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Health and Medicine
Date April 8, 2025
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Research showcase celebrates the innovation and ideas of Brown public health students

National Public Health Week offered students at Brown’s School of Public Health the opportunity to discuss the impact of their research projects and learn about the work of others.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — In 1995, President Bill Clinton designated the first full week of April as National Public Health Week. At Brown University’s School of Public Health, the week traditionally kicks off with Public Health Research Day, a festive poster conference and competition.

On Tuesday, April 8, in keeping with tradition, approximately 100 students from the School of Public Health, plus a handful of community partners, gathered at Brown’s Alumnae Hall to discuss their research and celebrate the power and promise of public health. 

While all participants have the opportunity to present their work, awards for outstanding undergraduate, master’s and doctoral research posters will be announced at an event celebrating students, staff and faculty members on April 16.

Here's what five School of Public Health students shared about their research experience this year:

Devon Newman

Class of 2025 

Project: The Influence of Health Care Access on Firearm Safe Storage

“I looked at whether individuals who have greater access to health care are more likely to practice firearm safe storage. We used data from a randomized control trial that assessed a bystander firearm injury prevention intervention that was geared toward youth in 4-H Shooting Sports clubs. I used the firearm safety measures that were assessed at baseline and then added health care access measures, and we assessed them in a cross-sectional way. 

“Although I didn’t find anything statistically significant, that doesn't mean that health care access doesn't play a role in firearm safety and injury prevention. The scientific literature shows that when providers talk about firearm safe storage, it can be an effective way to get people to take the subject seriously. This important topic needs to be explored on a wider scale, with a larger and more diverse sample, with measures that can tease out whether or not these firearm conversations are actually being had in the health care setting.”

Sara Santacruz

Class of 2025

Project: A Scoping Review of Maternity Care Access for Birthing People with Disabilities in the U.S.: Gaps, Challenges and Opportunities

“In the class Reproductive Health Justice and Rights, we examined legal protections of reproductive health access, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act. I learned that 12% of women of reproductive age in the U.S. have disabilities, yet they have disproportionately higher rates of adverse outcomes such as gestational diabetes, hypertensive disorders, preeclampsia and preterm birth. I was interested in the disconnect between the legal protection and people’s lived experiences. 

“For this project, I conducted a scoping literature review to get a sense of the lived experiences of people with disabilities as they were navigating maternity care. I counted 266 articles but only 33 met my inclusion criteria. I used qualitative software to see how frequently concepts occurred and organized those concepts into five barriers and four facilitators to maternity care access. I just committed to a master of public health program at Emory University, where I'll be concentrating on maternal and child health care, and I plan to include disability as an important research dimension.”

Nathan Garcia-Diaz

Class of 2025, Master of Public Health

Project: Unveiling Vulnerability: Investigating Socio-Environmental Factors Shaping Population Health in Rhode Island

“I am a fan of combining spatial mass into machine learning models, so I was fortunate to participate in a research project that does exactly that. I applied geographically weighted random forest models to identify the most predictive variables within two indices created by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to identify vulnerable populations: the Social Vulnerability Index and Environmental Justice Index. 

“We can clearly see where there are highly vulnerable populations in Rhode Island, but that doesn’t really give us insight into why they’re vulnerable. That's what my project aims to elucidate. We concluded that by specifically targeting predictors of vulnerability, we can build more resilient communities. I'll be sharing these specific results with the Rhode Island Department of Health, and I'm expanding this research to a larger geographic area for publication.”

MiKayla Dotson

Class of 2025, Master of Public Health

Project: Environmental Exposure and Health Risks: A Data-Driven Assessment of Illegal Dumping

“This project is about cataloging and mapping illegal dumping activity in sites in Mississippi. The dumping information is collected by our field team in Jackson, Mississippi, which takes soil samples as well as assessments for noise and air pollution. That data is then sent to me, and I catalog it, upload it to our database and apply a predictive model to estimate risk. 

“We created an interactive tool that allows local users to put in their zip code and learn their relative health risks based on the presence of pollutants. It's currently in beta, but we're hoping people can use this tool to advocate for better environmental policies in their area. I’m from Mississippi, as is my advisor, Erica Walker, and it has meant a lot to me to work on something like this that communicates health data in an accessible way.”

Shuo Feng

Ph.D. Candidate in Public Health

Project: Plain-language coding with GPT for developing public health models

“Most public health practitioners don’t have a super technical background. However, GPT or large language models, have potential to facilitate research coding, especially in public health simulation models. We propose applying a test-driven development approach to large language model-supported coding. This approach is well known in software development, but it’s a new way to think about coding for public health simulation modeling. 

“Our framework specifically speaks to how you should develop your tests and what are the things you need to be cautious about to avoid and catch errors. We demonstrated its application through two case studies. We've been envisioning this as a recommendation piece: what we think works better, what we think works less well, for using GPT for coding for public health. I will say that the way that I will interact with GPT now, after learning this, will be completely different from what I used to do, and what we are trying to suggest is actually a little bit counterintuitive to what most people do.”

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Research School of Public Health Undergraduate Research

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