Charlotte Levine Scholar Explains Her Mission To Empower Women
Kayla Walker, a junior from Crofton, Maryland, is a Levine Scholar who is majoring in public health and mathematics on the pre-medicine track — and passionate about closing the health disparities gap that exists for women of color. Earlier this year, Boston-based nonprofit Campus Compact named her among its 2023-24 Newman Civic Fellows. Throughout the fellowship year, Campus Compact provides students with opportunities to help them develop strategies for social change.
“According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the risk of pregnancy-related deaths for Black women is three times higher than for white women. The CDC also reports that 60% of all pregnancy-related deaths are preventable. Because of persisting racial disparities and biases in the field of obstetrics, countless deaths occur for Black mothers across the United States.
In high school, I completed my STEM senior capstone project about the maternal health disparities and biases in medicine. My classmates and I completed an educational session with aspiring health care professionals about common medical misconceptions by race, informed them about maternal mortality disparities and introduced doulas as a potential field of interest.
This project sparked my overwhelming interest in women’s health. Coming to Charlotte as a Levine Scholar, I wanted to use the opportunities available through this scholarship to understand the state of women’s health in the city, work with local organizations that address women’s health issues, and join clubs and organizations that support the cause.
During my first semester, through a partnership between the Levine Scholars Program Research Mentoring Initiative and the Academy for Population Health Innovation, I joined the research project Holistic Opportunity Program for Everyone Initiative led by Victoria Scott and Jennifer Langhinrichsen-Rohling, faculty in the Department of Psychological Science, and Tamikia Greene, assistant health director, Mecklenburg County Health Department. This initiative’s goal is to integrate behavioral health services in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, known as WIC, and Family Planning Clinics in the Mecklenburg County Public Health Department with a special focus on screening women who may have postpartum depression. Joining this APHI project would establish a strong foundation for my future endeavors in the field of public health, because I had the opportunity to see how academia and public health could work together to make recommendations that are both practical and data-informed.”