Supporting
ENVIRONMENTAL and HUMAN HEALTH
Alumna Audrey Tran Lam (17MPH in occupational and environmental health) is an environmental health program manager with the Center for Energy & Environmental Education (CEEE) at the University of Northern Iowa. Originally from Vinton, Iowa, Tran Lam has also earned a Certificate in Plant-Based Nutrition from eCornell and a Graduate Certificate in Food Systems, the Environment, and Public Health from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She answered some questions about her career path, the power of volunteering, and environmental stewardship.
What led you to public health? Funnily enough, I didn’t know what public health was until the summer of 2014. I was serving as an AmeriCorps volunteer in Cedar Rapids to make homes more energy efficient. During my service, I also worked on an organic vegetable farm for four seasons. It was there that I started really understanding the complex, interlocking web that connects food, food access, nutrition security, land use, agriculture, chemical fate and exposure, climate change, and human health. I saw the nexus of all these issues as being “public health,” and wanted to spend my life working to make the system more sustainable. So, I started at the College of Public Health in 2015!
PHOTO BY JOEY LOBODA
16 SPRING 2023 INSIGHT