MPH program welcomes new faculty member: Jodi Dowthwaite

Jodi Dowthwaite often finds herself branching into new territory, taking on projects and positions that require heavy lifting to get off the ground.

“I just have that continuous push for a little bit of struggle,” she said.

Yvonne Johnston, associate professor and founding director of the Master of Public Health (MPH) program, recently invited Dowthwaite to serve as an adjunct faculty member in the two-year-old program and to assist with development of a fast-track option for undergraduate students to receive the MPH. Dowthwaite teaches two MPH courses: Social & Behavioral Sciences in Public Health and Public Health Biology.

Along with her MPH program responsibilities, Dowthwaite leads the Community and Global Public Health stream of the First-year Research Immersion (FRI) program. She designed and implemented the public health research stream in 2017, and is working on new options for Binghamton University students interested in public health.

“The undergraduates that I’ve been teaching are very excited about the possibility of doing a master of public health,” she said. “It would be really good if we could set up a 4+1 program.”

The FRI program allows first-year Binghamton undergraduate students to conduct serious research under the tutelage of experienced researchers. During their first year in the public health stream, students help design a research project, which they then execute during the first semester of their second year.

“There was no such program when I was an undergraduate, and I would have loved the opportunity to be exposed to public health research from my first year instead of eventually finding my way into this line of work over decades,” Dowthwaite said.

She believes the ultimate goal of public health researchers is to influence people to live the best lives they can, working on a local, national or global level.

Unsurprisingly, the altruistic nature of public health research attracts caring students.

“I think the public health stream draws really good people, people with good hearts, because they want other people to be healthy,” Dowthwaite said. “It’s a pleasure to work with people who are like that.”

Dowthwaite has had long-term interests in mental health and health disparities, but for the past 15 years her research has had a narrower scope. She has been conducting longitudinal human growth research, focusing on muscle, bone and fat development in relation to youth exercise and diet, to help prevent osteoporosis and fragility fractures in later life. She finds that the FRI students’ research interests have provided her with the impetus to expand her research horizons into both mental health problems and health disparities.

“That’s the field I want to go [toward], and where a lot of the… [FRI] research has been going,” she said.

Nationwide, diseases such as obesity, Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease disproportionately affect impoverished people. Stress and mental health problems are also major concerns. In order to study the complicated interactions among environment, behavior and health outcomes, Dowthwaite is expanding her research scope while serving as a research mentor for FRI.

Since Dowthwaite derives pleasure from the complex, pioneering nature of public health research, integrating biological sciences with behavioral sciences, she is excited about the direction the work is taking.