“I Want to Challenge Myself Even More”.
Vivian Muzyk poses in front of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center. Photo credit: Alyssa LaFaro/UNC Research
“I Want to Challenge Myself Even More”
Before enrolling in the online MPH program at the School of Public Health, Vivian Muzyk built a career in journalism and nonprofit communications while navigating cancer survivorship, parenting, and foster care. Now, she is using her training and lived experience to help policies, programs, and systems better serve the people who rely on them.
Before Vivian Muzyk became a student in the online MPH program at the School of Public Health, she was a journalist, parent, and cancer patient.
Today, alongside her studies, Muzyk supports cancer-related research and serves as a patient advocate, drawing on her experience as a cancer survivor to help others navigate care and survivorship.
Muzyk’s brush with her own mortality led her to reflect on the trajectory of her life, she says, and ultimately, catalyzed her decision to study public health.
“Anybody who’s diagnosed with cancer, at whatever stage, will lose sleep wondering if their life will end sooner than they expected—and whether they’ve been living it the way they want,” she says.
After earning her master’s degree in journalism from the University of Georgia, Muzyk got her professional start as a writer and editor at Southern Living. She eventually shifted her career into nonprofit communications, assuming a position as director of communications at the American Heart Association in Birmingham, Ala. Along the way, Muzyk and her husband decided to start a family, and Muzyk gave birth to two children. When the family relocated to North Carolina for her husband’s clinical training, Muzyk found opportunities to continue honing her narrative storytelling skills at state nonprofits, where she advocated for early childhood education and healthcare programs, designed campaigns to advance safe sleep practices, and supported the implementation of community violence prevention trainings. Muzyk and her husband were preparing to welcome a foster child to the family when they received life-changing news they were not prepared for: at age 44, Muzyk had breast cancer.
Muzyk had no symptoms, no family history, no lifestyle-related risk factors. Yet doctors discovered a tumor during a routine mammogram screening—an appointment she had nearly skipped.
Is this really necessary? She had wondered at the time.
But Muzyk’s husband worked next door to the clinic, where Muzyk was scheduled to have her appointment, and he had invited her out to lunch afterward. The promise of a shared midday meal swayed her to go after all, and fortunately, the disease was detected in its early stages. Over the course of a year following her diagnosis, Muzyk underwent successful treatment with surgery and radiation at Duke University Hospital.
But the true healing began, she says, when one of her clinicians referred her to Get Real and Heel, an exercise oncology program at nearby UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center that takes its title from the “Tar Heel” nickname adopted by North Carolina residents. Cancer treatments and medications had left her with persistent fatigue, joint pain, and reduced physical stamina. through structured exercise and peer support, the program helped her rebuild strength and resilience during recovery.
Muzyk wanted to do more than just survive cancer; she wanted to come back stronger. And, with the support of an exercise plan and the community she found through Get Real and Heel, she did.
“[Cancer] made me think, ‘Okay, when I’m feeling well again, what do I really want to do with my life? Where else can I have an impact?’” says Muzyk. “I’ve had all these experiences, and I’d love to put them to good use and help other people if I can. I’m really enjoying my life, but I do feel like I have more to give. I want to challenge myself even more.”
While running on the treadmill, a habit she had developed in Get Real and Heel, she overheard that the hospital was looking to expand access to the program to Spanish speakers. As a bilingual Latina, former patient, and stay-at-home mom, Muzyk recognized she was in a unique position to help.
“After my experiences with cancer and foster care, I became focused on how policies and programs actually land with the people they’re meant to serve,” says Muzyk. “The first rule of communications is knowing your audience, and I’ve seen how often well-intentioned efforts miss the mark because they don’t take the time to really listen. I see the same challenges in cancer research. We all want people to thrive—but the real question is how we get there. That’s why I went back for an MPH: to build the research skills needed to connect advocacy, evidence, and lived experience in ways that truly work in communities.”
Muzyk spoke with SPH about the importance of expanding access to programs like Get Real and Heel, the impact of foster parenting on her worldview, and the public health problems nearest to her heart.
Q&A
With Vivian Muzyk, online MPH student
SPH: You credit the program Get Real and Heel with being instrumental in your recovery from cancer, and now, you are applying expertise from your own experience as a patient and skills from your studies in the online MPH program to help launch a version of Get Real and Heel for Spanish speakers. Why is it important that public health interventions like Get Real and Heel be culturally competent and more widely accessible?
Muzyk: I’m from Florida, and my parents are from Cochabamba, Bolivia, so I’m a first-generation American, and I’m bilingual. Being bilingual in Florida is very commonplace. Materials are printed in Spanish and English. There’s Univision and Telemundo. It is really part of society. [In North Carolina], it’s different, and, since moving here, there has been such a need for cultural adaptation work.
At one of my first jobs in North Carolina, I was with the NC Healthy Start Foundation, and what they did is they create materials and health campaigns, mostly focused on infant mortality. [For example] they had the Back to Sleep campaign, which is about putting babies on their backs to sleep to reduce the risk of SIDS [Sudden Infant Death Syndrome]. I was always another set of eyes and ears to edit material, and that’s where I first learned the value of cultural competency.
There’s no one-size-fits-all. That’s one thing I’ve learned. In my own experience with cancer care, foster parenting, public health, there’s no one-size-fits-all. Lives are complicated. People need to make their own decisions, but we can still empower people to make healthier choices. So, if we know that people are going to co-sleep, what are the safe ways to do that? And [how do we] create those materials in Spanish? The same applies to Get Real and Heal. You have to understand what Latinos are going through, especially here in North Carolina. Given the fear and uncertainty many immigrants are experiencing, how do you meet people where they are? How do you gain trust and provide programming in ways that people feel safe?
The first cohort is up and running right now. We’re doing them in the Triangle and in Winston-Salem. Once another is up and running, then we’re going to do a pre- and post-assessment. […] The research matters because policymakers and funders want evidence that programs work. That process helps ensure we’re delivering interventions that meaningfully improve people’s health. Being part of that work has been both energizing and deeply fulfilling.
SPH: Do you find that your experience as a foster parent has informed your professional work or the way you view health equity?
Muzyk: Supporting someone in foster care and connecting with others in that community fundamentally changed how I think about policy and program design. It really underscored how important it is to include people with lived experience when developing systems meant to support families.
Like many people, I initially assumed that removing [these] children from their homes was often the safest or best solution. But what I’ve learned—something anyone who works in this space will tell you—is that children want to be with their parents. That bond matters, regardless of neighborhood, school, or resources. If we care about children, we have to go upstream and ensure parents are supported and doing okay.
Too often, families become involved in the system because of poverty, substance use, or other structural challenges. These situations aren’t about a lack of love—parents and children both suffer. That experience shifted my perspective toward prevention and family support, and toward building systems that help families thrive before crises occur.
SPH: If you could wave a magic wand and solve one public health challenge, what would it be and why?
Muzyk: I want us to shift our thinking toward supporting vulnerable people instead of shaming them. So many people are struggling for reasons that are completely outside their control. Any one of us could be a single diagnosis, loss, or crisis away from being vulnerable, and that reality really changes how you see the world.
You see it in foster care, where children enter the system for all kinds of reasons that aren’t their fault. Life happens, families fall into hard situations, and both parents and kids suffer. We need more empathy—and right now, we also need more trust in public health.
We have a communications challenge. We have to get better at showing up, telling stories clearly, and explaining what we’re doing and why it matters. Public health is under attack, and building trust has never been more important. That’s something I think about a lot, and something I want to work toward using my public health training.
