Meet Brooke McNaughton, LI public health intern

The newest member of the Lown Institute team is public health intern Brooke McNaughton. She is a current Master of Public Health candidate at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, where she also serves as a Global Health Fellow and as the President of the Student Advisory Committee.

We asked Brooke to tell us what drew her to a career in public health research and the Lown Institute. Here is the story in her own words.

Like so many others, my passion for health care began as, and remains, a desire to better the world around me. Initially, I was certain that my positive impact on the world would be made through the field of oral health care. The summer I started applying for dental school, however, was the same summer I became a survivor of suicide loss.

“I couldn’t understand how health care was failing families so badly, but I was determined to get to the bottom of it.”

What struck me most about my loved one’s death was how unnecessary and preventable it was. When I heard something about the U.S. maternal mortality crisis on the radio later that year, something finally clicked. I’m neither a mother nor a clinician, but I have experienced the loss of a family member to a preventable death. I couldn’t understand how health care was failing families so badly, and in so many ways, but I was determined to get to the bottom of it. A couple years, a withdrawn dental school application, and (almost) one degree later, I am still trying to get to the bottom of it.

“I wholeheartedly believe that a radically better American health care system is possible.”

Like the Lown Institute, I wholeheartedly believe that a radically better American health care system is possible. What I have learned is that improvement–real, structural change–can only result from addressing the systemic problems that plague health care in America. These very problems are the same ones which can result in suicide and preventable maternal mortality, but unfortunately they do not stop there. My long-term goal is to improve these systemic problems through policy reform, enhanced public health and provider education, and increased access to health services for all.

When I’m not hitting the books, you can find me hiking, kayaking, or barbecuing with my husband and our dog (our cat kindly requests to be left out of such activities). I still maintain that I would have been a pretty great dentist.