A Dentist Expands Her Scope of Practice.
A Dentist Expands Her Scope of Practice
Mai Hussein, an MPH student from Egypt who practiced dentistry there for more than a decade, examined disparities in healthcare access and use among U.S. oropharyngeal cancer patients this summer through her practicum with the Cancer Epidemiology Education in Special Populations (CEESP) Program.
Mai Hussein. Photo courtesy of Mai Hussein.
Departing Egypt to study biostatistics and epidemiology at the School of Public Health was not a move Mai Hussein undertook lightly.
Back in Alexandria, where Hussein lives with her family between semesters at SPH, she practiced dentistry for over a decade before pivoting to clinical research during the COVID-19 pandemic. She had been working as the head of clinical research administration in Egypt’s Ministry of Health & Population for just over two years when she decided to return to school to study public health. She already held a Master of Medical Sciences in clinical investigation from Harvard Medical School, but Hussein says she was eager to deepen her understanding of population health and to enhance her data analytics skills. She found so much satisfaction in her first career shift, she says, she decided to take the plunge and return to Boston a second time to pursue an MPH.
“When I saw there was suffering beyond the medical condition of [my] patients, pain coming from other factors—which now [I] call social determinants of health—I became more passionate about how I can help them,” says Hussein. “How can I translate their pain in the scientific world?”
Since she first stepped foot on the Boston University Medical Campus in September 2024, Hussein has wasted no time busying herself with opportunities to practice all she is learning in the classroom. Her list of accomplishments and activities over the past two years touches upon nearly every research fellowship available at the school and beyond.
“[Hussein] stands out in so many ways for her delightful, all-in, always participating, always present-everywhere spirit. She is an exemplary example of a student taking advantage of all the School of Public Health has to offer,” says Joe Anzalone, assistant director of advising in the Career & Practicum Office, who met Hussein during her first visit to campus and later helped her find a practicum. “I have seen her engage fully in both academics and in the SPH student community. She truly embodies SPH’s mission to Think. Teach. Do. For the Health of All.”
At Anzalone’s recommendation, Hussein attended an informational session on the Cancer Epidemiology Education in Special Populations (CEESP) Program, a research training program organized by the City University of New York (CUNY) that provides funding for graduate public health students to travel and conduct mentored summer research projects in foreign countries and U.S. minority settings. At the time, Hussein had already taken several advanced epidemiology courses as a participant in the Department of Epidemiology’s Epidemiology Excellence Program, as well as served as a Maternal and Child Health Research Fellow under the mentorship of Kathryn Thompson, assistant professor of community health sciences. Additionally, her ongoing work with Veronika Wirtz to promote diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice (DEIJ) in the Department of Global Health as a Think. Teach. Do. Fellow had been recognized with the 2025 DEIJ Student Award.
Following a successful application, Hussein joined the 2025 cohort of CEESP fellows, alongside two SPH peers, Jenna Zabroski and Sarah Lawler. For their summer practicums as CEESP research fellows, Zabroski went to Romania to study pediatric cancer, Lawler to Thailand to study cholangiocarcinoma (cancer of the bile ducts), and Hussein, rather than return to Egypt for the summer, remained in Boston to study oropharyngeal and oral cancers (cancer of the throat and mouth).
Using the Merative MarketScan Research Databases—a nationally representative sample of longitudinal, deidentified U.S. healthcare claims data—Hussein assessed the prevalence, economic burden, and healthcare utilization of U.S. oropharyngeal and oral cancer (OOC) patients with Medicare and commercial insurance. Over the course of two months, she cleaned, analyzed, and interpreted the data with the support of her CEESP mentors: Megan Healey, clinical associate professor of epidemiology at SPH; Amr Soliman, professor of community health and social medicine at CUNY School of Medicine; and Onur Baser, associate professor of health economics at the Graduate School of Public Health at CUNY.
“It was very challenging, because you’re dealing with all the U.S., all health insurance, so you start your analysis with millions of patients,” says Hussein, “but I had [my mentors’] help, their guidance. Starting from the analysis to scientific writing, to finalizing the result, to writing the manuscript, to preparing a presentation, to giving a presentation and a workshop, and having an abstract [at] a conference in Boston,” says Hussein. She was also recently notified that their manuscript, on which she is first author, has been accepted for publication in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.
Having completed both her practicum and her classwork, Hussein is on track to graduate this spring, but not before she squeezes in yet another fellowship, this time with the Center for Trauma and Mental Health under the mentorship of Jaimie Gradus, director of the center and professor of epidemiology. She also looks forward to dedicating more time this semester to the other manuscripts she is working on, including one with Koichiro Shiba in the Department of Epidemiology and another for her Integrative Learning Experience under the mentorship of Marcia Pescador Jimenez, associate professor of epidemiology.
When asked why she keeps so busy, Hussein says, “I’m one of the ambassadors for BUSPH, and I love this place, [it’s] my second family and it’s given me a lot. I feel that part of me has a commitment to return all the gifts that I got from the school in a nice way.”
