Harkirat Kaur grew up in a family full of medical professionals, including a sister who is now a psychologist. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When her best friend died by suicide in middle school, Kaur was devastated \u2014 but she also felt she had the support system to help her process the trauma in a healthy way. As she\u202fwitnessed\u202fher peers grieve the loss, however, she realized that not everyone had a similar experience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI was able to get the support I needed, whereas some of my friends weren\u2019t because of the mental health stigma that existed around them,\u201d she said. \u201cWhen something like this happens, it gets talked about and\u202fput\u202fin the news, but then\u202fit\u202fkind of slowly\u202ffades away. A lot of the youth out there, even if they want to get help, are faced with a system that is\u202freally hard\u202fto navigate.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kaur is currently a graduate student\u202fin\u202fthe University of Washington Bothell\u2019s Community Health & Social Justice master\u2019s program<\/a>, where\u202fshe\u2019s\u202ffound a place to channel her passion for improving access to health care and addressing systemic gaps in mental health support. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When she first began as an undergraduate at UW Bothell, Kaur planned to follow in her family\u2019s footsteps and enter the medical field. She had a lot of experience providing community-based support through volunteer opportunities, such as raising money for UNICEF to help kids with malnutrition and volunteering in public schools and hospitals. She also worked with kids in an orphanage in Europe, where her family is from, and helped with medical camps that her family organized. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Given her experience working with communities and her passion for public health, her adviser suggested she might be interested in the Health Studies program. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI found I had a passion for the social sciences and\u202fhealth\u202fstudies, which taught me about some of the social determinants of health\u202fand\u202fto think critically about power, representation and the root cause of inequities,\u201d Kaur said. \u201cIt made me want to pursue public health and learn about how marginalized voices are shut off and decentered \u2014 and how we can bring them to center to\u202fhelp navigate and address these inequities.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Kaur completed\u202fbachelor\u2019s degrees in Society, Ethics & Human Behavior and in Health Studies in 2022 before receiving her master\u2019s\u00a0degree\u00a0in Education in 2024. But she didn\u2019t\u202fstop there. Wanting to further explore how to tackle systemic health challenges, she\u202fdecided to enroll\u202fin the CHSJ master\u2019s program.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI chose UW Bothell because of how much one-on-one interaction you get to have with your professors,\u201d she said. \u201cOne thing that fascinated me is how much your professors, mentors and advisers really try to understand your goals and ambitions and to help guide you to them. The fact that you can get that kind of support is what\u2019s really kept me here.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n “UW Bothell has given me a language and a framework to really understand that storytelling\u202fisn\u2019t\u202fjust about personal\u202fexperiences. It\u2019s\u202fabout methods for shifting narratives at an institutional level.”<\/p>Harkirat Kaur, graduate\u202fstudent, Community Health & Social Justice <\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n Kaur has learned in her CHSJ courses how powerful a tool\u202fin\u202fpublic health storytelling can be. She\u2019s witnessed\u202fit firsthand by sharing her own lived experiences through her writing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As part of the curriculum in one of her classes, taught by Dr. Jody Early, professor in the\u202fSchool of Nursing & Health Studies,<\/a>\u202fKaur\u202fwrote\u202fa personal essay about losing her friend to suicide. Her article, \u201cBuilding a Resilient Future: Youth Mental Health and Suicide Prevention<\/a>,\u201d was published by the National Alliance on Mental Illness. The piece details her experience, but\u202fit\u2019s\u202falso a call to action advocating for\u202fsystemic and policy changes to prevent youth suicide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI hope it helps whoever reads it \u2014 whether it\u2019s a parent or a policymaker or maybe even a youth \u2014 to know how to get help but also what they can do and what actions can be taken both as individuals and as part of a larger system,\u201d Kaur said. \u201cUW Bothell has given me a language and a framework to really understand that storytelling isn\u2019t just about personal experiences. It\u2019s about methods for shifting narratives at an institutional level.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n For her capstone project, Kaur is working with King County to build an advisory board for public health messaging. She is\u202fengaging directly with the Latinx community and youth to understand their health communications preferences. <\/p>\n\n\n\n While data is helpful in this work, she finds that individual experiences are especially informative. \u201cI come to this work with a deep commitment to equality and lifting community voices,\u201d she said. \u201cNarratives are\u202freally important to me because they help fill the gaps and show the lived realities behind the statistics. Paired with narratives, data becomes more compelling, contextual\u202fand actionable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cStories with data really illustrate how policies show up in real people\u2019s lives and make inequities harder to ignore.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Kaur will be graduating in June and plans to pursue a career in public health as a community health or program director, where she can lead equitable, community-driven initiatives and foster inclusive public health systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWorking side by side with communities is important to me,\u201d she said. \u201cCollaborating with communities is central to my public health philosophy. I\u2019ve learned that effective engagement begins with listening \u2014 many communities already hold the insights needed for sustainable solutions.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Her ultimate goal is to co-design public health systems that amplify community strengths, address structural inequities and elevate local voices in decision-making. \u201cI want to use storytelling as a bridge between the communities and the decision makers and leverage individual voices for collective change.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As a graduate student majoring in Community Health & Social Justice, Harkirat Kaur aims to use storytelling as a bridge between communities and decision makers.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121,"featured_media":33669,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"page-templates\/news-article-secondary.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_is_archived":false,"_archived_contact_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[202,252,200,204],"tags":[],"school":[420],"class_list":["post-33658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-news","category-population-health","category-profiles","category-students","school-school-of-nhs"],"acf":{"related_links":{"toggle_visibility":false,"link_1":"","link_2":"","link_3":"","link_4":"","link_5":""},"highlight_box":{"toggle_visibility":false,"title":"","content":"","button":"","button_style":"angled-purple-button","button_screen_reader_text":""},"contact_type_1":{"toggle_visibility":true,"contact_title":"","email":"","phone":"","box":"","address_line_1":"","address_line_2":"","location":""},"contact_type_2":{"toggle_visibility":false,"contact_title":"","email":"","phone":"","box":"","address_line_1":"","address_line_2":"","location":""},"social_media":{"toggle_visibility":false,"facebook_url":"","instagram_url":"","linkedin_url":"","twitter_url":"","youtube_url":""},"blog_archive_sidebar_visibility":false},"yoast_head":"\nAddressing health inequities<\/strong> <\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Sharing lived experiences<\/strong> <\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Working side by side<\/strong> <\/h2>\n\n\n\n