Summer 2022 Newsletter MCH Alumni Spotlight – Irving Harris Scholars

As an Irving Harris Scholar, Regina worked closely with the Program Coordinator of the UIC CoE-MCH in the collection and management of data for grant monitoring and reporting purposes, as well as the coordination of educational and training events hosted by the CoE. Regina also supported MCH faculty by conducting literature reviews and coordinating 5 different MCH courses during her time as an Irving Harris Scholar. Through these projects, Regina was introduced to how graduate-level training programs and HRSA grants are planned and implemented. Regina shared that in part due to this experience, she gained the opportunity to serve as the Project Coordinator for the Illinois Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and related Disabilities (IL LEND), a federally-funded interdisciplinary graduate-level training program, which is also housed at UIC. Because of the connections she made as an Irving Harris Scholar, the IL LEND and CoE-MCH were able to collaborate in multiple occasions, including meeting with legislators to advocate for continued maternal and child health and disability funding under Title V and the CARES Act. Regina stated, “When I was accepted into the UIC CoE in MCH and offered the Irving Harris Scholar position, my life as a graduate student changed. Thanks to this opportunity, I was able to focus on my degree, instead of worrying about affording my tuition. I was also able to learn skills in grant and project management, which gave me an advantage when I was job searching after graduation.”

Regina currently serves as a Grants Research Specialist with the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) and works to secure federal funding to help the City of Chicago prepare for, respond to, and recover from public health emergencies. She has also assisted with the department’s COVID-19 response by creating a procedure that ensured that requests for personal protective equipment (PPE) and ventilators were processed in a timely and efficient manner, guaranteeing that our medical partners had the tools to safely fight against COVID-19. Just recently, Regina received national recognition from the de Beaumont Foundation. From a group of more than 250 applications, she was selected to join the foundation’s 2021 40 Under 40 in Public Health, which recognizes young leaders whose creativity and innovation are strengthening communities across the country.

Lauren Schwerzler worked as Research Assistant for Dr. Handler during her first year of her MPH. She was also able to complete an online early childhood class through Erikson University in her second year through her experience as an Irving Harris Early Childhood Scholar at the UIC School of Public Health. Lauren shared that the Irving Harris Foundation support and a first-year RA position gave her “a leg up financially,” so she was able to focus on school as opposed to holding other jobs. It also helped her identify impactful and challenging RA positions that allowed her to develop necessary skills for the workforce. Through the skills developed and the faculty connections she made in that first year , she was also able to find and hold additional RA positions throughout the rest of her program. Lauren was able to apply skills like manipulating, cleaning, and translating data in SAS learned in class into her RA projects. She was able to enhance these skills through an assistantship completing data analyses with Keriann Uesugi, the Illinois Department of Public Health, and the federal Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) program. Lauren shared that her experience as an Irving Harris Scholar and RA allowed her to find her first job, as those research assistant experiences counted towards her years of work experience. Lauren stated, “without these opportunities, I wouldn’t have qualified for many positions and wouldn’t be where I am now.”

Lauren currently lives in Minnesota and works at Hennepin County as the Principal Planning Analyst for Single Adult Homeless Shelters. She does system-level work, coordinating and planning with the directors and managers of shelters, people with lived experience of homelessness, and other county, city, and state funders and staff. While her current position may not seem to be a traditional MCH position, every job in public health intersects with MCH. The homeless shelters Lauren works with serve single adults, but many of those people are parents, and having an MCH and systems lens on her work allows her to succeed and partner with other staff and stakeholders that she may not have considered without this knowledge.

Lauren is open to outreach from others in the MCH field and can be contacted at laurenschwerzler@gmail.com.

As a Research Assistant with the UIC MCH program, Jessica supported UIC MCH faculty on various research tasks during her time as a trainee, and collected information from current students and alumni to inform MCH program activities and resources. While she had some research experience entering the program, her professional experience in maternal and child health research and evaluation was expanded as a Research Assistant for the UIC MCH program and the UIC Center for Research on Women and Gender (CRWG). Jessica also was able to apply these skills during her APE internship with Detroit Department of Health and Wellness Promotion and throughout her coursework. This knowledge gained as an Irving Harris Scholar has been the foundation of her career. The understanding she gained around research methodology has been critical to each of her professional positions after graduation and has been helpful in her efforts to publish. Jessica stated, “I simply would not be in the role I am today without the expertise I developed and the on-the-ground work experiences that I had while part of the MCH program.”

Jessica serves as an Evaluation Manager for HealthySteps at ZERO TO THREE. She has more than a decade of experience evaluating health programs, and currently supports site-led HealthySteps research and participates in research partnerships to further expand the HealthySteps evidence base. Prior to her work on HealthySteps, Jessica led efforts to expand the evidence base of Text4baby – a mobile health service designed to promote maternal and child health. Jessica also worked at NORC at the University of Chicago where she served in managing and supporting roles for many public health and health services research and evaluation projects.

Jessica is open to outreach from others in the MCH field and can be contacted at jessbushar@gmail.com.

During her time as an Irving Harris Scholar, Marisa was able to work with Dr. Nadine Peacock and Dr. Susan Altfeld and their research team with their work on safe infant sleep, including an opportunity to contribute to a publication on utilizing a harm reduction approach to safe infant sleep. Marisa also provided support to Dr. Faith Fletcher and a diverse team of researchers from different organizations to conduct research on barriers to PrEP utilization for HIV prevention among Black and African American women in the United States. That opportunity to publish work alongside well-respected researchers during graduate school was something she had not expected when entering the program, and it also helped to ground the theories she was learning about in the classroom and see how researchers can apply different frameworks to their areas of study. Marisa continued her RA position with Dr. Fletcher throughout her MPH program, even continuing for some months after graduation.  Through that experience, she enhanced her skills with questionnaire design, recruitment, and interviewing, all of which helped her attain her current position at the National Opinion Research Center (NORC). Marisa said one of the most important impacts of being an Irving Harris Scholar was her ability to forge close connections with other students, UIC staff, and MCH faculty members. As someone new to the Chicago area, it was a way to create personal connections that lead to other research opportunities and opportunities for mentorship and professional growth. Marisa stated, “the Irving Harris Scholars program allowed me to build my professional network from day one of my MPH program… The opportunity to not only assist with, but have my thoughts and experiences taken seriously by the professionals I was working with is something that I strive to model when I work with recent graduates in my role at NORC.”

Marisa currently serves as a Research Director I at the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.

As an Irving Harris Scholar, Sherri worked on a safe-sleep study, conducted literature reviews, and contributed to manuscripts on both safe-sleep campaigns across major US cities and harm reduction methods/messaging related to safe sleep with Dr. Susan Altfeld and Dr. Nadine Peacock. The financial contribution of being an Irving Harris Scholar allowed Sherri the ability to focus more on her studies, and her experience as a research assistant provided the opportunity to practice skills that she was learning in her academic courses. Sherri shared that this grounding has been useful in every career advancement opportunity she has had so far, and that both organizations in which she has held positions since graduating have been through the referral of a CoE-MCH alumni.

Sherri currently serves as a Program Manager of Evaluation with the Evaluation Technical Assistance Strategy team at Sinai Urban Health Institute (SUHI), where she collaborates with partners to pursue interventions that address inequities in maternal and child health outcomes and partners with Sinai Community Institute (SCI) on projects related to COVID-19 vaccine outreach. Sherri contributes to all aspects of developing, implementing, and leading program evaluation activities. Prior to joining SUHI, Sherri served as Global Health Programs Specialist at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) working at the intersection of global and child health where she contributed to the development and evaluation of training and workshop content for global child and adolescent health initiatives. She was also the staff manager for the International Child Access to Community Health (ICATCH) program, which provides financial and advisory support to pediatricians and other health workers in low- and lower-middle income countries to improve the health of children and adolescents in the countries served.

Müge had the opportunity to serve as Irving Harris Scholar for one semester at the start of her time in her MPH program at the UIC School of Public Health, where she led community outreach efforts in support of the Well Woman Project, as well as researched marketing strategies and wrote, edited, and researched topics for monthly blog posts for the Coe-MCH. During this time, she was able to receive leadership coaching as part of the program and built a relationship with the individual providing leadership and career coaching, which lasted beyond graduation. Through this connection, initially made while Müge was an Irving Harris Research Assistant, she was able to learn more about the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), including job opportunities and a better understanding of the organizational structure and connection to field of maternal and child health. Müge stated that this “kind of access to a coach like Kris felt unique to Irving Harris Scholars” at the time she was in the program, and ultimately helped her on the career path she is currently on today as she has been working at the AAP since graduating.

Müge currently serves as the Manager of Child Welfare Initiatives at the American Academy of Pediatrics, after having held previous roles as the Program Manager of both the Early Hearing Detection and Intervention Program and the National Resource Center for Patient/Family-Centered Medical Home.