Currently completing her MPH at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health in the Department of Epidemiology with a certificate in population mental health, Christina has always been invested in mental health and has worn many hats in the field, including as an undergraduate peer counselor and a research coordinator in Dr. Joan Luby’s Early Emotional Development Program.
During her practicum this summer, Christina primarily supported the FLII-11 project, specifically by updating the REDCap version of the survey so it is aligned with the most updated Qualtrics version. She also performed a review of adolescent mental health literature to inform the data analysis plan for the Drakenstein project, a longitudinal cohort study based in South Africa that followed children from the prenatal period until adolescence, looking at a multitude of health and psychosocial indicators. Additionally, Christina worked alongside colleagues from BasicNeeds Ghana to write up the nutritional, social, and financial impacts of their sustainable farming project. Through these various projects and meetings, she has developed a stronger understanding of all the input, feedback, and perspectives that go into developing accessible mental health assessment tools. She has also strengthened her writing and data analysis skills in R.
Moving forward, Christina hopes to work on her data analysis and interpretation skills to translate mental health data into digestible formats that can be used to identify points of resiliency within various communities. She hopes her work can encourage policy changes and support further research and collaboration within the mental health field.