Christie Ngo Named BU’s Graduate Student Employee of the Year.
Christie Ngo Named BU’s Graduate Student Employee of the Year
Christie Ngo (SPH’23) has been named Boston University’s Graduate Student Employee of the Year, an honor that since 1989 has recognized students who excel in the performance of their on-campus jobs.
Ngo currently works as a data analyst for the New England Public Health Training Center (NEPHTC), supporting analysis of public health training performance and evaluation data and population health data. NEPHTC is a Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)-funded continuing education program based at BUSPH that delivers training and technical assistance for the public health workforce in the six New England states.
It is the second time in as many years that an SPH student has received the honor; in 2022, Adaeze Okorie (SPH’23) won the award for her work at the Center for Antiracist Research.
Karla Todd Barrett, a senior program manager at NEPHTC, nominated Ngo in the category of Critical Thinking, and wrote that Ngo quickly demonstrated her aptitude soon after starting her data analyst job by taking on an important project supporting one of NEPHTC’s collaborators.
“Christie chose to go beyond expectations by taking on a project for the Vermont Department of Health (VDH). She took the opportunity to assist in analyzing chronic disease morbidity/mortality population data for different BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) populations in Vermont. This highly motivated commitment allowed Christie’s analysis to have an impact that will touch real Vermonter’s lives,” Todd Barrett wrote.
Ngo’s data analysis, flexibility, excellent communication, and collaborative attitude were essential to enable NEPHTC to meet demanding and difficult performance reporting deadlines, Todd Barrett wrote. For one project, Ngo gathered, checked, and coded several thousand lines of data in two months, which was an intense, high-pressure deadline required by the reporting period and funding timelines.
For an important segment of the project, Ngo showed both leadership and the willingness to go above and beyond her role to support the Health Statistics & Informatics Division of the VDH, according to Todd Barrett. Ngo’s work was used to enhance programming for an initiative called the 3-4-50 Framework, a community health improvement strategy based on evidence that three health behaviors elevate risk for four chronic conditions that together cause more than fifty percent of deaths.
Ngo analyzed data and prepared a special population data brief for Vermonters of color and LGBTQ+ Vermonters, and is currently finishing a brief related to food security and housing. Her work was submitted to the Governor’s Report, with the findings that it “shows that quality of life for Vermonters of color is disproportionately affected by chronic disease; American Indian or Alaskan Native and multi-racial Vermont adults have significantly higher rates of lung disease, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease compared to White, non-Hispanic Vermont adults.”
Ngo will be honored April 10 in a ceremony on the Charles River Campus.