2019 Convocation: ‘Stand Up for What Is Right’.
Addressing 440 graduates of the School of Public Health at the Boston University Track & Tennis Center on Saturday, May 18, Convocation speaker Mona Hanna-Attisha called on the largest class in the school’s history to embrace the unexpected and “stand up for what is right, no matter how hard it will be.”
“By taking on a life of public health, you have put yourself on overwatch, and you will be on the front lines of some of the most important battlegrounds today,” she said. “I urge you to use the tools that you learned here, and the tools you will acquire, to keep your eyes open.
“Let your clarity of vision and your broad public health perspective show you how the world should be, not the imperfect place that it is,” she urged.
Hanna-Attisha is the pediatrician, scientist, activist, and author whose research exposed the 2014 Flint water crisis. She is currently an associate professor of pediatrics and human development at Michigan State University College of Human Medicine, and the founder and director of the Michigan State University-Hurley Children’s Hospital’s Pediatric Public Health Initiative, a program that aims to mitigate the effects of the Flint water crisis on children and families.
“Sometimes the work you choose has other plans for you,” said Hanna-Attisha, who found herself facing the dire needs of an entire community after she publicly revealed evidence of elevated blood-lead levels in Flint children in September 2015, over a year after the city switched its water source from the Great Lakes to the highly corrosive Flint River.
It was her public health perspective—shaped by her knowledge of epidemiology, statistics, policy, practice, and environmental health—that enabled her “to take on something bigger.”
The Flint water crisis, Hanna-Attisha said, is a story of what happens when “the people charged with keeping us healthy and safe care more about money and power than they do about us and our children.” Despite frustrated and fearful mothers and community members raising concerns about murky drinking water and the inexplicable illnesses of their children, government officials told the people of Flint to relax and that everything was OK, she said.
“But it wasn’t OK. It was preventable, but no one stopped it. It was avoidable, but it happened.”
After announcing her research findings, she received swift condemnation from state officials. “For a minute, I regretted using my voice,” Hanna-Attisha said. “I was scared. I was sick. I began to second-guess myself.
“But that was quickly replaced with the realization that this had nothing to do with me, and everything to do with the kids,” she said.
The Flint water crisis was not an isolated story, she said: There are kids everywhere “from the Rust Belt of America to coal country, black, brown, white, waking up to the same nightmares of poverty, injustice, austerity, lost democracy, and stolen opportunity.”
This, Hanna-Attisha said, is why the dedication and perseverance of emerging public health professionals is more important than ever.
“We need all of you,” she said, “because vaccine denial is a public health issue. Racism and hate and nationalism are public health issues. Guns are a public health issue. Controlling women’s bodies is a public health issue.”
Hanna-Attisha closed by underlining the core values of public health. “The story of Flint shines a light on our civic responsibility and deep obligation as human beings to care and provide for each other,” she said. “From this day on, you are entrusted to be the voices of health.”
Student speaker Marylyn Creer, an MPH recipient committed to helping people access quality health care and tackle or prevent chronic diseases, told her fellow graduates about the values that her late mother instilled in her during her childhood.
“My mother taught us to always help others, and never forget where you came from,” Creer said. When Creer was 21, her parents were both hit by drunk drivers, and her mother passed away. Creer said as she grew older, she never forgot her mother’s words.
Growing up in Tuscaloosa, Ala. and later moving to Birmingham, Creer served as a community leader, grassroots organizer, and a neighborhood president for almost 30 years before coming to SPH.
“I mentored young, underprivileged people,” she said, “and I wept when my mentee, Wendy, was killed in a senseless murder. I wanted to do something about all of that. I knew I had to work in public health.”
At SPH, Creer said she soon discovered that inequities and injustice exist everywhere. “I was brokenhearted,” she said. “But then I became emboldened and encouraged when in those same classrooms I learned about ways that I could fight the good fight, and of ways to fight smart.”
Creer urged graduates to show care and respect for these communities. Borrowing a quote from her brother, she said “people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
As they go out into the world, she told her fellow classmates, “carry that torch of justice with you and be determined to make a difference. You can, and you will, and you must.”
Saturday’s ceremony also celebrated the accomplishments of other members of the SPH community. Two faculty members were honored for teaching and scholarship: Jessica Leibler, assistant professor of environmental health, received the Norman A. Scotch Award for Excellence in Teaching, and Sydney Rosen, research professor of global health, received the Faculty Award in Research and Scholarship.
Mary-Lynn Fulton (SPH’99), Head of Clinical Operations Study Management at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, spoke to the new graduates about the importance of advancing and refining the leadership skills they gained at SPH.
Student Greylin Hillary Rinaldo Nielsen received the Leonard H. Glantz Award for Academic Excellence.
Harold Cox, associate dean of public health practice, presented the first-ever Award for Excellence in Practice to Amparo “Chary” Ortiz, senior financial administrator in the Department of Biostatistics.
Vanessa Boland Edouard, director of strategic initiatives, received the Dzidra J. Knecht Staff Award for Distinguished Service.
A separate SPH Awards Ceremony on May 17 featured the presentation of several new awards to a total of 32 students, faculty, and staff for their outstanding contributions and achievements to the SPH community. View the full list of award recipients here.