Diversifying the Leadership of Public Health.
Diversifying the Leadership of Public Health
Collaboration is key for Jasmine Abrams, who joined SPH as an assistant professor of community health sciences in 2019. In addition to SPH’s reputation as a leading school of public health, Abrams notes that she was also drawn to a school near “so many other top research institutions and amazing community organizations in and around Boston… it seemed like fertile ground for meaningful collaboration and partnerships.”
Perhaps the most important collaborations for Abrams are with the women whose health she studies.
Her work focuses on improving the sexual health of Black women in the US and around the world, which she does using participatory and action research methods that recognize that everyone is an expert on their own experiences, making them coresearchers rather than subjects.
“The participatory work I am doing in Haiti is a good example,” she says. “We are working with community-based organizations and a community advisory board to better understand how HIV and class-related stigma are manifesting in maternal healthcare settings, and using that information to develop a stigma reduction intervention that will improve women’s experiences of maternal care.
“The project is providing opportunities at every stage of the research process to center voices that are often silenced in research and programming—I am really excited about that,” says Abrams.
She believes that centering these voices is the future of public health for research, researchers, and those who head their institutions, noting that a generation of public health leaders starting to retire “will create an opportunity to substantially diversify the leadership of public health, which is sorely needed.”
Comments & Discussion
Boston University moderates comments to facilitate an informed, substantive, civil conversation. Abusive, profane, self-promotional, misleading, incoherent or off-topic comments will be rejected. Moderators are staffed during regular business hours (EST) and can only accept comments written in English. Statistics or facts must include a citation or a link to the citation.