Frank Gyan ‘09 credits EOP with opening doors to a career in public health
Frank Gyan ’09 was “a timid kid from Brooklyn” when he arrived at Binghamton University. Now a self-described “entrepreneurial epidemiologist,” working for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and running a business with his wife that provides janitorial services to healthcare facilities throughout the Northeast Corridor, he has come a long way. And it all started with one conversation during the Binghamton Enrichment Program the summer before his first year at Binghamton.
“I will never forget this moment,” Gyan said. “We’re going from one class to the next, and [then-EOP Director James Pogue] pulled me to the side, looked me dead in my eyes, and said, ‘Frank, you’re going to be a great guy on this campus one day. Just keep doing what you’re doing.’ And it penetrated my very soul. Everything that has happened since then came from that conversation with Dr. Pogue. It was an affirmation, and I just ran with it.”
From that point on, Gyan made it a point to make his time at Binghamton count. He joined MALIK Fraternity Inc. and delivered educational programming that explored the impact of HIV and AIDS in communities of color. He also took a geography class that introduced him to the concept of public health mapping, which he found fascinating and wanted to further explore.
“Early in my life I was diagnosed with epilepsy,” he said, “and then my dad passed away from diabetes. So I’ve been asking that question — ‘Why us, why me?’ — for a while. Not in a pitiful way, but trying to understand what is going on from a scientific standpoint.”
He delved into these questions even further through the McNair Scholars Program and the Science and Technology Entry Program (STEP), formerly known as CSTEP, both of which he learned about through EOP. Working with Sharon Bryant, co-director of STEP and a faculty member in the Decker School of Nursing, and Leo Wilton, professor of human development, he wrote a research paper looking at the prevalence of HIV among religious Black men.
Bryant and Wilton both had a profound impact on Gyan, but they weren’t the only mentors he found at Binghamton. EOP, he discovered, was an all-encompassing support system. Yulanda Whyte Johnson was his assigned counselor, but he took the opportunity to speak with anyone in the program he could.
“EOP provided the ability to walk into a counselor’s office and talk to them — even bring them into your personal life — and for them to give you their fatherly or motherly counsel,” he said. “For them to scold you when they had to, let you know when you’re not making wise choices.”
Gyan’s wife, Kayoll Galbraith Gyan ’11, also found EOP to be a valuable tool. While she did not qualify for admission through EOP, she quickly found her way into the EOP family and became an adopted member. She and Frank, who met and started dating in high school, found that they had similar academic interests in college. Kayoll was also introduced to the McNair Scholars Program and CSTEP through relationships she cultivated during her time as an EOP tutor. She was a student in the Decker School of Nursing and spent three summers studying human papillomavirus (HPV) among Caribbean Americans with Bryant and Wilton. She went on to study HPV vaccine promotion among African American women while earning her PhD at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and completing a postdoctoral research fellowship at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Currently, she is a tenure-track faculty member at Northeastern University, where she shares this passion with a new generation of students.
This is another area in which the couple finds its passions aligning. Gyan says he looks to the motto of his junior high school as one guiding principle in his life: “You must lift as you climb and leave no one behind.”
“For almost 20 years, it has stuck with me,” he said. “I really do believe in making sure that the generation behind me does better than me, just like I’m supposed to do better than the generation before me.”
This mindset is reflected in his eagerness over the years to share opportunities with and mentor current Binghamton EOP students, as well as in his career. After graduating from Binghamton, Gyan received a master’s degree in public health from New York Medical College before eventually joining the Massachusetts Department of Public Health as a school-based health center epidemiologist.
He and his colleagues assess risk and resiliency among students, with the goal of limiting chronic truancy. They work to find out more about the students who visit the 33 school-based health centers, which operate as satellite clinics located mostly in high schools around the state. What are the unseen factors that may be impacting students’ health and well-being, and therefore their academic performance — mental health issues, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, gender identity, etc.?
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic brought new questions and priorities. How are families’ economic situations impacting students? What effect does that have on equity in the academic arena? Remote learning doesn’t work for students who don’t have access to computers at home.
In addition to providing medical care, providers in the school-based health centers teach students that they have what it takes to reach their full potential. They call this resiliency. Gyan has a personal appreciation for this part of the work.
“We measure risks and resiliencies,” he said. “If someone was to measure my risks and resiliencies as a student, I would say that EOP was a resiliency — it allowed me to stay in school.”
He encourages others to reflect on and appreciate their past experiences, as well.
“Let us not get so consumed with life that we forget the people and the places that made us who we are. Binghamton has made a lot of us who we are. I never talk about my graduate school experience, but I will never stop talking about my Binghamton experience, because it really shaped me. It took a timid kid from Brooklyn and introduced me to the world, and I will never forget that.”