The 2025 Public Health Showcase took place on Monday, April 21. Students got the opportunity to put their public speaking skills to the test and to network with each other and attendees.
Heather Bush, Dean of Public Health, said the showcase were organized to give students a chance to display their research to professionals before they graduate and move into their chosen line of work or further studies.
“Students were coming out of COVID and they realized they didn’t have very much on their resume,” Bush said. “(The showcase) was really a student-initiated idea . . . It’s an exciting time for our students to have practice at talking about public health.”
Bush said she hoped the event would allow students to become less nervous about answering questions related to their research and instead be more enthusiastic about sharing their interests with the public and other professionals.
The over 90 research posters on display covered a wide range of topics related to public health. One poster showcased how a need for health resources in different communities can be displayed through photos, others covered topics like cancer prevention and opioid addictions.
“Public health is about people, so it really spans anything you can think about in terms of the health of populations,” Bush said.
Alex F. Howard, the vice president of health and wellness for the Dogwood Health Trust, attended the event as a speaker for the students at the showcase. He said he hoped the event would help students not only network but also encourage them to continue to pursue public health as a career path.
“Many of us assume that we have to have everything figured out . . . you don’t have to have any of that, you have to have a commitment to figuring out the plan,” Howard said. “I’m most excited about having an opportunity to connect to students and say ‘hey, stay on the journey, stay on the path, stay committed to it.’”
After students displayed their posters, a poster award ceremony was held at the end of the event.