I’m not a New Year’s Resolutions person, but I do think it’s important and helpful to reflect on the past year and think about what you’re moving towards in the future. It could have been something I did while I took the week of Christmas off from work, because I feel like it was the first time in a while that I really just mentally disconnected from work (and other stuff like what I’m doing with MPHA), but I didn’t. Mathias asked me last night what my goal is for three months from now, and I honestly had no answer, which isn’t exactly accurate. I feel like I have a lot of things I’m wanting to accomplish or work on. Maybe I just don’t have a plan for how I’m going to do things. And not everything needs a plan.

Something that has emerged as a focus for me this past year is how I can contribute to facilitating connections and space for people to learn and build relationships with each other. Most of what I do with MPHA is the Membership Committee, and we’ve talked a lot about how we could build networks and engage new people in the association who haven’t been like folks outside the Metro, students, people working in different fields, etc. in order to more authentically represent the field of public health and to build a more diverse and inclusive member base. And, how do we that authentically? It’s a lot to think about and work on, especially since we’re a volunteer run association. One of the things I’ve been working, MPHey!, came out of that motivation to open up spaces for people working in public health to build meaningful connections with each other. A friend of mine from my MPH program and I came up with MPHey! as way for people to network but also learn from peers and engage in discussion about tricky or big topics in our field. We did two this year, the first focused on how people can find their place in public health and the second on public health research. And there will be more in the future!