By Susannah Anderson, MPH
My research focuses on social determinants of health, and perhaps because I’m a former biology teacher, I’m specifically interested in education as a determinant of health. Disparities in education mirror disparities in health, and in the interests of cutting expenses, education policy may be widening these gaps rather than shrinking them. Though my research may not have always have a health-related outcome like viral load or blood pressure, I’m convinced of its importance to public health.
On April 18-19, I attended the annual meeting of the National Association of Urban Debate Leagues (NAUDL) in Washington, D.C. with Dr. Briana Mezuk, my advisor from my MPH. We attended the annual awards dinner and presented our recent research on students in Chicago Public Schools. Graduation rates and college attendance in many of the cities in the NAUDL lag behind the national average, and in my Master’s thesis, Dr. Mezuk and I documented how participation in an urban debate league may improve a student’s likelihood of graduating from high school.
At NAUDL’s annual dinner, I met and heard speeches by students, coaches, and NAUDL staff. The student speech was especially inspiring, in which Wynter Haley Scott discussed how her experiences with her debate team shaped her time in high school. After focusing on recoding data and looking for significant effects, I appreciated hearing about how these programs have contributed to positive outcomes for the students.
I appreciated the opportunity to share my research with NAUDL staff, while listening to their feedback and hearing their ideas and questions about the analyses. Dr. Mezuk and I presented our recent research on college attendance and survey data from Chicago Public Schools to the NAUDL’s board of directors and to the league directors. Because I was one of the few people at the meeting who had never been any kind of debater, getting to know the coaches, student debaters, and former debaters reminded me of the people behind the numbers I’d been analyzing, and how that work can have a tangible effect on people and programs.
Susannah Anderson is a doctoral student in the Department of Global Community Health and Behavioral Sciences. Her research interests center around adolescent health and social determinants of health.
