Student Profile
Moyouri Bhattacharjee
School of Public Health, MPH Program
Moyouri Bhattacharjee began her academic career at Cornell University, completing her bachelor’s degree in Biological Sciences. She is currently pursuing her master’s in public health at Downstate with a concentration in epidemiology.
A unique purview into the realm of public health research
Growing up in an immigrant, minority community, Moyouri Bhattacharjee witnessed firsthand how a lack of accessibility to health care services affected people around her. A simple trip the hospital felt out of reach to many in her community due to a lack of time, education, and infrastructure to support public health.
The personal experience of growing up in an underserved area sparked her initial interest in the realm of public health and was later solidified by a wonderful experience in a biophysics research lab in high school.
Her research interests expanded as she gained access to accomplished researchers and diverse fields of study in college. Moyouri first encountered translational research in her junior year and has continued her journey in public health research ever since. Moyouri shares that she has had amazing mentors throughout her research career who have helped her develop a deep appreciation for scientific inquiry. Most recently, she has focused on deepening her understanding of health disparities research and honing her skills to become a better researcher and community contributor. Working under mentors with research participants at Downstate has afforded her the privilege of studying barriers and facilitators to healthy outcomes at various points of the patient trajectory.
Work at Downstate
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By conducting research in underserved populations, Moyouri aims to uncover how patients' unique sociocultural and geopolitical circumstances, along with systemic inequities, influence their health outcomes. Understanding even just a few of these factors is crucial, as each patient's situation impacts their chances of achieving positive health outcomes in ways that are still not fully understood.
At the university hospital's public health school and Ob-Gyn department, Moyouri explored the social determinants of health (SDOH) in pregnant patients, comparing those who were immigrants to those born in the United States. This research aimed to assess barriers to accessing prenatal and postpartum care through SDOH screenings.
In the iNSPIRe program within the surgery department, Moyouri has honed her quantitative skills and analyzed data from a national all-payer inpatient healthcare database. The focus for this project was to assess the likelihood of limb-saving procedures versus amputations in patients with chronic limb-threatening ischemia (CLTI) in hospitals with varying levels of Medicaid-facility burden.
Additionally, in collaboration with the School of Health Professions, the School of Public Health, and the Neurology department, she contributed the implementation of a telehealth intervention for patients with hypertension. This project aimed to explore the effect of sustained blood pressure monitoring on trends over time, with the goal of reducing the risk of stroke.
Through her experiences with these projects, Moyouri has found that the human element in this research motivates her to search harder for answers and find joy in the process.
She hopes to leverage the innovation and creativity already present in health equity research to increase access to timely and effective care. Ultimately, her goal is to improve health outcomes for local communities and make discoveries that can be applied to broader populations.
Being at Downstate
Moyouri was inspired by Downstate’s mission to work to improve the health of urban and immigrant populations. She also appreciated the flexibility of the program, which allowed her to work, take classes and engage with the Central Brooklyn community. In addition to the program’s design and mission, she was interested in engaging in clinical research with the university hospital, and to explore working with community organizations.
She says one of her favorite things about Downstate has been that she gets to apply what she learned in the program to her research projects and in the local communities she serves. She was constantly impressed by the diverse experiences of her peers across all the schools at Downstate. Their individual approaches to care delivery provided a lot of insight into her own notions of what effective and equitable care is, and they challenged her idea of what a health professional should do, say and think.
Looking ahead.......
If Moyouri could offer one piece of advice to future trainees at Downstate, she would advise them to connect widely and deeply with the faculty, staff, peers, and fellow community organizers. Public health and healthcare are deeply political and constantly evolving fields. It is not practiced in a vacuum and it thrives with a strong community as its foundation. She urges trainees to build their community now and never stop.
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When asked what she envisions for her future, she said she aspires to be not only a researcher, but also an advocate and servant leader, actively working to address health disparities and promote equitable access to care.