Four students and faculty met to discuss opportunities and future directions for global health in Mississippi at the Overby Center Friday.
Associate professor of anthropology and international studies Kate Centellas introduced the panel and said she hopes to foster collaboration among undergraduate and postgraduate students with various health professionals.
“We envision this initiative as being pretty radically interdisciplinary and inter-career stage,” Centellas said. “We really want people working broadly in multiple departments with different mentors and faculty members who all have important perspective on issues that are encompassed by global health.”
Postgraduate student and panel member Emma Willoughby said that she is interested in connecting factors that affect health across the world. Willoughby currently works at the University of Mississippi Medical Center of Obesity Research, primarily with health policy analysis.
Willoughby said it’s eye-opening to see how little research is published on the obesity epidemic.
“Everybody likes to say Mississippi is so horrible and that we have the worst statistics,” Willoughby said. “I think it’s better to contextualize it.”
Willoughby said it’s important to note that Mississippi is not the “fattest” state anymore, and that the U.S. is “catching up.”
Senior international studies major Miller Richmond served as an undergraduate student representative on the panel. Richmond said he is particularly interested in gender and how motherhood is portrayed in the Middle East.
As a freshman, Richmond said he quickly realized he did not like hard sciences, but still wanted to become a doctor.
“I realized there was this larger field of research,” Richmond said. “If you look at medical school requirements, it’s really transitioning to this broader perspective of social sciences and humanities.”
Professor of sociology and Director of the Center for Population Studies John Green also spoke on the panel and said the center has a large focus on data research
“The idea is that we want to drive decision making that is informed by research,” Green said.
Green said in order to address problems in global health, it is necessary to have interdisciplinary perspectives and inter-professional practices.
“We need a team-based approach,” Green said.
According to Centellas, the rubric of global health can give a framework to understand in a deeply interdisciplinary and rigorous way.
“Global health is this broad field that encompasses environmental health and issues around pollution and environmentalism that we should be talking about at a global level,” Centellas said.
