Students Create Community Change in Activist Lab Fellowships.

Three School of Public Health students are translating their skills from the classroom to the community in year-long fellowships through the SPH Activist Lab.

Moneesha Dasgupta and Carol (CJ) Bigsby are the 2020-2021 fellows in the Activist Fellowship Program, which is funded by the Activist Lab and enables up to two students per year to engage in advocacy-related activities or other meaningful public health projects with a community organization or government agency. Cheyenne Bailey is completing a separate Activist Lab fellowship that is sponsored by The Boston Foundation.

Dasgupta, a dual-degree student in the MPH/MSW program and who just graduated from the School of Social Work in May, is completing her fellowship at the Boston Public Health Commission’s (BPHC) Engagement Center. Located near the intersection of Melnea Cass Boulevard and Massachusetts Avenue in Boston’s South End neighborhood, the center provides a safe space and health resources for people who are experiencing substance misuse, homelessness, and behavioral health conditions.

Since September, Dasgupta has been engaging with the individuals at the center to gain insight into the types of services or programs that they would like to utilize at the center. She will also help implement and evaluate some of these new services to determine which programs are most helpful to the community members and their individual and collective challenges. She has worked with people receiving treatment services before, and she says she is eager to bridge her social work experience with her public health skills.

“I have so much respect for this population, and I’m very excited to be working in a social justice capacity,” says Dasgupta. “Oftentimes, the people who are directly impacted by programs and policies are not included in the policymaking process, so I’m really looking forward to connecting with people, and creating and implementing their ideas.”

She has already received feedback from community members on ways to improve the center’s communication materials about support services and activities.

“They have said that fliers aren’t always effective, so we are thinking about what other visual communications we can provide,” Dasgupta says. “These populations are facing a lot of stigmas around homelessness and come to the center to be in a safe space, so we want to be able to reduce those stigmas and create activities that reflect how they want to spend their time.”

Bigsby is also working to ensure that health consumers have a greater say and understanding in the health services they receive. In the Center for Consumer Engagement and Health Innovation at the nonprofit Community Catalyst, she is engaging with senior healthcare consumers who are dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid, to assess their success and challenges navigating the healthcare system.

“When people are dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid, they are able to receive more care,” but the process that determines their eligibility for those services varies among states, she says. “In some states, they are automatically admitted into more services, and in other states, they have to apply. We’re leading focus groups to talk with dually eligible people to see what their experiences have been like, how they are navigating the healthcare system, and whether they believe the services they can access are valuable—and whether they are even aware of the services they are entitled to.”

As a student in the BA/MPH program, Bigsby is currently taking MPH core classes at SPH while completing her senior year as a health sciences major and biology minor in the College of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences: Sargent College. She says she has not had much experience with policy work, so she is looking forward to learning as much as possible from her team at Community Catalyst, and from the community members.

“Different classes that I’ve taken have touched upon public health policy, but I thought this would be a good opportunity to see how policy actually works, instead of reading about it,” Bigsby says. In a separate project for the organization, she also conducts research to assist with the development of an integrated health and housing model that would provide community-based healthcare to seniors in Boston. The Community Catalyst staff have been welcoming and have created an inclusive environment, she adds. “Even though all of my meetings are on Zoom or on phone calls, I feel like I’m actually part of the team,” Bigsby says.

Bailey, a second-year student studying community assessment, program design, implementation, and evaluation (CAPDIE) at SPH, is utilizing the power of storytelling to understand and advocate for public housing residents’ pressing health needs as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. She is working with Boston REACH (Race and Ethnic): Partnership in Health and Housing (PHH), a collaboration among SPH, BPHC, the Boston Housing Authority, and the PHH Community Committee (public housing residents and community advocates), to address residents’ concerns about the physical and mental health impacts of COVID-19, as well as safety measures within their homes. Bailey will conduct trainings on advocacy and storytelling, which will not only empower community members to understand and communicate their health needs, but serve as effective methods for humanizing public health issues and shaping health policies.

“I decided to study public health because of my own personal struggles navigating the healthcare system with a chronic illness, and wanting to know more about how people can advocate for themselves—especially people from overlooked and underserved communities,” says Bailey. Storytelling reveals valuable information “beyond what the data can tell us. It represents a personalized experience that is irrefutable in some ways, or speaks to you in ways that numbers or statistics can’t,” she says.

She plans to pursue a career in advocacy, possibly at a community organization in her hometown of Brooklyn, NY, or in a capacity where she can advocate for people who are chronically ill.

“Hearing about people’s journeys and how they’ve been affected by social, economic, and mental barriers galvanizes me to get more involved and do more community work,” says Bailey. “I’m so excited to work alongside community members and learn about what advocacy means to them, and what they’d like to see change within their community.”

“The Activist Lab is delighted to continue our Activist Fellowship program, and offer an additional fellowship through The Boston Foundation, to provide students with the opportunity to help external organizations achieve their mission and make positive change,” says Anne Fidler, assistant dean for public health practice and associate professor of environmental health. “These experiences will provide valuable experiences for these students to apply their classroom learning to the real world and address important problems faced by the most vulnerable members of our community.”

—Jillian McKoy