Faculty Spotlight: Candice Belanoff.

Collaborative work is key to developing sustainable public health solutions and improving population health outcomes. This weekly series spotlights one SPH faculty member who advances public health through collaborations within the field and across sectors.

As a maternal and child health epidemiologist, can you describe your primary research interests? 

 Most of my research has involved epidemiology of the perinatal period, starting with my dissertation on breastfeeding patterns across the US, and continuing when I came to SPH in part to work on the PELL (Pregnancy to Early Life Longitudinal) project in 2009 with Gene Declercq, Judith Bernstein and Milt Kotelchuck (former faculty member in CHS).

PELL is this really powerful relational data system that links Massachusetts birth certificates, hospital discharge data and a whole bunch of other service and health records data together to answer all sorts of interesting questions about pregnancy and the health of families and babies. We have looked longitudinally at outcomes related to assisted reproductive technology, substance use disorders and treatment during pregnancy, method of delivery, congenital anomalies, you name it. I was so lucky to cut my teeth on the PELL project as a newly-minted ScD, unsure of how to launch my career in MCH/social epidemiology. I had the privilege of working, and essentially training with some of the top MCH researchers in the country (noted above). I still shake my head at my good fortune, landing at BUSPH when I did. Some may recall that 2009 wasn’t the best year to be on the job market with a very expensive advanced degree in tow…

My primary research interest and goal as a researcher is to generate knowledge that will help us finally close the horrific racial gaps in any number of MCH outcomes in the US, but most urgently, those contributing to inequities in infant and maternal mortality. We need to understand the mechanisms through which structural and interpersonal racism, and their interactive effects, degrade and devalue the health of people of color, particularly Black and Indigenous people, and privilege and prioritize the health of white people. One of the great challenges faced by social epidemiologists remains how we concretely define and empirically measure these things we call “structural racism” or “historical trauma”—sometimes it can feel like trying to catch the wind. But I think it’s key to making any substantive progress around equity in the field of MCH.

But of course it’s not enough just to operationalize and understand these constructs; our research must point to concrete strategies for action toward social change. This also must be done in close collaboration with, and under the guidance of affected communities so that we’re asking the right questions, collecting the relevant data and producing meaningful solutions.

How are collaborative partnerships integral to your work, and can you describe one or two collaborations that have been most meaningful to you?

Thankfully, almost all of the research I’ve done has been collaborative (because working alone is sad and lonely and, honestly, not as robust).  Additionally, for the past few years I’ve had the opportunity to collaborate with local Boston communities for a course I teach (SB820: Assessment and Planning for Health Promotion). Through the Partnership in Health and Housing (a long-standing coalition including BUSPH faculty, Boston Housing Authority (BHA) residents and administrators, and the Boston Public Health Commission), I’ve gotten to know a number of BHA tenant leaders throughout the city who’ve invited my class into their communities to conduct community health needs assessments. I cannot say enough about how valuable this type of academic/community partnership is. Students (and I) learn so much from the true experts (i.e. community members) about community health through visits, interviews and storytelling, and we try to deliver a valuable public health product to our partners in return. I’m currently looking into opportunities for expanding this community/academic collaboration so that students can take the next step after delivery of the needs assessment report, and act as consultants and facilitators on projects that communities want to conduct.

 In the recent Teaching Public Health symposium, you moderated a panel discussion on creating inclusive classrooms. As faculty prepare to engage and collaborate with students in the coming school year, what is one takeaway from the discussion that you can share with faculty on how to create inclusive and safe spaces for students?

Well, I would say one particular thing that stood out to me was the invitation to broaden our approach to measuring “success” and “learning” in our courses—particularly in this very strange time we’re living through—and needing to consider not only disparate learning needs, but the myriad—and definitely not equal—ways students’ lives have been turned upside-down this year. I love that there are increasing calls to radically reimagine classrooms as not just these “knowledge ATMs” but as spaces where students produce more knowledge than they are “given;” where we as faculty publicly challenge our own understandings and the traditional power arrangements that govern academia; where we manifest liberation and justice through our collective efforts.

So, maybe multiple choice quizzes won’t disappear tomorrow, but I genuinely dream of a future where performance art becomes a viable option for assessing one’s grasp of the chi-square. Plus, imagine how much less onerous end-of-semester grading would be! ;-)  

“Professor Belanoff is a brilliant educator who understands how to get both the details and the concepts across to her students—the methods and facts, as well as the broader ideas, from regression to racism. We lean on her when we need to know what we can do to improve the classroom for students and teachers alike.”

Richard Saitz, professor and chair of community health sciences