If you ask Daniela O'Connell what she’s excited about in the public health landscape, the answer might surprise you.
O’Connell, the Senior Deputy Director at the Public Health Informatics Institute at the Task Force for Global Health in Decatur, is excited and optimistic about artificial intelligence and its potential uses in her field.
“Our workforce is so limited and stretched thin, particularly in epidemiology and informatics, so I would love to see how AI can be leveraged ethically and responsibly,” O’Connell said. “Bring some of these tools and apply them to public health. Let's take a look at data sets and analyze them and help our policymakers make decisions around the health of our populations.”
On The Path To Public Health
O’Connell’s interest in public health, which led her to Georgia State University on the path to her current position, began in her hometown of Barranquilla on the northern coast of Colombia. The daughter of a dentist, O’Connell began trying to work out what she wanted to do back in high school.
“At first, I thought I was going to be a medical doctor. I wanted to help,” she said. “I knew I had always wanted to be in the business of helping people.”
Early on, she also considered being a clinical psychologist or even the possibility of following her mother into the dentistry field. Her path forward became a little clearer when she was awarded a scholarship through the Georgia Rotary Student Program for one year.
“I came and I liked the first year, and then I ended up finding new scholarships to be able to stay in the U.S.,” she said.
She began at Armstrong State University in Savannah, Georgia, now a part of Georgia Southern University. During her junior year, a field trip to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for a health ethics class brought the picture of her future into stronger focus.
“I was in that place, not knowing where to go next, because I knew I wanted to do something that would help people, but I knew I didn't want to be a one-to-one clinical professional,” she said. “And I walked into the CDC, and I was like, ‘Wow, this is it. This is what I've been looking for.’ So I graduated from college, went to Georgia State right after college, and the rest is history.”
Getting In On The Ground Floor
O’Connell said one of the charms of going to Georgia State’s School of Public Health was the size of the program and the potential she had to build relationships within it.
“I could tell I wasn't going to be a number like in the other metro Atlanta schools,” she said. “Georgia State’s public health program at the time was a small, intimate place, and then obviously in close proximity to CDC.”
At the School of Public Health, O’Connell sharpened her focus with the help of the School’s founding dean and Regents’ Professor, Michael Eriksen, who served as her academic advisor. Eriksen helped O’Connell discover and deepen her love for behavioral health sciences, she said.
His classes on behavioral health sciences and urban health stick with her to this day.
“I started learning about the effects of the built environment on our health,” O’Connell said. “Dr. Eriksen showed us maps of health indicators in the city of Atlanta by ZIP code. I was fascinated, and even now, I could sit in on these lectures all day.”
Eyes On The Prize
When she was at the end of her MPH program, O’Connell took a global health class that hosted guest speakers every week
“The guest speaker one week was Dr. Mark Rosenberg, who was the president and CEO of the Task Force for Global Health at the time,” O’Connell said. “So I'm sitting in this classroom and I'm thinking, ‘I'm going to work there one day, that's where I want to be.’”
After graduating with her MPH in 2007, O’Connell landed a job with the Emory School of Medicine, which sponsored her work visa. She wore two hats while at Emory. She was the Coordinator of a Diabetes Education Program for Latinos while also working as a Grants Coordinator for the head of the diabetes clinic at Grady Memorial Hospital.
She continued on that path for three and a half years before an opening for a program associate position at the Task Force became available. The job was an entry-level position as a part of the network of field epidemiology training programs around the world. O’Connell spent almost five years with this program before moving to the Public Health Informatics Institute as a project manager. After a couple of years in this role, an unexpected opportunity in the program’s leadership team opened up.
“I came back from maternity leave with my second child, and I was told, ‘Hey, this deputy director position is open,’” O’Connell said. “And some of my peers said, ‘We think you should apply.’ And I applied, and I got the job, and I've been in this role for seven and a half years.”
Looking Forward
In the last 18 years, the School of Public Health at Georgia State has continued to grow from the small startup program that O’Connell attended into a leading national public health program, attracting more and more students. So what advice would she have for prospective students looking at the field of public health?
“I would say, really look into it. There is a need to train the next generation of public health practitioners,” she said. “We need a generation that understands the importance of public health.”