Best of Both Worlds: AEF Fellow Bonnie Bloxom on Studying Abroad and Combining Epi and Clinical MCH Work

By Ben Warden, CSTE Staff

Today’s National Public Health Week 2023 theme is Reproductive Health, a subject close to current AEF fellow Bonnie Bloxom. Below, Bonnie shares how she found her way to epidemiology, her time studying abroad and her current work in Maternal Child Health at the Oregon Health Authority. 

“You should try Public Health. Just take the intro course.”

Little did she know at the time, but those ten words from Bonnie Bloxom’s undergraduate academic advisor at Elon University ended up shaping the next course of her career.

She’d always been interested in analytics, research and data, so her advisor asked her to give public health a try. After taking the course, Bloxom was hooked.

“The very first class in the course covered social determinants of health, population levels and global health,” she said. “I thought ‘Wow, this is exactly what I wanted.’ I didn’t know public health existed until this class.”

Bonnie finished her time at Elon University with a B.S in Biology and a B.A. in Public Health Studies. At first interested in medical school, she decided to pursue her newfound passion for public health. Part of the initial course she took covered Global Health, which she found to be particularly inspiring and enjoyed learning.

Bloxom decided she’d like to learn more about a potential career in global health and her next move proved it. She went to graduate school … in Taiwan.

Bonnie received a funded Fulbright grant to attend National Taiwan University, the home of the only internationally accredited master’s program in Public Health. She earned her MPH degree in 2021.

While studying in Taiwan, Bloxom noticed a difference in how public health is practiced there as opposed to the U.S., especially since her time in the country coincided with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“One of the main differences is just from a cultural perspective”, she said. “There’s an idea of collectivism there — everyone working towards a shared common goal and sacrificing some of your own personal ones for the good of society.”

Specifically, she points to masking, a common and apolitical practice in Taiwan even before the pandemic. Since the significant impact by the 2004 SARS outbreak, masking in grocery stores and public transportation was a part of life.

“During Covid, my Taiwanese classmates asked me: ‘Why is it such a big deal for people to wear masks and to get the vaccine in the United States?’ They have a lot of trust in their government and their public health system.”

As her time in Taiwan was wrapping up, Bonnie looked for her next opportunity back home in the U.S. Through good, old fashion Googling, she learned about CSTE’s Applied Epidemiology Fellowship (AEF). Having spent the past few years immersed in ‘theory’, the chance to work in a local health department and gain on-the-job experience in applied epidemiology appealed to her.

Bonnie applied and was accepted into the two-year program working at the Oregon Health Authority. She’s been there since August 2021 and will graduate later this summer. One aspect of the experience she’s appreciated is working closely with mentors.

“My mentors here in Oregon have just been amazing and I can't speak highly enough of them. They're great.”

Bonnie also mentioned the excitement of the unpredictable day-to-day nature of being a fellow.

“Each week can look different just depending on which projects and what's going on,” Bloxom said. “For example, this past week, I was at a hospital because they had a novel outbreak of a fungus. I was working with their infection preventionist and trying to understand how to prevent this from spreading in the future.”

Outside of the unexpected crisis, Bloxom’s specific area of focus is Maternal Child Health (MCH). She works closely with the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS) and publishes its pertinent data. PRAMS is also the cornerstone of a project Bonnie is working on for CSTE.

“It's using six or seven years of PRAMS data and looking at the impact of racial discrimination on prenatal, preconception and postpartum care utilization among pregnant Oregonians. And so that's been taking up a lot of my time reading, writing a literature review and writing up manuscripts.”

After her time in the AEF program ends this year, Bonnie intends to continue her education by attending nursing school. Her ideal work life would be a mix of hands-on clinical work in MCH, but also to continue honing her craft in epidemiology with data and statistics.

“My dream would be to have that sort of dual career where I'm in the clinic, but also working at a state or local health department doing public health as well,” she said. “I hope to combine both my work as a nurse and as an epidemiologist.”

Looking back on her almost two years at the Oregon Health Authority, Bloxom said one overarching theme has popped up again and again throughout her fellowship: The importance of working with the community.

“What I’ve learned is that community-based public health works, community-based epidemiology works. But how can we really engage in true partnership and true community participation with a population? That is really lacking right now.”

Bonnie said that idea hit home even more when she learned about this year’s CSTE Annual Conference theme.

“It's interesting that one of the themes of CSTE this year is working with epidemiology, not on, communities. My immediate thought was ‘We want to do this so badly in Oregon.’”

Bonnie Bloxom is a current fellow at the Oregon Health Authority where she specializes in Maternal Child Health. Hannah has an M.S. in Global Health from National Taiwan University and a B.S. in Biology from Elon University.

For more information on the CSTE AEF program, please visit www.cstefellows.org.