Hannah Ihnat

Briefly describe your current role as a public health practitioner.

As the program coordinator for West Virginia Area Health Education Centers, I help support overall program success by assisting with development, implementation, evaluation, and dissemination of program activities. My daily tasks surround data entry and reporting for health professions students and providers who live and work in West Virginia. I work closely with the program office and regional AHEC staff across the state, as well as local partners, students, and key interest holders to improve healthcare access and quality in rural and medically underserved regions.

Why did you choose WVU for your public health education?

It seemed natural to choose WVU for my public health education. I knew I wanted to work with improving healthcare quality and access in my home state, and WVU gave me many opportunities to do that both during school and after graduation. I completed both my undergraduate and graduate degrees with the WVU School of Public Health, so I was able to meet many faculty and staff along the way who intentionally and consistently supported me. This support is ultimately what made WVU special for me. Along with that, WVU has a strong philosophy for rural healthcare, and this was instilled in me from the beginning of my education. That made it natural for me to develop my own philosophy of wanting to improve rural healthcare quality, access, and outcomes.

How did WVU and your experiences in the School of Public Health prepare you to be a public health professional?

Being able to work with community partners and understand what it takes to support public health in West Virginia was really valuable for me. I was able to work with community partners as part of the curriculum, as well as for my job during graduate school, which really shifted my perspective as a public health professional. Meeting leaders in rural communities and getting to experience firsthand what their struggles look like adds a perspective that you can't read about and learn from a textbook. Understanding communities as a whole is so important for this field of work and the School of Public Health adequately prepared me for that.

Tell us about your field placement experience or other hands-on experiences.

My field placement for my Master of Public Health applied practice experience was with the WVU Health Affairs Institute. During this experience, I familiarized myself with data extraction, analysis, and reporting for a telehealth pilot project to evaluate its impact on emergency room visits and readmissions. I learned how to most effectively report outcomes as a team and how to communicate with key stakeholders involved in the project. For my MPH capstone, I presented on research I'd been working on for two years that involved looking at the effects of occupational physical activity on cardiovascular health. I worked directly with research participants during visits; collected and processed data from accelerometers, heart monitors, and saliva samples; and analyzed sleep periods using a software called ActiLife. I learned many general research skills and how to apply basic biostatistical methods (mainly mixed effects linear regression) to a real-world study population.

What advice would you give today’s public health students?

Follow what fuels you! For the longest time, I thought I had to have everything figured out about what I wanted to be and my exact job title. As long as you have a basic understanding of how you want to contribute to a change in the world, everything else will fall into place. If you are passionate about what you do and can see that even from a distance you are making a difference, the job title you have isn't as important as you probably think. Public health is such a broad field, and you can waste a lot of time trying to narrow it all the way down. My advice is to just go where your opportunities and your heart take you. Also, try not to compare yourself--especially to your peers! They are there to help and support you.

What does public health mean to you?

Public health, to me, means improving the health and well-being of entire communities by addressing the systems and conditions that shape health. It focuses not only on treating illness but on preventing it through education, policy, and access to resources. Through my training in program evaluation, I have come to really understand the importance of storytelling through data in public health and how it can create meaningful and lasting impact in every sector. I see public health as a way to create healthier environments so that everyone, regardless of where they live, has the opportunity to live a healthy life.