Soon after Brittany Jenkins-Lord came to the Bloomberg School in 2019 for her M.P.H., she often sat at a table at the front door of Baltimore’s Northeast Market. She was volunteering for a community-based project.
"When people walked in, we asked them, 'Do you know about your family history? Would you like to learn how you can talk to your family about your health?'" she says.
Jenkins-Lord helped women chart their family histories in relation to disease risk and urged them to share the information with their doctors. Many had family histories similar to her own.
Growing up in Charleston, South Carolina, Jenkins-Lord, Ph.D., M.P.H. ’20, MS, lost several family members to cancer who also suffered from diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, and other comorbidities. It’s a narrative shared by many Black families in the South, where “there’s a lot of disease and a lot of risk factors for disease,” she says…
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