Pushing Boundaries for Public Health

Thoin Begum, a graduate student in the School of Public Health, installs a filter for real-time monitoring of particulate matter at the Rensselaer County Wastewater Treatment Plant.

ALBANY, N.Y. (May 14, 2019) – School of Public Health student Thoin Begum has been selected as one of Global Kids’ ‘30 Under 30’ for her work examining the environmental exposures to human health.

The nonprofit, aimed at inspiring and motivating students in underserved communities, is celebrating their thirtieth anniversary in 2019 by recognizing the achievements of thirty of their young alumni. Thoin Begum, who is working on a master’s degree in Environmental Health Sciences in the School of Public Health (SPH), was featured as a ‘30 Under 30’ in March.

Begum first became involved with Global Kids during her sophomore year of high school in Brooklyn and was engaged in activities with them until she graduated. They took her on college tours, awarded her a $20,000 scholarship and involved her in planning annual functions she took part in, such as workshops to empower women.

Begum credits the organization with sparking her interest in public health. “Global Kids taught me to push boundaries and change perspectives, something that is needed in this field.”

After receiving her undergraduate degree at St. Lawrence and hearing from an advisor there about UAlbany’s public health program, she came to Albany to pursue a master’s in public health with a concentration in environmental health sciences. Under the advisement of associate professor Michael Bloom, Begum has been researching environmental exposures and their impact on in vitro fertilization outcomes in white and Asian women. She’ll continue this research through the summer.

Upon conclusion of her master’s degree, Begum will begin pursuing a PhD. She wants people to know that “public health and environmental health is an emerging field that has a lot of misconceptions – it isn’t just about global warming or about dealing with the amount of natural disasters we are seeing. It’s really about our everyday life.”

Begum also emphasizes SPH’s experiential learning opportunities.

“I didn’t know what to expect when I was coming in. I knew I would be working on research but I thought that it would only be research for my thesis. But at UAlbany, I am involved in so much additional research and I’m getting exposure to topics that are not solely related to my thesis.”

For more information about Global Kids, visit their website.

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