CityMatCH 2024 Poster here!
This September, I was honored to present my poster “Developing Policy to Address Prenatal Diet Inequities in California: The California Community Prenatal Nutrition Initiative” at the CityMatCH Leadership & Epidemiology Conference in Seattle, WA! This poster was adapted from my policy proposal in the MCAH Foundations course from last year - it outlines a collaborative WIC and CDPH effort to upgrade corner and convenience stores in food deserts and low food access regions, with a specific focus on outreach to pregnant and breastfeeding families. I delineated structural racism as a key driver of inequities in accessing fresh produce and healthier foods, and compared my proposal to other pilot food prescription and delivery programs for pregnant people that were associated with positive birth outcomes.
While presenting my poster at the conference, I built meaningful connections to other poster presenters, including a research team from Family Health Initiatives in New Jersey. This team found many similarities between my proposal and nutrition inequities in their state, which led to further conversations after the conference and a networking meeting with the MSW intern at this organization! I am excited to have a connection with this maternal and child-health focused organization in another state for future collaborations and analysis. To my surprise, I also ran into some members of my summer practicum team from Alameda County Public Health Department! They were very proud of my poster and introduced me to more colleagues from Bay Area counties. I loved seeing how they were thinking about the conference themes in relation to county programs and epidemiology!
One thing this conference did particularly well was spotlight and uplift indigenous advocacy, artwork, maternal & child health outcomes, and epidemiology. For example, there was an indigenous art market throughout the conference, and the land acknowledgement included a prayer and a living promise to center the deep indigenous history of the Pacific Northwest and Seattle. The most impactful plenary session was a conversation with BIPOC epidemiologists about the ways that Western thinking appears in our research practices, especially with excluding small population groups, p-values, and the language of “significant” and “insignificant.” I left this session feeling inspired to pursue strengths-based approaches and to not rely too heavily on finding “significant” results, because of the possibility of overlooking whole communities and histories. Another useful piece of this conference was looking at the datasets used for analysis during breakout sessions. Discussions around CDC datasets and PRAMS stood out as ways for me to explore structural factors related to maternal and child health.
My poster was nominated for the Exemplary Student Poster Award prior to the conference, and I spoke with multiple judges during the poster luncheon. The next day, I was surprised to receive both the Student Poster Award as well as the Policy Innovation Award from CityMatCH! Their team was accommodating of my need to leave the conference 1 day early, and they presented me with my certificates before I left, in addition to announcing my name at the awards ceremony. I am deeply grateful to CityMatCH for their effort to uplift innovative student work. I would also like to thank Dr. Carly Strouse for her excellent mentorship during the Foundations class and as I was designing the final layout of my poster for this conference.
