SPH Plugs In: Fresh Picks for Spring.
SPH Plugs In: Fresh Picks for Spring
Members of the SPH community share their picks for several books and a song that they would recommend to others in public health.
School of Public Health community members share recommendations for content that has resonated with them and that they feel others in public health might also appreciate:
“Drag Queens in Limousines” / Corryn Barter
Corryn Barter, an MPH student studying Community Assessment, Program Design, Implementation, and Evaluation (CAPDIE), recommends the song “Drag Queens in Limousines” by Mary Gauthier. The song was title track of Gauthier’s first album and won her the award for best country song/best country artist at the 1999 GLAMAS (Gay & Lesbian American Music Awards). Its autobiographical lyrics harken back to Gauthier’s high school years coming of age as a gay woman in the South and finding solace among other outsiders. Her experiences with adoption, addiction, and recovery.
Barter appreciates the song’s dual messages to both be yourself and accept others for who they are. She often found herself drawing motivation from listening to the song prior to going into work at the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics (MONUM) where she was a New Urban Mechanics Summer Fellow during summer 2025. Barter worked as a high school physics and health teacher prior to enrolling at SPH, and hopes to use her public health education—including her experience as a summer fellow in City Hall—to one day develop comprehensive social-emotional learning programs for young people and adults.
“It’s my favorite song of all time,” says Gauthier. “It’s a great example of storytelling. [Gauthier] talks about what it was like living in the ’80s, but [the song] is really just about community and appreciating where you are from and where you are now.”
The Commercial Determinants of Health / Alyssa Benalfew-Ramos
According to Alyssa Benalfew-Ramos (SPH’19), the chief of policy for the Black Economic Council of Massachusetts (BECMA), The Commercial Determinants of Health is essential readying for all students of public health. Edited by Nason Maani, Mark Petticrew, and former SPH dean Sandro Galea, the book describes how private sector activities affect population health. Through case studies featuring commercial actors such as the tobacco and fossil fuels industries, the book explores the influence of money, profit, and power over health.
“I think [the book] is really helping me understand the moment that we’re in,” says Benalfew-Ramos, who studied health policy and law while an MPH student. She says she feels well-versed in the social determinants of health from her education at SPH and familiar with the political determinants of health from her job at BECMA, but she appreciated the opportunities presented in the book to gain insight into lesser-known determinants of health, such as the potentially outsized influence of tech leaders. She has found this added context helpful as she strives to build the political power of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’s Black community to advance racial and economic justice.
Evenings and Weekends / Summer Kaeppel
The book Evenings and Weekends by Oisin McKenna recently became a favorite of Summer Kaeppel, manager of social media content and strategy in the Office of Marketing and Communications at SPH. Kaeppel, an avid reader and active member of a book club, discovered and quickly consumed the book on her own after the title came up while she was searching for recommendations from fellow fans of the Irish author Caroline O’Donoghue.
Evenings and Weekends follows an ensemble cast of interconnected characters over the course of a single weekend during London’s 2019 heat wave—”imagine the classic movie Love, Actually, but way better,” quips Kaeppel. One of her favorite aspects of the book is how it uses a multi-generational lens to explore of sexual identity. “It is more common to encounter stories about young people coming to terms with their identities, but Evening and Weekends shows a variety of characters, young and old, at different stages of understanding themselves,” she says. “I loved seeing the overlap in emotions across characters—how people at the beginnings and ends of their lives can experience the same exact same feelings.”
Dungeon Crawler Carl / Anna McKay
“Phenomenal,” is the word Anna McKay uses to describe the science fantasy LitRPG (literary role-playing game) book series Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman. Given the millions of copies the series has sold since it was picked up by a commercial publisher in late 2024 after originally being self-published online in 2020—it would appear she is not alone in her assessment. The series focuses on Coast Guard veteran Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s cat, Princess Donut, who together survive an alien invasion of Earth only to be thrust alongside other survivors onto a sadistic intergalactic game show.
McKay, who works alongside Kaeppel as the head of website and design in the Office of Marketing and Communications at SPH, enjoys the dark humor Dinniman employs as he explores human behavior in the face of extremely stressful and chaotic circumstances not unlike those resulting from real-world public health challenges. She offers the following review: “Ever feel like you are surviving an apocalypse by obeying the absurd expectations of a corrupt and mean wealthy class that seems to completely control your every experience and choice? Or maybe you were already having a miserable day, only to find out the world is even worse than you could imagine? If so, Dungeon Crawler Carl—and Princess Donut the cat—could offer you a much-needed sense of fulfillment, community, levity, and maybe even hope.”
Having it All: What Data Tells Us about Women’s Lives and Getting the Most Out of Yours / Vivian Muzyk
Vivian Muzyk, a communications specialist and online MPH student living in North Carolina, recommends the book Having it All: What Data Tells Us about Women’s Lives and Getting the Most Out of Yours by Corinne Low, PhD. Muzyk—who has worn many hats over the course of her life, including journalist, cancer patient, and parent—resonated strongly with the book’s data-driven take on the tradeoffs women face in the pursuit of fulfilling professional and personal lives. “There’s this expectation for each individual woman to figure it out—to figure out childcare and work—and it’s too much. American women aren’t failing as individuals, the system makes it really hard, and caregiving isn’t valued,” she says. In a post Muzyk shared to LinkedIn after beginning to read Having it All, she writes, “Corinne Low reminds us: the core issue isn’t individual effort — it’s structural design.”
In another LinkedIn post, Muzyk reflected on the parallels she has observed between the invisible labor of public health and motherhood. “Both are rooted in care, consistency, and prevention—the kind of work that often goes unseen precisely because it works,” she writes. Her message was well-received, garnering over 1000 likes and more than 200 reshares. She looks forward to leveraging her education in public health to connect advocacy, evidence, and lived experience to advance policies and programs that support women and families.
