Standing in a crowd and watching a parade of dancers during Festa Junina made Jane Lee-Woodmansee (PH ‘24) fall in love with Brazilian culture all over again. After serving a mission in Brazil, Lee-Woodmansee thought she knew a lot about the country, but participating in a public health study abroad opened her eyes and helped her see the nation from a public health perspective.
While traveling through different cities in Brazil Lee-Woodmansee and her classmates studied medical entomology with students from the University of Brasilia, evaluated workers' health at a recycling facility, attended a World Health Organization conference, and learned about vaccinations in Brazil’s public health system.
The student team conducted fieldwork catching bugs to identify which ones carried tropical diseases like dengue. For Lee-Woodmansee, who has an aversion to bugs, participating in this fieldwork was a “growing experience.”
Lee-Woodmansee has experience creating public health initiatives and proposals for government funding. However, seeing this technical side in the lab and out in the field helped her understand the “specific problem that we're trying to solve” with health initiatives. Seeing how different medical professionals and scientists work together gave her a more complete understanding of the work it takes to run public health systems. It also fueled a curiosity in her that was sparked at BYU.
“I think the best advice that I’ve heard from a public health professor at BYU was to always be curious,” said Lee-Woodmansee. “Not only to be curious about your own field and continue learning and becoming an expert but to be curious about other peoples’ fields.”
Learning about other fields related to public health in Brazil increased Lee-Woodmansee’s understanding of common health issues and how to address them. She learned that it’s important to not only work with public health officials but also to listen to specific members of the community to understand what the community needs.
Health at recycling cooperatives is a significant community issue in Brazil. The Brazilian government created recycling cooperatives to provide safer working conditions for those who sort recyclable material from trash. At the cooperative, Lee-Woodmansee and her classmates evaluated the workers’ health, and through these evaluations, they learned how to improve work life and safety.
“Being able to see how it was impacting people on a very personal level, helped me when I looked at the bigger picture of the numbers and the data to be like, those are people experiencing what I just spent a whole week studying,” she said.
This understanding is something that has inspired Lee-Woodmansee to continue learning and finding ways to serve. It also reflects a principle taught by President Reese: “Students who understand their identity as children of God, children of the covenant, and disciples of Jesus Christ instinctively recognize their covenantal responsibility to help their fellow human beings.”
Now successfully graduated with her bachelor’s degree, Lee-Woodmansee will increase her capability to serve as she follows her curiosity to graduate school. There, she will take with her the light she gained from her time at BYU—replete with opportunities for academic growth like the ones she experienced in Brazil—and use it to fulfill her covenantal responsibility to serve others.
