SPH Plugs In: What We are Reading, Watching, and More.
SPH Plugs In: What We are Reading, Watching, and More
Members of the SPH community share recommendations for books, films, podcasts, and other content that have resonated with them as they study, research, and practice public health.
Occasionally, a book, film, or podcast comes along that both engages audiences and prominently features important topics in public health. These stories, whether fiction or nonfiction, remind those in the field of the vital role of narrative in communication, education, and inspiration.
In light of a new series premiering on PBS called The Invisible Shield that explores public health infrastructure in the U.S. (and features Dean Sandro Galea), School of Public Health community members share their recommendations for the stories and storytellers that have resonated with them.
Dacia Beard / Dopesick
Dacia Beard, a communications project manager in the Department of Health Law, Policy and Management, has spent the last several years collaborating with communities heavily affected by the opioid crisis on research aimed to reduce opioid overdoses. As a result, Beard is acutely aware of the role pharmaceutical companies have played in opioid misuse. She recommends that the SPH community watch the Hulu miniseries Dopesick to better understand “how did we get here” in terms of the over-dispensing of opioids.
Muka Chikuba-McLeod / And the Band Played On
Muka Chikuba-McLeod (SPH’98), a co-recipient of SPH’s 2023 Distinguished Alumni Award, is a Zambian physician and the executive vice president of international programs at the global health consulting organization John Snow, Inc. (JSI). Following medical school, Chikuba-McLeod worked on the frontlines of Zambia’s HIV crisis for seven years. The experience drove her to pursue a career in public health, where she felt she could make an impact on a larger scale. When asked what one piece of public health content she would recommend to the SPH community, Chikuba-McLeod says, “I think it has to be And the Band Played On.”
The 1993 film, based on American journalist Randy Shilts’s 1987 book by the same name, tells a story not unlike Chikuba-McLeod’s own, following an epidemiologist who worked on an Ebola outbreak in Zaire in the late 1970s and later studied HIV/AIDS at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the early 1980s. “I’m also an epidemiologist—apart from having an MPH in international health, I have a master of science in epidemiology,” says Chikuba-McLeod, who was responsible for organizing HIV treatment for over 300,000 Zambians in her last role at JSI. “And this movie was so heartbreaking, but also a realistic depiction of public health work as we do it, warts and all.”
Jirair Ratevosian / Sex Education
Jirair Ratevosian (SPH’07) also dedicated a large chunk of his career to HIV/AIDS work. In his most recent role as the first ever health equity advisor in the US State Department, Ratevosian helped oversee the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) program. He then left the field to campaign for US representative of California’s 30th Congressional District. Ratevosian, who is openly gay and married to Nigerian HIV activist Micheal Ighodaro, enthusiastically recommends the Netflix TV series Sex Education. He appreciates how the show raises awareness of sexual health in a way that destigmatizes coming out as LGBTQ+, which he says is an identity that personally took him many years to embrace.
Anoop Jain / The Covenant of Water
Anoop Jain, an assistant professor of environmental health, studies sanitation issues as social determinants of health in India. Trained in social epidemiology, Jain researches how access to clean water and toilets early in life affects health outcomes later in life. He is also the founding director of Sanitation and Health Rights in India, a nonprofit on a mission to end open defecation in the country.
Jain, who both conducts research in northern India and has family there, says he enjoys reading books by Indian and Indian-diaspora authors. He recently read Indian American physician and New York Times-bestselling author Abraham Verghese’s The Covenant of Water. The novel, set in the coastal Indian state of Kerala, follows three generations of a family as they reckon with the drowning deaths of at least one person from each generation. Ultimately—without giving too much away—the matriarch connects the dots and uncovers the root cause of her family’s “curse,” says Jain.
“It is this interesting example of the ways in which epidemiology works,” he says. “It is this beautiful illustration of how people and their stories are data, and the ways in which it is incumbent on us, as public health researchers and scholars, to sift through that in order to seek out the truth.”
Jeneczka Roman / “A Primer on Power: Housing Justice and Health Equity”
& Alexis Walls / Beacon Hill in 5
Alums Jeneczka Roman (SPH’20) and Alexis Walls (SPH’17) are colleagues at the Massachusetts Public Health Association (MPHA) where they collaborate to promote policies that support the health of Commonwealth residents. To stay abreast of the latest developments in local policy, Walls, an assistant campaign director at MPHA, listens to the New England Public Media podcast Beacon Hill in 5. She says that while the podcast does not exclusively cover public health issues, it is a useful for keeping up broadly with what is happening in the Massachusetts State House, such as ongoing discussions on gun control. “It is five minutes and only comes out about once a week,” says Walls. “I think that is a great place for people to dig in.”
Roman, the assistant director of advocacy and communication at MPHA, says she returns time and time again to “A Primer on Power: Housing Justice and Health Equity,” a report published by the research organization Human Impact Partners. “I am not kidding when I say I refer to it almost weekly,” she says. “Oftentimes we get asked why a public health association is working on housing, and I think that this resource lays out beautifully the role public health practitioners can play in organizing in solidarity with movement groups to bring power back to community to advance housing and justice and how building power is so integral to advancing health equity and reducing negative health outcomes.”
Nickita Gupta / Health Pilots
Nickita Gupta is a current MPH student studying Community Assessment, Program Development, Implementation and Evaluation (CAPDIE). During the summer of 2023, Gupta applied what she is learning to document the needs of Dorchester’s Grove Hall community during a practicum funded by the Activist Lab. In addition to her studies, Gupta also works as a part-time program coordinator for the nonprofit Center for Care Innovations (CCI), which aims to strengthen healthcare systems that provide care to historically underserved communities.
Gupta says she likes to listen to CCI’s podcast Health Pilots and would recommend it to others in the field. “All the topics are very pertinent to storytelling within public health practice,” she says. Some examples of topics covered in Health Pilots episodes include centering the resilience and wellness of care teams (“Help the Helpers: Embracing the Cultural Shift for Trauma-Informed Care”) and amplifying community voices in design projects (“Centering Lived-Experience Experts as Equity Designers”).
Dana Vasers / Five Days at Memorial
Dana Vasers, a former lawyer and a current MPH student studying healthcare management, also completed an Activist Practicum, using her skills as an attorney to support the Massachusetts Alcohol Policy Coalition.
Vasers recommends Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink. She says she read the book after completing an in-class activity in her Human Resource Management in Public Health course that referenced the events it chronicles. Set in New Orleans, Louisiana during the week following Hurricane Katrina, the book follows the staff of Memorial Medical Center (today, Ochsner Baptist Medical Center) as they grappled with how to care for their patients in the midst of severe flooding, a loss of power, and other challenging conditions.
MacKenzie Hilton / Coded Bias
MacKenzie Hilton (SPH ’24), who graduated with her MPH in December 2023, developed an interest in artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging digital technologies while a student in the course Digital Disruption in Health: The Effects of Health Information Technologies on Polices, Delivery, Patient Engagement, And Health Outcomes taught by Michelle Sasso. Hilton proceeded to go down a rabbit hole, watching a variety of shows about AI on Netflix.
Hilton recommends the 2020 documentary Coded Bias. She found that the film, which investigates racial bias in facial recognition algorithms, provided her with a useful framework for thinking about the challenges of implementing digital tools in a way that reduces rather than exacerbates health inequities. Hilton went on to find a practicum position at Boston Children’s Hospital that allowed her to explore the topic further and even gave her the opportunity to help outline guiding principles for the equitable development and application of AI in healthcare. She says that she recommended Sasso’s course to all her friends, telling them, “You’re going to love it!”
