Marylyn Creer Is 2019 Convocation Student Speaker.

Marylyn Creer, an MPH recipient who combines a passion for public health equity with decades of experience as a community organizer and labor representative, has been named the student speaker at the 2019 School of Public Health Convocation.

At an age when most people would be looking toward retirement, Creer drove more than 1,200 miles from her home state of Alabama to attend SPH in 2017, spurred by the desire to keep fighting for the health of vulnerable communities. She had just recently completed her bachelor’s degree and graduated summa cum laude from Alabama A&M, after over 20 years as a labor organizer and many-times-reelected neighborhood president in Birmingham. “If you can be in a position where you can intercept negative health consequences, to me that’s an even greater calling,” she says.

Creer says she was particularly driven to combat the growing diabetes epidemic, which has claimed the lives of several friends and family members. She wanted to study community-based health interventions and other strategies for helping people access better health and health care, she says, because type 2 diabetes, like many diseases, requires an integrated approach.

At SPH, Creer was actively involved in community engagement activities, including serving on committees for the Community Action Network (CAN), and interning with the Partners in Health and Housing Committee, which represents Boston public housing residents. In her final semester, Creer helped Candice Belanoff, clinical associate professor of community health sciences, conduct a community health needs assessment at a nearby public housing site. “Marylyn’s earned trust with community has brought people out in droves to meet with students and participate in interviews,” Belanoff wrote in her letter nominating Creer as student speaker. “They know that if Marylyn Creer is involved, it must be legitimate.”

In another nomination letter, Yvette Cozier, associate professor of epidemiology and assistant dean for diversity and inclusion, wrote that Creer has been simultaneously a student and mentor for many at SPH: “She has brought her years of experience into the classroom setting and into her classmates’ and professor’s lives.”

Creer is now working with Harold Cox, associate dean for public health practice and director of the Activist Lab, and the Public Health and Housing Committee to address the inequities that Boston public housing residents face—while simultaneously investigating and implementing type 2 diabetes interventions. She also plans to return to SPH in 2020 to pursue a doctorate, with a focus on community-based, participatory research.

—Michelle Samuels