Eight of our MPH students attended the 2019 CityMatCH Maternal and Child Health Leadership Conference, held September 23-25, in Providence, Rhode Island. What follows is a post from one of these attendees.
By Annapurna Kocherlakota, BA
The CityMatCH 2019 conference was truly an amazing experience. This was the first large public health conference I have attended so everything was very new and exciting.
I was delighted when I saw the keynote speaker, Kitcki A. Carroll, was going to be presenting on Indigenous people in the United States. This is one of the populations with whom I am most interested in working so I was thrilled they were being highlighted. The talk was scheduled to be an hour and a half so I was a little worried that I might have trouble focusing, especially since I had arrived in Providence very late the night before and this talk was first thing in the morning and in a different time zone. I was shocked when I realized how quickly the time had gone; he could have spoken for another hour and I would not have noticed.
While I went to many fascinating seminars and workshops, one of the most valuable parts of the conference was all of the networking opportunities. The conference app allowed us to access a list of all of the participants and send them messages. While nerve-racking, I sent out cold-call-style emails to each participant whose work interested me. I was shocked that nearly everyone I emailed responded and agreed to meet me. I was able to conduct four informational interviews with six people in less than twelve hours. These were people who work all over the country with rural and Indigenous populations, all from an MCH perspective. I’m so glad I was able to make all of these connections.
Annapurna Kocherlakota, BA, is a second-year MPH student, concentrating in Maternal and Child Health. She plans to graduate in May 2020. Her interest focuses on negative fetal exposures, including fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, neonatal abstinence syndrome, and industrial pollution-related birth defects. She has a particular interest in rural populations and Indigenous peoples, particularly in the United States and Canada. She also loves cooking, eating, traveling, and watching true crime TV shows.
