News from the School of Public Health

THE STATELY 23-STORY HOTEL OPENED AT the height of the Jazz Age, but less than a year later, Wall Street’s 1929 crash snuffed out revelry in the opulent ballroom and secret speakeasy. That’s when the property, then one of Baltimore’s tallest buildings, supposedly began accumulating ghosts: failed businessmen, wiped-out tycoons, even a bankrupt couple reputed to have jumped to their deaths on a downtown street with their young daughter.

Vonai Moyo '13 knew her dual passions from the start— as a child she dreamed of becoming a pediatrician and since the first grade she devoted herself to gymnastics.  At UMD’s School of Public Health (SPH) she nurtured these two loves and transformed them into two dynamic careers: working as a physician assistant (PA) and as a rookie member of the renowned New England Patriots

Before teen superstar Bryce Harper burst onto the scene, president mascots raced along the outfield fence and D.C. crowds danced to the tune of “Baby Shark,” the Major League Baseball team now known as the Washington Nationals was situated a little north of the border.

As a kid, Joanne Pérodin ('05 BS, ’09 MPH) loved to take things apart and put them back together again, like her bicycle or keyboard, and thought she might become an engineer. By the time she began her studies in kinesiology in 2001 at UMD’s School of Public Health, she had already lived through the tumult of political violence in her home city of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, along with the increasingly disastrous effects of extreme weather events on Haiti’s environment and population. 

On Thursday, student organizations, academic programs and other School of Public Health involvement groups gathered for the school’s annual SPH Involvement Fair, held in the School on its ground floor Concourse.

Twenty-two-year-old A hated that they’d had to start wearing a bra earlier than classmates and desperately wanted to be flat-chested. As a teen, while watching a show on weight loss, they saw a man wrap himself in plastic wrap to sweat off a few pounds—and thought, “What if I shrink-wrapped my chest?” The flaw in this plan quickly became apparent: They couldn’t breathe.