Katelyn Holliday, PhD, is an assistant professor in family medicine and community health. Her research focuses on the cardiovascular health effects of the natural and built environments and the role of geospatial factors and health disparities in these relationships. She aims to find ways that these environments can be shaped to positively influence health and health behavior.
What inspired you to pursue science as a career? Was there a specific person or experience that sent you down this path?
I started out my undergraduate college experience as a biology pre-med student, mostly because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my career. Over time I leaned into the ecology and environmental biology specialization and really enjoyed learning and thinking about the environment (in part because I had a close connection to the outdoors, growing up taking many trips to the national parks and spending a lot of time on my grandparent’s farm). I still liked the idea of having a career focused on people’s health, but I really wanted to incorporate my studies of the environment. A friend somewhat randomly found out about a summer study abroad experience in Australia that happened to be focused on public health. We both decided to go, mostly just to experience Australia together. For me, however, it ended up being a life-changing trip because that is where I learned about the field of public health for the first time and discovered that it was the ideal place to interweave my interests in health and the environment. When I got back to college that fall, I began taking undergraduate public health courses (including epidemiology and environmental health) and was accepted into the Collegiate Leaders in Environmental Heath internship at CDC the next summer. All those experiences combined led me to apply to graduate school in epidemiology with a focus on environmental health.
Has there been a finding or development in your research that has surprised you recently? Tell me a bit about what that was and why it was surprising.
As part of my Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health award (K award), we found that Black and Latina women reported feelings of fear of racism or discrimination in public places as barriers to physical activity in community locations like parks, streets and roadways, and gyms. While this may not necessarily be surprising, it has not been well documented in the physical activity scientific literature, and I think it is very important for researchers and public health practitioners to consider this when working on things like intervention development.
What advice would you give to young people aspiring to enter the field of science?
Learn when to be flexible and when to stay true to yourself. I’m currently working on and helping to lead an amazing project focused on studying deaths of despair among our former military service members. This is substantively very different from my main research portfolio, but I initially took the opportunity to learn about something new while applying my needed skills in Geographic Information Systems and the environment to the project. Over time my role on the project has grown, and I feel we are doing very important work for this vulnerable population. At the same time, we may be facing a period in science where we are asked to compromise our identities as scientists. Most public health scientists I know joined the field to help populations most in need of health improvements. I think it will be important for us to stand firm and find ways to continue this important work, so that we can continue working toward health equity for everyone.
We may be facing a period in science where we are asked to compromise our identities as scientists. Most public health scientists I know joined the field to help populations most in need of health improvements. I think it will be important for us to stand firm and find ways to continue this important work, so that we can continue working toward health equity for everyone.