Since she was small, Rachel Nelson, a senior at J.H. Rose High School in Greenville, has had plans to one day work in the health care field, perhaps become a physician.
In pursuit of that, she took every health science course available to her at Rose. So motivated was she by her dream that by the end of her sophomore year, she had exhausted the school’s health science curriculum.
Enter NCSSM Online. Thanks to her older brother’s participation in the program, she was familiar with the opportunities it provides students looking to expand their course enrollments.
“My brother was more into math and engineering, but he really had a lot of extra learning opportunities,” Rachel says. “I really wanted that, but more in health sciences.”
Last year she took Neuroscience through NCSSM Online. Next year she’ll be taking Epidemiology. But the course she just completed — Honors Public Health, taught by Dr. Catherine Vladutiu, a Research Associate Professor in the Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine at UNC School of Medicine and previously a senior epidemiologist for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services — has been one of the most revealing to date.
“After reading the course description,” Rachel says, “I knew it would be a great way to learn more about what public health means to our communities in North Carolina.”
Dr. Vladutiu, a nationally recognized expert in her field, taught two sections of the course, with 24 NCSSM Online students in each section. As someone who spends the majority of her instructional time working with graduate students and physicians completing fellowships in their areas of specialty at UNC’s medical school, the course was something of an eye-opener.
“This was my first time teaching high school students,” she says. “I’ve heard of the School of Science and Mathematics for years, and I knew that the school and the Online program was very competitive to get into. But what was a surprise to me was just how intellectually curious the students were, and the breadth of state coverage that these students represented. They brought in perspectives from where they lived. For a topic like public health, having that diverse perspective is critical.”
A bad knee eventually led Krish Korrapati, a Pine Lake Preparatory junior from Mooresville, to Dr. Vladutiu’s course. As an eighth grader, Krish endured two knee surgeries to address athletic injuries.
When the bill for the surgeries arrived, Krish’s parents made sure that he understood how fortunate their family was to be able to accommodate the expense. For far too many, they made clear, such a medical bill could be financially crippling.
“I had just returned from a school trip to D.C. where I got to see the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, and it had gotten me to thinking about equity and freedom,” Krish says. “I returned home to see that bill for the surgeries, and it all just led me down this rabbit hole of research into healthcare accessibility in America and the world, which led to my current interest in public health policy.”
A cousin of Krish’s who had taken the Online Honors Public Health course under a different instructor encouraged him to consider it. He applied to the course and got in.
“I’ve done advocacy in the public health sector and in the health equity sector on the county, state, local, and national level, so going into the course I was really interested in the policy side of public health,” says Krish. “But then I took this course and what I found really, really interesting was that it isn’t just about government policy.”
That’s exactly what Dr. Vladutiu was hoping her students would gain an understanding of.
“We covered the basic fundamentals of Public Health, and then we talked about what factors impact differences in health outcomes, whether it be education, demographics, environment, or socioeconomic status. I taught them how to apply more of a systems thinking framework to public health,” she says. “In addition to the basics, we talked about how to define and measure health and determinants of health. I brought in guest speakers and leading experts who covered topics, such as injury prevention, that students may not think of immediately when thinking about public health. And I really wanted to tie everything to North Carolina, so we had somebody from the state Department of Health and Human Services, and somebody that was an NCSSM alum.”
That Public Health encompasses so many aspects was an important realization for Rachel, who felt prior to the course that she had a fairly solid understanding of what public health is.
“What I didn’t know was how broad the implications are for our communities,” she says, “and how many branches there are to the field and how far it reaches.”
Krish agrees.
“Even after the first lesson, I realized there is so much more to know about public health, and I need to learn as much about it as possible.”
The appreciation Rachel and Krish have for the course is equaled by the admiration Dr. Vladutiu and the class’s special guests had for the students’ interest and engagement.
“These students were exceptional,” Dr. Vladutiu says. “And the consensus across the board from the visitors to the class, including several community leaders and faculty from the University of North Carolina, was that these students truly did college-level work, and they did it well.”
NCSSM is committed to providing opportunities for students throughout North Carolina to engage in learning that advances their development as scholars, citizens, and individuals. “There’s no doubt,” Rachel says, that the Online program has already better prepared her for college next year, and she still has a semester of Online programming left.
Krish just got started with NCSSM Online this year, and so has another year and a semester left to explore all that is available to him. “I don’t think there are many high schools at all that offer courses like these,” he says. “NCSSM Online is providing me with a variety of opportunities to go above and beyond in fields of interest to me, opportunities to grow that might not be accessible to me otherwise.”
