Fardin Rahman

My name is Fardin (far-deen) Rahman, and my pronouns are she/her/hers. I’m a native New Yorker from Queens and I grew up in a Bangladeshi immigrant household. I recently graduated with my MPH from NYU with a concentration in Global Health. This past year, I worked at NYU Langone Health, performing quantitative and qualitative research for various projects aimed at improving the health of South Asians living in America. I also interned at the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene on communication projects to promote maternal health programs that provided no-cost doula and home-visiting services to mothers in underserved neighborhoods.

I have always been driven towards global public health and health equity, but my experiences during COVID-19 solidified my intent to study public health. I witnessed how the pandemic had a negative impact on ethnic minority groups and low-income families, many of whom were facing financial and social burdens. Having now completed my MPH, I feel inclined to work towards addressing the lack of safe, and affordable health access in marginalized communities, including my own. Through this program, I will have the opportunity to foster skills and knowledge in program planning and evaluation in real-world settings. This will prepare me to work at the local level, both nationally and globally, to advocate for community-sensitive and community-engaged policies/interventions that prioritize context-specific population needs.

This fellowship will provide hands-on development and training in real-world program evaluation planning, implementation, and use. This includes assisting in evaluation projects such as pilot testing rapid assessment tools, identifying equity-related challenges, and conducting case-based surveillance. There will also be opportunities for collaborating with internal and external stakeholders, performing quantitative and qualitative data collection/analysis, conducting literature reviews and reporting evaluation findings.