Nancy Tovar-Garcia graduated with a degree in public health.

 

What’s your story, how did you get to the UW?

Youssef graduated in 2018 with a degree in Public Health. In 2020, he became a graduate student at Evans School of Public Policy and Governance at the UW.

 

Why did you join the military?

When I was 18, I didn’t have a lot of direction in my life. I call it my “pursuing pleasure phase.” I saw myself going down the wrong path, and decided I needed to change that.

What interests you most about nutrition?

I’m always fascinated by what I learn in my nutrition classes. It's helped me to achieve a positive mindset, and I know that I can use the knowledge I’m gaining to help others.

One of the first classes I took at the UW was Nutrition 200: Nutrition for Today. I was learning things that I could use right after the class ended. 

What would you like to do in the future?

Kate Tokareva graduated in 2019 and is attending the UW School of Medicine.

 

How did you discover public health?

Why did you decide to go back to school to get your bachelors?

I went to a couple of different colleges when I was younger and I failed a lot. I didn’t have a real goal or an educational role model. Now that I have kids of my own – two daughters who are 3 and 6 – it’s really important to me that I become a role model for them.

What did it feel like to get in to the UW?

Deanna Ly graduated in 2019 with a BS, Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences

 

Why are you passionate about public health?

Joseph Lee is now an Associate Clinical Systems Analyst at Stanford Health Care

 

Why did you choose health informatics and health information management?

Why minor in nutrition? As a competitive athlete, food has always been a big part of my life. The health of your body is integral to your success as a runner. Minoring in nutrition allows me to maximize my abilities as an athlete by learning about the specific nutritional demands of the body.

Why minor in global health? Through the Biology Honors program, I enrolled in a course that took a public health approach to HIV/AIDS. The course opened my eyes to global health. I’ve always had an interest in aid work and foreign policy, but I was never able to isolate a specific major or minor, until I found the Global Health Minor. It was exactly what I wanted to do.

Why is war a public health issue? War is, of course, toxic to health. War produces death, disables people and erodes infrastructure that supports health, yet it is entirely preventable. Public health can serve in a prevention role, not just a cleanup role. We set up refugee camps and clinics, send in vaccination teams and doctors, but we need to do more to prevent conflicts sooner.

A laboratory scientist, fly fisherman and winemaker, Terrance Kavanagh left his native Michigan for the University of Washington in 1985 to be a postdoc in the pathology department. Today, he leads three UW centers, including the Interdisciplinary Center for Exposures, Diseases, Genomics and Environment, where researchers work to understand how genetic factors influence human susceptibility to environmental health risks.

A first-generation college student from the Colombian coffee belt, Mauricio Sadinle deviated from the family business to pursue higher education. With help from an unlikely pen pal, he used statistics to quantify the toll of Colombia’s war with rebels. Now, he uses statistics to improve the quality of data and to unlock data's full potential.

Finding passion points and public health pathways

While working as a dietitian in San Francisco, Jessica Jones-Smith noticed trends in how social, environmental and economic factors shaped people’s food choices and, in effect, their health.

If it weren’t for a teacher who pushed her to pursue science, Rhea Coler could have slipped through the cracks as a young girl in Trinidad. Three degrees and five patents later, Coler is shaping the future of vaccine development and mentoring emerging leaders in global health.

Can a woman’s diet, lifestyle, socioeconomic status or environmental exposures affect the course of her pregnancy? How might they affect the occurrence of disease in her child? Do they affect male and female children differently?