martin II, MD, who had his first taste of health policy in 1994 as a senior health policy fellow in the office of Sen. Ted Kennedy.

Ryan Yoder’s volunteer work at Safe Point began with small tasks: transporting syringes, handing out brochures on HIV and Hepatitis and restocking tourniquets. A year and a half later, he’s one of only three staff members supporting one of Columbus’s comprehensive harm reduction program for intravenous drug use.

Yoder had no idea that volunteering at Safe Point would be the beginning of a much larger journey that would have an impact not only on the clients he served, but on him as well.

Sesen Paulos was yet another undecided student at Ohio State.

It was 2011 and Paulos wasn’t certain which major would merge her interests in social and natural sciences. That was until the College of Public Health introduced its Bachelor of Science in Public Health program.

Once she enrolled, Paulos never looked back. She engaged in several extra-curricular activities, learned French and studied abroad in India to prepare for her one major goal: joining the Peace Corps.

Leslie Dawn Cooper struggled with addiction for years until her untimely death in 2009. The Portsmouth, Ohio, resident overdosed on oxycodone at the age of 34. If someone else was present at the time of her death, a witness intervention could have saved Cooper’s life.

Although food is mass produced to feed the world’s population, health and nutritional disparities like food insecurity still affect millions of lives. Working to address these disparities is Ayaz Hyder, PhD, assistant professor of environmental health sciences at the College of Public Health. Hyder is co-principal investigator on a new National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded project aimed at improving food security and community health through smarter regional food systems.

The College of Public Health presented the 2017 Champions of Public Health Awards on October 16 to five individuals and organizations for making strides in improving the health and well-being of Ohioans.