Gavriella Hecht, MPH, was one of 201 students receiving a master’s degree from Mount Sinai.
At a time when the world is focused on public health, the students in the Master of Public Health (MPH) program at the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai are as committed as ever to preventing disease, protecting the environment, and promoting good health at the local level and in populations around the globe.
Gavriella Hecht, who graduated from Mount Sinai’s MPH program on Friday, June 26, pursued the epidemiology track, taking on a variety of projects to gain knowledge and experience. She served as a research assistant on data management for the Integrated Care at Mount Sinai study on substance use among HIV patients. The study was conducted at outpatient HIV clinics within the Mount Sinai Health System.
In 2019, she presented research on opioids and HIV at the annual conference of the American Public Health Association. Earlier, Ms. Hecht had the opportunity to participate in county-level New York State projects that included lab work with mosquitoes and research on how certain species impact the West Nile virus.
“One of the great things about the Mount Sinai MPH program is that students have the opportunity to do significant work and really make a difference,” she says. “It allowed me to pursue my passions and to feel valued for my work. The faculty and staff are very committed to the success of their students.”
Today, Ms. Hecht is continuing her training through a two-year Centers for Disease Control and Prevention / Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists Applied Epidemiology Fellowship at the Arizona Department of Health Services. She is assigned to its Public Health Preparedness/Epidemiology and Disease Control Office of Infectious Diseases, working primarily on projects involving data management related to COVID-19, including the evaluation of electronic laboratory reporting and contact tracing.
At the Master’s Achievement Ceremony that preceded Commencement, Ms. Hecht was recognized for her accomplishments with the Excellence in Public Health Leadership and Service Award. She is also a member of the Delta Omega Honorary Society.
Ms. Hecht plans to continue her focus on epidemiology, studying patterns of zoonotic and vector-borne diseases, an emerging field she became interested in after taking a class on the topic at Mount Sinai. “My biggest passion,” she says, “is understanding how human, animal, and environmental health all impact each other.”