Op-Ed Assignment Turns Core Lessons into Arguments for Change

At the end of their first semester, as a culmination of the Columbia Mailman Core, master’s students get the chance to integrate the concepts and skills they’ve learned by writing an op-ed. The assignment allows students to showcase their ability to engage with real-world issues and argue for change.

Building on this approach, five standout student op-eds from the 2025-26 academic year are published online today. Each reflects students’ ability to identify and analyze important social issues, build persuasive arguments, and propose actionable solutions, as taught in the Core: making a case for the urgency of an issue, marshaling the facts in support of an argument, and expressing a clear call to action. Together, they demonstrate the breadth of timely issues that can be argued through a public health lens: ensuring humane climate conditions for incarcerated populations, incorporating social vulnerabilities into disaster warning levels, building intergenerational care homes, combating disease with culturally competent interventions, and improving workplace conditions for nurses.

“What I learned in the Core about health equity, social determinants, and public health practice shaped how I framed my argument. I worked to incorporate my lived experiences without speaking for others and to elevate my community’s realities while grounding them in evidence. Understanding the importance of writing to a specific audience, in my case, policymakers, allowed me to craft a narrative that was emotionally resonant yet grounded in data,” Jeanette Nguyen, a first-year MPH student in Sociomedical Sciences and author of the op-ed on improving hepatitis B outcomes in partnership with Vietnamese-American communities.