PHX Perspectives | September 20th, 2022
Another summer season is in the books. It was a wonderful summer at PHX –immersed in public health teaching and learning, developing new skill sets and, of course, nurturing new connections. We always end each summer with an eye toward the future and the excitement that lies ahead, but it’s also important to take a moment to consider what we have achieved collectively. As we pause to reflect on it all, our hearts are full of gratitude to our staff, our faculty, and our students for entrusting us with their lifelong learning goals.
One of our favorite things this summer was to bring the PopHealthExperience summer enrichment program back to campus for the first time since the summer of 2019. The PopHealthExperience, which ran from July 11 – 22, 2023, filled the Boston University Medical Campus with young and enthusiastic learners. These rising 10th – 12th graders learned from BUSPH faculty, staff, and graduate students about a range of public health topics, participated in hands-on experiential learning activities, discovered career choices, and developed leadership skills. Throughout the two weeks on campus, students worked in groups to identify one public health issue affecting their communities, advocated for an innovative public health solution, and produced media advocacy videos to address these issues.
According to Hanna, a sophomore at Boston’s Commonwealth School, “when people think about medicine and health, they think of hospitals and doctors. But here, I’ve learned so much from guest speakers about things like biostatistics and other specialties that I never would have thought fit into the medical field.” The program has reinforced her desire to work in the health field, she concluded.
In addition to the youth program, the PHX Summer Institute offered short, immersive programs open to professionals, from across sectors, with all levels of public health knowledge. We offered a wide range of programs that taught participants career-enhancing skills, from learning to plan effective, continuous improvement processes to refining their data analysis skills, all while networking with their peers inside and outside of BUSPH.
To Cody, a participant in the intensive three-day Introduction to ArcGIS Pro for Public Health program, “the interactive nature of the course kept [him] engaged even over Zoom, the content was a great introduction to ArcGIS Pro, the repetition of doing standard practices was helpful, and the pacing was great.”
Similarly, Katharine, a student in the Essentials of Biostatistics with SAS JMP course enjoyed “the clarity of presentations, video tutorials, ability to work at [her] own pace.”
While summer is just ending, we are already planning for the PHX Winter Institute, starting January 3, 2023. Please visit our site to learn more about the great array of programs being offered, with more to be added soon.
You may continue to engage with PHX and expand your public health learning through our free online mini-MPH, our webinar series, Free Associations Podcast, or by attending the first annual Health in Focus Film Festival on December 1-3, 2022. It was a wonderful summer. Thank you for being a part of it.
The PHX Team
