A blog post written by Julia Nagy, a 2021-2023 Fellow
I’ve never learned to not sweat the small stuff. Sweating the small stuff is my main form of exercise. However, perhaps concerningly, I too frequently do not give the big stuff the sweat it deserves. Which is how last summer, for the second time in my adult life, I found myself moving across the country to live in a state I’d never so much as previously stepped foot in. After twelve years living in Boston, eight years in the health and healthcare workforce, and six years at the same non-profit, I’d just completed my MPH and was ready for a Big Life Change. That said, moving to Wisconsin absolutely was not on my radar.
Two main things I initially learned about the UW Population Health Service Fellowship convinced me to (very carefully) load my houseplants up into a UHaul and drive straight west on I-90 until I hit Lake Monona:
- The core equity focus: I’ve seen and worked in many public health and health care settings that consider health equity to be a “nice to have” add-on to their work, but with the Fellowship equity is foundational. This, to me, was crucial. I’ve learned that I do not want to do public health work that does not put equity at the center, and I see the Fellowship live that promise every day.
- Learning communities: I completed my MPH part-time and, thanks to the pandemic, nearly half of it was virtual. Because of this I struggled to build strong, lasting collaborative connections with others in my cohort, and felt like I missed out on that important part of the grad school experience. The promise of a learning community appealed to the part of me that wanted to nerd out with others about public health, equity, social justice, and more. I’ve absolutely found that here with other Fellows, with Fellowship staff, and with colleagues and partners at my placement sites.
Since I arrived in Madison additional experiences have reinforced that I made the right decision to accept this opportunity:
- Flexibility to explore: Within my placement site I had a ton of latitude to find projects that interested me and that I felt like I could learn into. I’ve been able to take on meaningful roles in projects that really align with my goals and interests within the two offices in which I’m placed. I also now know that if I was interested in a topic that I couldn’t address within my placement that Fellowship staff would be happy to help me find and connect with another department or team where I could work on that topic.
- The trust the Fellowship confers: Coming from Boston, I didn’t have a lot of context for this Fellowship. I quickly learned that it is quite well-known in Wisconsin health systems and organizations, and PHI fellows have a reputation for being responsible, thoughtful employees and partners who do high quality work. As a result, there’s an intrinsic level of trust that Fellows receive that leads to being quickly given responsibility for meaningful work. This level of confidence might otherwise take years to build. Just six months into my Fellowship I began leading the process to develop the next State Health Improvement Plan, which is a major policy document that will anchor the Department of Health Services work to improve the lives of Wisconsinites for the next 5 years. I can’t imagine I would have been given this degree of independence and responsibility so soon without the weight of being a Fellow behind me.
All said, it turns out sweating this decision would have been an unnecessary use of energy anyways; I’m thankful that I took the leap. I am thriving, and so are my plants.
