From Passenger Seat to Public Health Protagonist

As a child, I did not always have the words to describe what I was searching for. I only knew that something was wrong, and that it had everything to do with where you lived and the color of your skin. My understanding of public health did not begin in a classroom, but in the passenger seat of a car, bearing witness to the stark geography of inequity in my Florida hometown.  

Every Sunday drive to church, every trip to the local community center, revealed that health was not just about individual choices; it could be written into a five-digit zip code. The people living in these neighborhoods weren't making “unhealthy choices,”they were navigating an environment shaped by long-standing systematic abandonment. It was in those mindless drives that I began to wonder why our surroundings become the silent architects of our well-being, and why that blueprint is so often drawn along lines of race and class.

Black History Month has always invited me to sit with that longer story. I recognized that the redlined maps of the 1930s became the food deserts I witnessed in young adulthood, and that the segregation my grandparents navigated became the disease disparities that disproportionately burden Black communities today.

I carried these realizations with me into my college years at Xavier University of Louisiana, a HBCU in the historically disenfranchised neighborhood of Gert Town, New Orleans. With my campus in a food desert, I was motivated to move beyond observation and immerse myself in real public health work. In 2023, I participated in Columbia Mailman’s Undergraduate Summer Public Health Scholars Program (SPHSP). There, I gained hands-on experience through a combination of coursework, mentorship, and research. I worked on a randomized controlled trial examining smoke-free housing policy compliance within the New York City Housing Authority. Despite the policies designed to shield low-income, elderly residents from secondhand smoke, many still faced exposure every day inside their own buildings.

Through interviews with residents, I sought to understand why smoking persisted in spaces that were meant to be smoke-free. What emerged was not defiance, but rather the effects of a stressful environment where decades of neglect undermine health and safety. Tobacco addiction flourished without adequate cessation support, and the lack of designated outdoor smoking spaces made compliance unrealistic for many. These conversations reinforced the idea that enforcement alone cannot solve public health problems and that health policies fail when they do not account for lived experience.

The work I did that summer in New York followed me back to Xavier and empowered me to continue using my voice for and with communities. I joined the Food Policy Advocates Program, where I learned to teach others how to use their voice to influence policy. By working with Black food policy organizations, I was able to speak with elected officials in Baton Rouge and learned that real advocacy means making sure a community's voice, not mine, is the one at the forefront. A year later, I was back at Mailman to pursue my MPH. Now, my journey has come full circle, leading me back to the environmental disinvestment I first witnessed growing up. For my APEx this past summer, I worked on Project VITAL (Vacant Lot Improvement to Transform Adolescent Lives) in Baltimore City, Maryland. I explored how greened vacant lots (the process of actively turning neglected spaces into community assets) can reduce violence victimization and perpetration among Black adolescents. This work confrontsthe challenges faced by youth in marginalized neighborhoods, where disproportionate exposure to violence, increased rates of depression, and material hardshipare direct remnants of systemic segregation and poverty.

As I reflect on my path, I am keenly aware that I did not get to where I am today alone. I carry with me the wisdom cultivated at my HBCU, where I learned not only the language of public health but the responsibility that comes with it. At Mailman, that foundation has been strengthened by mentors like Vice Dean of Education Michael Joseph, Dr. Paris Adkins-Jackson, Troy Hoffman, and Diamond Jackson, who each saw possibility in me before I fully recognized it myself. Their investment in me reflects a long-standing tradition of Black professionals lifting as they climb and paving the way for those who come after, not because it was their job, but because it is our collective legacy. In a society that too often silences us, they created spaces where my voice could be protected, cultivated, and amplified.

For me, honoring Black History Month means recognizing that my journey is part of a larger lineage. As a Black woman in public health, I try to continue that cycle by serving as a RISE Peer Mentor at Mailman, where I pour into incoming first-generation students and students of color just as I was poured into. RISE, which fosters Resilience in an Inclusive environment through Solidarity and Empowerment, is a living practice of the community care that has long sustained Black communities.

I entered public health because I refuse to accept that where someone lives should determine whether they have the opportunity to live a healthy life. That belief anchors me and guides my way forward. This Black History Month and beyond, I choose to honor my past, serve my present, and invest in our shared future by walking the path my mentors cleared and holding the door open wider for those who follow.

Kennedy Wade is a SPHSP alum and second-year MPH student in the Epidemiology Department, with a Certificate in Applied Biostatistics and Public Health Data Science. She aspires to use data and epidemiologic methods to address the root causes of health disparities in marginalized communities.