Public health professor gives back in the BEST way

Lilly Ramphal-Naley, MD, MPH, has come up with a unique way to assist international graduate students at UNT Health Science Center by donating her teaching stipend back to the school to create five new $1,000 scholarships through the School of Public Health BEST Center.

The SPH BEST Center gives students an opportunity to work on public health projects for clients around the world by providing data analytics services for researchers, agencies, public health departments and other organizations.

Dr. Ramphal-Naley, Adjunct Assistant Professor, has worked with the SPH for 14 years, most recently developing and teaching occupational and environmental health courses online. She said she continues to be inspired by her students.

"I like to tell them, we need your young minds to help find solutions to global issues like health care access, safe/healthy food and water, isolation of changing or emerging infectious diseases like TB, malaria, the Ebola crisis, and more," she said. 

"These are some of the major public health issues that need attention. Data is critical, because without the data analysis, all you have is a problem, no solution. Hopefully, the big world projects and challenges that our students are taking on can be translated back into ways they can help their own native countries and our world in the future."

Selected as this year’s BEST Global Interprofessional Scholars are Obiora Egbuche (MPH, Biostatistics) and Udoka Obinwa (MPH, Epidemiology) from Nigeria; and Jay Mistry (MPH, Epidemiology), Gunjanbhai Patel (MPH, Epidemiology) and Nayan Patel (MPH, Epidemiology) from India.

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