Alumni Spotlight: Brenda Henry, MPH '01 PhD '07
When Brenda Henry MPH '01, PhD'07 left Michigan in 2006, she didn’t realize how much she would take away from her Michigan experience. “I was originally going to stay for just 2 years, for my Masters degree, and I ended up staying for seven.”
While at SPH, Brenda worked with Arline Geronimus, with the Center for Research on Ethnicity, Culture and Health. Her research focused on racial differences in birth outcomes of the Latino population, "looking at why and how race matters". Brenda completed her dissertation entitled: Latinos and Race: An Overdue Examination into the Impact of Race on Latino Birth Outcomes in the United States, in 2007.
Brenda continued her work with racial disparities as Program Director for the Center for Applied Research and Technical Assistance (CARTA), a small foundation in Baltimore. CARTA’s mission is “to promote the safe and healthy transition of youth to adulthood by building the capacity of youth-service providers and by striving to transform the systems in which they work”. They do this by generating new knowledge and deepen current knowledge through applied research and evaluation, facilitating program improvement through technical assistance and training, and educating providers, policy makers, youth, and the public in order to catalyze change.
Her experience with adolescent, maternal and child health provided her with a solid background for this position. As the Director of Programs, Brenda led the Structural Racism and Teen Sexual Health project, was team leader of CARTA’s Unity Project and managed an array of applied research and technical assistance efforts promoting effective practice and capacity building across the country. Brenda also supplied oversight and guidance for all aspects of the Institute on Racial Disparities in Adolescent Sexual Health, and was actively involved in the creation of a Racial Equity Assessment Tool.
In February of this year, Brenda left CARTA, for a new challenge. She is currently Program Officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. As a member of the Public Health team in the Research and Evaluation Department, Brenda oversees grant making activities, provides guidance for initiatives, and develops research objectives.
When asked about what she remembers most fondly about her experience at HBHE, she replied: “Since I’ve been away, I’ve really come to appreciate the level of brilliance of both the faculty and students. There is such a wealth of knowledge. There were always stimulating conversations and unique perspectives relating to issues of inequality and disparities.”