A DrPH student in the Department of Community Health Sciences at the School of Public Health, Julia Noguchi believes that small-scale projects can still have a large impact on clinical and public health. When she’s not studying, Noguchi is involved in numerous projects at SPH and elsewhere to help clinicians and public health professionals support their patients, especially helping them with access to low-barrier community resources.

At SPH, she works with Diana Ceballos, assistant professor of environmental health, on developing a curriculum for families of construction workers affected by metal contaminants.

When not at school, Noguchi works in the Office of Medical Education and Continuous Quality Improvement at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University as the director of Service Learning and Community Mentoring, and is developing a paper and electronic “White Coat Pocket Guide” to educate medical students about available community resources to better serve their patients.

She also works with a student-run foot care clinic for people experiencing homelessness in Rhode Island. Through an Activist Bucks grant from the SPH Activist Lab, she has been able to develop trainings, purchase supplies, and expand this clinic to other venues across the state.

“We need to find ways to put patients at the center of our health system,” she says. “The future of public health is an integrative, whole-patient model of care in which hospital systems and community-based services work closely together to improve population health.”