Hello everyone, welcome to my Master of Public Health (MPH) academic portfolio! Within this portfolio you will find a culmination of my motivators to become a public health practitioner, things I learned along the way, examples of projects and papers I have completed, reflections on my community experiences, and goals I have as new practitioner.
Now, you may ask, “Well, how did she get here?”
In 2021, I graduated from Old Dominion University with a Bachelor of Science in Dental Hygiene and became a Registered Dental Hygienist. Upon graduation, I knew I wasn’t done reaching my academic goals and decided that I wanted to further my education in how I can serve people that I love and care about most, so I took up Public Health. I also knew that I wanted to have the opportunity to mesh my two professions (Dental Hygiene & Public Health) and dive deeper into the community aspect of dentistry because I found a passion in providing care to underserved populations. Whilst being a hygienist, I found that there is a huge gap in linking oral health matters to systemic health conditions, both chronic and acute. To add, I discovered that oral health literacy amongst all socioeconomic classes is dangerously low and continues to plummet as social determinants of health take part. All of these realizations urged me to concentrate on Health Behavior and Promotion in my public health studies, which brought me here!
