Monique Hedmann, MPH, is a public health researcher, poet, community health advocate, and premedical student in the Northern Manhattan community. Here, we meet Monique as she talks about her interest in public health and her inspirations.

Q: How did you get interested in public health?

A: I grew up with a mother who is an OB/GYN doctor who showed me from an early age how to have compassion for people who have ill health. At a young age, I began to see the different factors that affect a person’s health. When I went to college, I majored in psychology and I also took some medical sociology classes. The medical sociology classes were by far the most fascinating classes I took in college. That is how I first found the field of public health and when I graduated, I knew that I wanted to pursue a career in public health.

Q: What are some experiences that have shaped your work with public health?

A: When I was two years old, my mother and I moved from Houston, Texas to Los Angeles, California, where I was raised. From when I was five until about ten, a woman named Ms. Johnson helped raise me. She was 75 years old and from Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  Although I remember her as a beautiful and very strong older woman, I saw the things that she struggled with on a daily basis—ageism, sexism, and racism. My interest in health, particularly in the context of aging, really started with Ms. Johnson. Through her, I also became aware of racism, a concept that became very clear in Atlanta where I attended Emory University as a young undergraduate student. Moving to a city that is 75% Black really opened my eyes to how health disparities affect communities of color. Also, while I lived in Oregon and California, I saw how complementary medical therapies, such as acupuncture, massage therapy, Eastern exercise, and the use of nutritional supplements were widely used.  It inspired me to figure out a way to make these methods more available to communities of color and other communities that really need them and can benefit from it.  At the end of the day, I want to do work that will prevent and assuage as many types of health problems as possible.