University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa public health assistant professor Jonathan Huang is one of only 10 faculty members nationwide to be selected a fellow of the 2024–25 Maternal and Child Health Faculty Development Fellowship Program at Diverse Institutions from the National Maternal and Child Health Workforce Development Center.
“I’m truly privileged to have the opportunity to draw on these resources to help strengthen what I and the Office of Public Health Studies can offer the broader community of maternal and child health practitioners, researchers and advocates,” said Huang.
The fellowship program aims to empower selected fellows in advancing their maternal and child health work and scholarship in areas including public health education, student mentorship, research and collaborative partnership development.
Developing a new course
Huang’s primary objective within this fellowship is to develop a comprehensive graduate course on epidemiologic methods to address the unique maternal and child health needs of Hawaiʻi, while supporting ongoing efforts to enhance the curriculum at UH Mānoa.
With input from community stakeholders, academia and public sectors, the curriculum may include topics such as quantifying disparities in pregnancy and child outcomes specific to Hawaiʻi, employing life course models, and navigating challenges posed by data scarcity due to issues like small sample sizes and historical lack of collection or disaggregation of race/ethnicity data relevant to Hawaiʻi (reporting data separately for different self-identified race/ethnicity communities).
With more than a decade of extensive research experience, Huang is an expert in exploring how social and environmental inequities materialize as health disparities, starting even before birth. He has actively engaged with diverse global communities, academics, and longitudinal cohort studies, with recent work focused on Southeast Asia.
Participation in this fellowship presents an invaluable opportunity for Huang to exchange ideas and best practices with the fellow selected faculty members from diverse backgrounds and communities. By leveraging this collaborative platform, he hopes to incorporate insights gained and tailor them to the specific needs of Hawaiʻi’s community.
“We are excited for Jonathan and our students as maternal and child health is so vital yet understudied especially in Hawaiʻi,” said Eric Hurwitz, chair of the Office of Public Health Studies. “The innovative, community-informed course will be a great addition to our curriculum.”
