Meera Joshi

Hello! My name is Meera, and here is a little bit about me. Before obtaining my Master’s of Public Health (MPH) degree, I earned a Bachelor’s of Science in Integrative Biology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

I began this degree by studying topics such as evolution, ecology, and conservation biology, and realized about halfway through my degree that I was especially interested in how the environment influences human health. This led me to expand my career focus to human health and the environment, by taking classes in public and global health. I supplemented my academic studies by volunteering at health centers, working at my university’s health center in their health education unit, and led programs focused on supporting health needs in the community. These experiences fueled me to develop a passion for public health and expanded my interest in protecting overburdened and underserved communities. To further pursue this passion academically, I obtained my MPH at the University of Michigan in Environmental Health Promotion and Policy so that I could work to integrate equity, health promotion, and social justice with environmental protection. During my master’s program, I also worked at EPA’s Region 5 Office in Chicago in the Chemical Emergency Preparedness and Prevention Section. In this role, I helped the team develop strategies to promote environmental justice and health equity into the development processes for inspection targets and emergency planning exercises. This fellowship has given me the incredible opportunity to engage in meaningful involvement at the forefront of environmental health, while also further developing my knowledge, skills, and experiences with environmental public health topics. Through this program, I hope to advance my professional experience by learning to bridge program evaluation and evidence building with relevant public health topics, to further equity and support environmental justice efforts.

My fellowship project is to engage in the robust and multifaceted implementation of the Evidence Act, through my work on OCFO’s Evidence and Evaluation team. This will include developing assessment plans, conducting interviews, completing qualitative and quantitative analysis, creating reports, producing training materials, and more.