Public Health Buckeyes: Addie Monter

Working in a nursing home while in high school inspired me to study public health. I learned the importance of advocacy within healthcare as I was continuously advocating for better care for my residents. Although at the time I did not know exactly what kind of career I wanted, I knew majoring in public health would open a lot of different paths for me.

I am most passionate about health promotion and health equity. I am passionate about advocating for better healthcare, better healthcare access and healthy foods access.

Learning about health inequities and poor experiences within healthcare systems ultimately drove me to become interested in attending law school. While taking my public health classes…I learned a lot about health outcomes and what determines these health outcomes.

Learning about individuals living in food deserts, the lack of healthcare access in certain communities and overall poor health outcomes for certain racial/ethnic groups made me want to pursue a career where I could help change this, which is what solidified my decision to (hopefully) attend law school and eventually a career in health policy.

I enjoy the fact that it’s a smaller major and I have been able to gain real connections with faculty and real friendships with other public health students. Ohio State has a huge student body, but at CPH you get the small school feel at a big university and I really appreciate that. Having smaller class sizes has really allowed me to have real interactions with my professors and truly get to know my classmates.

After I graduate in May, I hope to start a dual degree program of either a Master of Health Administration/Juris Doctor or Master of Business Administration/Juris Doctor. I then hope to pursue a career in health law working within a hospital’s general council, government affairs or compliance department.

Take advantage of every opportunity in front of you. During my first semester at Ohio State, I was taking a U.S. and international healthcare course when we had someone come in and talk to us about a research opportunity looking at Medicaid care access. Taking advantage of that opportunity opened my eyes to the difficulties that Medicaid patients have to face and helped prepare me for future internships.