Public Health Students

Learning Laboratory for Community Health prepares graduate students to solve real-world public health challenges

Taylor Thomas — Wed, 05 Jun 2024 15:55:33 +0000

Learning Laboratory for Community Health prepares graduate students to solve real-world public health challenges Taylor Thomas Wed, 06/05/2024 - 11:55

The Learning Laboratory for Community Health at ��AV held the first in-person Learning Lab Challenge at the Inaugural Empowered Communities Conference. For the challenge, graduate research assistants (GRAs) were tasked with developing an intervention that addressed the very real public health issue of opioid use disorder among adolescents and young adults.

Over the semester, GRAs worked in interdisciplinary teams, with community stakeholders providing insights into their research process and conducting interviews with affected youth and families to determine how to best meet the community's health needs.

Ashley Wiest

“We were excited to showcase student milestones achieved, challenges overcome, and collective triumphs that define our community journey toward a healthier, more equitable future,” said Ashley Wiest, a research faculty member in the College of Public Health and the Learning Lab project coordinator.

The challenge concluded with GRAs presenting their interventions to a panel of experts, who evaluated and selected the intervention that will be implemented at the Mason and Partners (MAP) clinics. The experts included

Kadhambari Sridhar, Community Preparedness Coordinator at the Fairfax County Health Department;
Jennifer Felts, Population Health Epidemiologist specializing in substance use and mental health; and
Shannyn Snyder, an adjunct faculty in the Department of Global and Community renowned for her expertise in socioeconomic disparities and social justice issues.

Under the guidance of Lisa Gring-Pemble, an associate professor in the Costello College of Business, the winning intervention, titled "Club Culmore: A Place-Based Wellness Model for Adolescents and Young Adults," was designed by three GRAs:

Shams Hadi Al Jassar, biology major and pre-medical student
Olivia Hutton, Master of Health Administration student
Eyesha Shaikh, Master of Social Work student

Shams Hadi Al Jassar

Olivia Hutton

Eyesha Shaikh

Club Culmore presents a comprehensive seven-step approach to wellness. From mental health services to tailored social media campaigns, workforce skill development, and a dedicated medication-assisted treatment (MAT) clinic, this innovative proposal promises to address the opioid epidemic through community collaboration and tailored services for at-risk youth.

“It was rewarding to celebrate the transformative impact our Mason students have had on the landscape of community health. Their dedication, resilience, and unwavering commitment to excellence have enhanced their individual growth and enriched our community,” said Wiest.

The Learning Lab was created with support from a $1 million Health Services Research grant, made possible by Congressman Gerry Connolly of Virginia's 11th District, who shepherded the proposal through Congress. Rebecca Sutter serves as the grant's project director and principle investigator. The mission of the Learning Laboratory is to support multidisciplinary training for public health students and professionals, with special attention to marginalized communities within Northern Virginia.

The Learning Lab’s impact on students and the community

Since its inception, the Learning Laboratory has been highly successful. In the second year of the lab, students reported the lab

increased their knowledge of community stakeholders,
increased confidence in discussing core public health topics, and
significantly improved their critical thinking skills related to community health, networking and research, problem-solving, and professional development.

“The Learning Lab is dedicated to equipping students with the multifaceted skills essential for success in the workforce after graduation. Our teaching models foster proficiency in research, interviewing, data collection, administrative tasks, and community resource utilization alongside technological competencies, thus nurturing a generation of adept community health professionals,” said Wiest.

Read the Lab’s 2023-24 Impact Report.

In This Story

Shannyn Snyder, MAIS

Ashley Wiest, DNP, FNP-BC

Rebecca Sutter, DNP, APRN, BC-FNP

Lisa M. Gring-Pemble

Topics

experiential learning

Impact

Community Health

Mason and Partners Clinic

Public Health Students

Kim McNally becomes George Mason’s first PhD in public health

Taylor Thomas — Thu, 02 May 2024 15:50:40 +0000

Kim McNally becomes George Mason’s first PhD in public health Taylor Thomas Thu, 05/02/2024 - 11:50

��AV's College of Public Health started its new PhD in Public Health in 2021 with a cohort of six students. Just three and a half years later, Fairfax County Health Department School Nurse Kim McNally will be the program's first PhD to walk across the Commencement stage at EagleBank Arena this May.

By training the future public health workforce, including epidemiologists, nurses, nutritionists, health administrators, and social workers, George Mason’s College of Public Health—the first in Virginia—helps reduce the public health worker shortage, and its students and graduates help individuals and communities get healthy and stay healthy. Since the PhD program's inception, the college has accepted 27 students.

Kim McNally (center) with her mentors Professor Ali Weinstein and Professor Amira Roess. Photo provided

After receiving her bachelor's in social work from Rutgers University, McNally went to work in child protective services, ultimately deciding it was not for her. She went back to school, earning her bachelor's in nursing and master's in nursing education from Western Carolina University. After a year working in a hospital, she realized her love of public health, which led to her applying to George Mason’s brand-new PhD program in public health. McNally successfully defended her dissertation in April.

Throughout her studies, McNally continued to work full time as a public health school nurse for the Fairfax County Health Department as part of the School Health program, which provides schools with school health aides and public health nurses. Her current position as a school health nurse in Fairfax County has been instrumental to PhD goals.

McNally’s primary research during her PhD was looking at ways to improve HPV vaccine compliance, particularly among seventh graders. In fact, it was this goal that led her to getting her PhD in the first place:

“I really wanted to jump right in and do an intervention. But then I had to take a step back when I realized that we didn’t have the research to support developing one intervention over another. And so that’s where it started. [It] was just looking at a way to empower school nurses in particular,” said McNally.

As for what she plans to do now that she’s completed her degree, McNally still isn’t sure.

“I love my job,” she said. “It’s an amazing job. I work with amazing people so I would love to stay in school health.”

However, she also would like to work with schools and the health department to support school health nurses because the one thing she has heard over and over again is that school nurses are overburdened.

McNally is also very passionate about mobile health clinics. She says in the years she has been working in schools in Northern Virginia, she has never seen a mobile health clinic on a registration day or during an open house that offered the HPV vaccine and other immunizations required by Virginia state law for students in public schools.

As she looks toward Commencement this May, McNally said she couldn’t have reached her goals without George Mason and her mentors. McNally’s family, mentors, and well-wishers from the College of Public Health were in attendance as she defended her dissertation.

“Dr. [Amira] Roess [professor of Global Health and Epidemiology] has been my faculty mentor since day one and she’s been really amazing, really supportive. Guiding when guiding was needed but also letting me grow on my own,” McNally said.

She also took inspiration from her mentor Ali Weinstein, a professor in the Department of Global and Community Health, and how well she balanced the research aspect with the people aspect.

“We definitely need numbers and rates, but we also need to understand why people choose to vaccinate or choose not to vaccinate. I do feel like it definitely prepared me for my future goals," McNally said.

“I’m excited to see how Kim will continue to impact the fields of school nursing and public health,” said Roess. “She is a terrific role model for our current and future doctoral students.”

Adds Weinstein: “Her work is impactful and meaningful because of the combination of practical knowledge that highlighted a gap in public health practice.”

Learn more about the PhD in Public Health program here.