Where data meets lived experience.
Public Health Is Personal holds space for the stories behind the statistics. Through a healing and justice-centered lens, this blog explores how systems, history, and policy shape our bodies, families, and futures.
Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs): How Childhood Trauma Becomes Embedded in the Body
Adverse Childhood Experiences, often referred to as ACEs, are stressful or traumatic events that occur during childhood and adolescence, from birth through age 18. These experiences can include exposure to abuse, neglect, and various forms of family or household dysfunction. At their core, ACEs disrupt a child’s sense of safety, stability, and belonging. They interfere with healthy bonding and can quietly shape how a child grows, learns, and moves through the world.
Why Survival Is Not Enough: Black Maternal Health and Dignified Care
In Georgia, from 2020 to 2022, the leading causes of pregnancy related deaths included cardiovascular conditions such as cardiomyopathy, hypertensive disorders, and cerebrovascular accidents, along with COVID 19, maternal health conditions, hemorrhage, and embolism. In 2022 alone, mental health conditions became the leading cause of pregnancy related deaths. Postpartum is a period marked by intense hormonal shifts, and mental health disruptions can escalate quickly. Postpartum depression can arrive unexpectedly and with devastating force.
The Latest Attack on Public Health
Here’s my definition of equity and equality. Equality is giving everyone equal pieces of pie despite how hungry they are. Equity is giving everyone a piece of pie that reflects what they need to no longer be hungry. Equity for me is what we need to progress in public health. Those who are a part of the fight to better public health in the United States must realize that although we want equality we really need to focus on equity. Providing communities with resources and tools to receive the same, or close to the same, level of quality care.
The Power of Pen to Paper: Why I Choose Handwritten Healing
There is a different kind of honesty that shows up when I put pen to paper. Typing feels quick, efficient, and productive, but handwriting feels like truth. When I write by hand, I say things I would not say out loud or even think to type. There is no backspace. There is no red underline.…
When Policy Meets Pain: A Personal Reflection on Birth, Bias, and the Systems That Shape Our Lives
Public health has never been something distant or theoretical to me. It has always been woven into the fabric of my life and the lives of people in the communities I come from. Before I studied public health or policy, I lived it. I saw how access, culture, and systems decided who received care and who was left to navigate illness alone. I learned earlier that public health is not only about data points and charts. It is about real people, real families, and real consequences.