BA

Umaima Abbasi

From Pakistan to New York City: Alumna strives to improve vaccination programs

Umaima Abbasi, BA ’20

Umaima Abbasi, BA ’20, has encountered many reasons to care about addressing vaccine-preventable diseases. She grew up in Pakistan, where few immunizations were available and several infectious diseases ran rampant in her area, including malaria, dengue and polio. And in 2020, she lost her mom to the COVID-19 pandemic before vaccines were widely distributed.

Lloyd Lyons

Focus of alumnus is 'always on the people'

Lloyd Lyons, BA ’19

Even while wading through rafts of spreadsheets, profit reports, inventory assessments and analyses of retail store efficiencies, Lloyd Lyons, BA ’19, never loses sight of the real reason he is here, working as a manager of customer experience strategy for CVS Health. Lyons is one of the 95 students who made up the first cohort of public health majors at Michigan Public Health in 2019.

Kennedy Dubose

Turning Experience, Knowledge, and Education into Better Public Health

Kennedy Dubose

Kennedy Dubose studies public health not only for personal and intellectual reasons but also for what she sees as moral, ethical imperatives. Growing up, she saw public health systems failing Black communities. With a combination of local and global training, she is looking to promote more equitable community health in Detroit and around the globe.

Omar Ilyas

Choose to Act: How to Build An International NGO While Graduating from School

Omar Ilyas, BS ’19

Driven by a desire to do something about an emerging water crisis in Pakistan, Omar Ilyas and some friends started fundraising to build a well. About 24 months later, they had completed funding and construction on their 750th water well through their nonprofit Paani. The 2019 graduate is not stopping there.

Briana Nelson

Total Transformation: Focus, Execution, and What We Want to Do with Our Lives

Briana Nelson

In eighth grade, Briana Nelson decided to improve her fitness. With personal initiative and family support, a lifetime passion for nutrition was born. “It was a total transformation,” Nelson says, and her ability to focus and move herself forward toward big goals is helping her achieve great things as a student-athlete and as an ambassador for health equity.