PERSONAL STATEMENT

 Why do you want to work in public health? How did you arrive at this
realization?
 What educational, work, research, volunteer, or other extracurricular
experiences have been formative in your public health journey? What did you take
away from them?
 What do you plan to do during and after your degree? What are your
professional ambitions?
 Why is an MPH, specifically, the best degree to help you accomplish your
career goals (as opposed to other public health degrees or an MD, for instance)? 
 Why do you want to attend the specific program(s) that you’re applying to?
How will those programs help you achieve your ambitions?
 As a student, what would you contribute to an MPH program?

Your personal statement should tell the story of what has led you to pursue an
MPH and a career in public health. 

accomplishments that you’re proud of (such as publications, presentations,

fundraisers you’ve put on, or anything else that’s relevant to public health),
An example of a great MPH personal statement

This personal statement comes from Megan’s application to Yale’s MPH in Social
and Behavioral Sciences program:

My fascination with the role of nutrition in healing complex diseases

stemmed from helping loved ones during my childhood constructively handle
mental health challenges. When I was nine, I lost my father to cancer and
watched my mother and brother’s mental health decline over a decade of
processing his death. At the time, I didn’t have a strong grasp of how
nutrition could’ve helped them in the same way that I do now. I began
learning about this topic when I sought out immersion experiences with local
organizations in New Zealand (NZ) and Cambodia to pursue my interest in
nutrition and explore the benefits of a healthful diet within those
communities.

Through a one-month group volunteer expedition in Cambodia, I shared

ideas with 15 local families on how improving diet quality could positively
affect their overall health. They informed us that our culturally sensitive
nutrition lessons supported them in eating healthfully, which led to
improvements in physical and mental well-being as they faced trauma
following their country’s devastating 1979 genocide. This showed me that
mental health benefits can be reaped from diet as the result of both beneficial
nutrient properties and the establishment of community through uniting
people around food. Upon my return home, I applied my newfound
appreciation for socialization while sharing healthful meals with my family
in NZ, which reinforced our sense of togetherness. As my belief in the power
of nutrition for stabilizing mental health was strengthened, I became
determined to bolster my knowledge of diet as a psychiatric therapy.  

To continue empowering individuals facing psychological trauma to choose

healthful diets in another context, I decided to visit the United States, a
country known for its societal diversity. I received a merit-based scholarship
from my home institution to study abroad at Cornell University. To facilitate
my exploration of nutrition’s role in psychiatry within the United States’
diverse populations and to improve my nutrition counseling skills, I
continued my studies at Cornell in the Didactic Program in Dietetics.

While at Cornell, I realized that the purpose of nutrition care for mental
health lies not only in facilitating more positive emotions psychologically but
also in restoring nutritional balance physiologically. I’ve also learned that
many populations of low socioeconomic status who consume low-quality
diets, due to complex social reasons sometimes beyond their control, also
face mental illness in conjunction with their health disparities. To better
understand mental illnesses associated with racial inequities, I volunteered
as a nutrition educator at AltaMed’s 10-week obesity program to provide
nutrition care for a Hispanic group. Through co-taught nutrition lessons, I
built rapport with parents who spoke little English and their children by
tailoring teaching plans and using hands-on exercises. I also used nutrition
counseling with individuals experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder and
autism spectrum disorder to reinforce how they could use diet to positively
influence their behavioral and brain health, both mentally and
neurologically.

My experiences with diverse communities internationally and in the U.S.

have strengthened in me the importance of making nutrition care for mental
health available to all. They have also inspired me to deepen my
understanding of how diet can be used to improve behavioral, mental, and
neurological health for various populations, regardless of one’s mental state,
socioeconomic status, or ethnicity. These are some of the reasons why I want
to attend Yale University’s niche Master of Public Health in Social and
Behavioral Sciences.

The evolution of my interest in understanding and advocating for nutrition’s

role in brain health was further strengthened this past summer. I was sitting
in a doctor’s office waiting for my boyfriend when he walked out and told me
he was diagnosed with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME), a debilitating
neurological disease. Although this news was challenging to grasp, I felt
hopeful that helping my family through a similar challenge previously, along
with the knowledge gained from my current research writing, would prove
valuable here.
Coincidentally, eight months prior, I co-founded a collaborative article-
writing project to showcase nutrition’s profound role in brain and behavioral
health with my former professor, a Cornell mitochondria and nutrition
researcher. In this project, “Eating for Happiness,” I review evidence on
dietary mechanisms that contribute to the development of neurological and
mental illnesses as well as previous interventions aimed at targeting these
mechanisms. Subsequently, I use these findings to recommend new
population-level interventions that could reduce mental illness mortality
rates, such as conducting nutrition lessons at psychiatric treatment centers.
In one specific article I co-authored with a dietitian, we synthesized over 150
articles on nutrition’s ability to alleviate psychiatric and neurological
disorders, including depression and Alzheimer’s. This article has been
accepted for publication by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics’
Behavioral Health Group.

My desire to continue promoting the connection between nutrition and

neurological health expanded when I learned that my co-founder of “Eating
for Happiness” is also a researcher for Cornell’s federally-funded ME
research center. The serendipity of working with an expert on this currently
incurable disease while living with my partner who has ME has inspired me
to approach ME treatment with a nutrition component. For my next article, I
plan to promote nutrition interventions as a powerful adjunct to treat
behavioral health issues by linking diet to ME.

Studying and working abroad to provide evidence-based dietary

recommendations have resulted in my desire to drive a paradigm shift in our
global perception of nutrition as important for both brain and body health.
Nutrition produces not only psychological benefits that improve mental
health, but also dramatic biological changes that support brain function. As
Yale’s MPH in Social and Behavioral Sciences addresses nutrition as a
health promoting behavior that comes with psychosocial challenges faced by
many communities worldwide, I am pursuing this program to become a well-
rounded public health behavioral science and nutrition professional. It is the
ideal program for me to further explore how powerfully diet can impact
behavioral health and to apply my knowledge in practice settings, especially
through collaboration with Community Alliance for Research & Engagement
within Yale’s unique Public Health practicum course. 

After the MPH, I plan to integrate my nutrition counseling skills and

nutritional psychiatry research to work with other healthcare professionals
as a public health dietitian and behavioral science professional, while
continuing advocacy work around ME. I hope to improve nutrition access for
all who seek holistic care, especially those who struggle with mental illness,
as dietary treatment should be a human right. Ultimately, Yale’s MPH would
allow me to combine the science of nutrition and mental health with the art of
compassion to promote nutrition as a therapy to all.