{"id":1690,"date":"2026-10-01T15:23:57","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T15:23:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mchleads.com\/?p=1690"},"modified":"2026-10-01T15:23:59","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T15:23:59","slug":"kids-are-our-future-what-we-can-learn-from-them-and-how-we-can-advocate-for-their-health-5-communication-9-teaching-coaching-and-mentoring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mchleads.com\/?p=1690","title":{"rendered":"Kids Are Our Future: What We Can Learn From Them and How We Can Advocate For Their Health [5: Communication & 9: Teaching, Coaching, and Mentoring]"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\"\"
Catherine Turner<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n

Catherine Turner <\/strong>graduated from Drexel University<\/a> in May 2026 with her MPH in Community Health and Prevention and a graduate minor in Maternal and Child Health (MCH). Catherine was an MCH trainee and MCH Program Assistant for the Drexel University Center of Excellence in Maternal, Child, Adolescent and Family Health<\/a>. During her first year at Drexel, she served as the Secretary for the Maternal and Child Health Student organization<\/a>, which provides MPH students with the opportunity to fundraise for and connect with the Philadelphia MCH community and host educational events, such as journal clubs, to explore important topics within the MCH field. Catherine is passionate about advocating for children\u2019s health, reproductive justice, and reducing disparities in health outcomes throughout the world of MCH.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Kids Are Our Future: What We Can Learn From Them and How We Can Advocate For Their Health [5: Communication & 9: Teaching, Coaching, And Mentoring]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

About You<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is your Maternal and Child Health (MCH) focus area?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout my time in the MPH program at Drexel<\/a>, I have realized that my MCH focus area is aligned with Children and Adolescent Health, specifically, advocating for vulnerable children and improving health literacy among adolescent populations. I would love other MCH students to see how many MCH topics, such as reproductive justice or environmental health, intersect with children and adolescents\u2019 health. Youth populations across the globe require strong advocates to help improve their access to healthcare, schools, and sports; all of which can have profound outcomes on their health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What do you want other MCH students to know about this particular issue within our field?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I became interested in reproductive justice when I was in high school and began to research abortion access and access to clinics, such as Planned Parenthood, as part of independent research projects. This passion brought me to American University for my undergrad, where I completed a B.A in Public Health and a minor in Women and Gender Studies. These areas allowed me to see that studying MCH within Public Health was the next step in my career path. Choosing to study MCH at a graduate level was important for me to gain research and analytical skills that will help me work in MCH as a public health professional. I also loved the opportunity to explore and research so many different topics for class projects, and this aspect of MCH has helped me hone in on what I really want to do in this field. It\u2019s important for me to explore the MCH field because it works on improving health outcomes at all ages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What sparked your interest in MCH? Why is it important for you to explore MCH (versus other disciplines or areas of public health)? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I became interested in reproductive justice when I was in high school and began to research abortion access and access to clinics, such as Planned Parenthood, as part of independent research projects. This passion brought me to American University for my undergrad, where I completed a B.A. in Public Health and a minor in Women and Gender Studies. These areas allowed me to see that studying MCH within Public Health was the next step in my career path. Choosing to study MCH at a graduate level was important for me to gain research and analytical skills that will help me work in MCH as a public health professional. I also loved the opportunity to explore and research so many different topics for class projects, and this aspect of MCH has helped me hone in on what I really want to do in this field. It\u2019s important for me to explore the MCH field because it works on improving health outcomes at all ages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How would you describe yourself? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Empathetic, driven, and welcoming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Project or Practicum Experience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Describe a specific project, practicum or internship you participated in. What was your role and what did you work on? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For my Applied Practice Experience (APE) project, I worked with the Bridging the Gaps (BTG) Program<\/a>, a multidisciplinary initiative in Philadelphia designed to bring graduate public health, medical students, law students, social work students, and more to community-based organizations in Philadelphia. Through this hands-on program, I was placed at Sunrise<\/a>, a free summer camp for children in West Philadelphia that helps to alleviate food insecurity in the area by providing free breakfast, lunch, and snacks to all attendees. As a BTG intern, I had the opportunity to work with over 40 second- and third-graders on improving their health literacy by creating educational and engaging weekly health lessons that focused on different topics such as oral health, mental health and mindfulness, and cardiovascular health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which MCH Leadership Competency (or competencies) most connects to this work? What were key outcomes or impacts from your project\u2014on the community, organization\/agency or yourself?  <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The two MCH leadership competencies that most connect to this work are 9: Teaching, Coaching, and Mentoring and 5: Communication. Through this work, the kids at Sunrise had to trust me as their health educator for the summer, but I also had to trust that they would be active and engaged in the work I created. This summer APE experience emphasized to me that communication, especially health communication, is not a one-size-fits-all model and instead demonstrated to me how important it is to be able to think of different communication methods to help my younger audience understand the health lessons I was providing them with. Throughout this experience, my teaching skills were strengthened, and my confidence as a public health professional continued to grow as I created lessons that were both exciting for these students and academically accurate, and helped improve their overall health literacy.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This project was an impactful way to work directly with West Philadelphia kids and help them learn about important health topics that are directly linked to their health outcomes through engaging lessons, such as grounding skills that can help students with emotional regulation when they begin to feel overwhelmed and out of their body. My time at Sunrise sparked my passion to advocate for children\u2019s health and learn about race-based disparities in pediatric care, inspiring me to dive deeper into this public health area and work towards creating potential solutions to combat this issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reflection and Growth<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Explore the role of self-reflection in your growth as an MCH professional. How has reflecting on your learnings or experiences helped you align your career goals with the MCH competency\/competencies you previously mentioned? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think that self-reflection is an incredibly powerful and important tool as an MCH professional, especially when we are not always directly linked to the topics that we are researching as lived-experience experts. Self-reflection allows us to dive deeper into ourselves and to truly analyze our beliefs and what is important to us, both personally and professionally. My time at Sunrise provided me with continuous self-reflection and allowed me to continually check in with myself to assess how I was showing up as a teacher, an intern, and as a leader for the kids I was working with last summer. I think that when you are working with kids, age differences can make it easier to assume that you are the most knowledgeable person in the room, but I learned so much about finding the joy in little things, what it means to be resilient, and the power of personal growth from these kids during my APE.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do you define leadership in MCH, and what kind of leader do you hope to be?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I define leadership in MCH as someone who is community-driven and has the desire to work with anyone and everyone on the issues that are impacting their lives. Leaders are those who not only want to inspire change but also want to do the necessary work that will help create an impact for the greater community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Please reflect on your experience as an MCH student. How do your academics influence your field\/practice-based experiences (and vice versa)?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As an MCH student, I loved the opportunity to explore and research so many different topics for class projects, and this aspect of MCH has helped me hone in on what I really want to do in this field. I learned about race-based disparities in pediatric care and created potential solutions to combat this issue, something that was sparked after my time at Sunrise and continued with the passion to advocate for children\u2019s health. Without my practice-based experience at Sunrise, I don\u2019t know if I would have been able to research this topic so heavily and want to become involved with children\u2019s health advocacy, which was further supplemented by my academic ventures in MCH.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is one tool, class, resource or product that you\u2019d suggest other MCHers check out, and why?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would recommend taking an environmental health class, even if it is not MCH-specific, while completing your graduate program. The changing environment continues to impact our health in many ways, and it is important to see how this will continue to affect your subtopic of MCH!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Catherine Turner graduated from Drexel University in May 2026 with her MPH in Community Health<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":1691,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[165,25,100,21,230],"class_list":["post-1690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-leadership","tag-mch","tag-mch-leads","tag-public-health","tag-umnproud"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.mchleads.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/MCH-Blog-Author-Posts-1.png",1080,1080,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.mchleads.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/MCH-Blog-Author-Posts-1-150x150.png",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.mchleads.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/MCH-Blog-Author-Posts-1-300x300.png",300,300,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.mchleads.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/MCH-Blog-Author-Posts-1-768x768.png",640,640,true],"large":["https:\/\/www.mchleads.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/MCH-Blog-Author-Posts-1-1024x1024.png",640,640,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.mchleads.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/MCH-Blog-Author-Posts-1.png",1080,1080,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.mchleads.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/MCH-Blog-Author-Posts-1.png",1080,1080,false],"chromenews-featured":["https:\/\/www.mchleads.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/MCH-Blog-Author-Posts-1-1024x1024.png",1024,1024,true],"chromenews-large":["https:\/\/www.mchleads.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/MCH-Blog-Author-Posts-1-825x575.png",825,575,true],"chromenews-medium":["https:\/\/www.mchleads.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/MCH-Blog-Author-Posts-1-590x410.png",590,410,true]},"author_info":{"display_name":"Crystal Egbo","author_link":"https:\/\/www.mchleads.com\/?author=18"},"category_info":"Uncategorized<\/a>","tag_info":"Uncategorized","comment_count":"0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pauhrG-rg","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.mchleads.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/MCH-Blog-Author-Posts-1.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mchleads.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mchleads.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mchleads.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mchleads.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mchleads.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1690"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.mchleads.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1699,"href":"https:\/\/www.mchleads.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1690\/revisions\/1699"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mchleads.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mchleads.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mchleads.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mchleads.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}