Pride Scholarship Winner Has Big Plans for Health Care
Marie Owino, a graduate student at Drexel University, was honored recently with the 2024 ASA Pride Scholarship. This award recognizes academic achievements and celebrates the diversity of the LGTBQ+ community within the statistics and data science fields. Following is an interview with Owino, who explains what the scholarship means for her and her plans for the future of health care.
You earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Graceland University and are now pursuing your Master of Public Health at Drexel University. What inspired you to engage in those studies?
I have always been fascinated by how the human body works, which is how I ended up with my bachelor’s degree in biology. As I moved though my undergraduate studies, however, I also became curious about how the structure of society affects health—specifically for marginalized individuals. This led me to pursue a Master of Public Health [degree], and I have been learning about the many ways things like racism, sexism, and homophobia affect health on local and global scales.
In your application, you said you consider yourself a “global do-er.” Can you explain what you mean by that?
My parents always emphasized the importance of leaving things/people/places better than you found them, and this is something I apply to my daily life. My academic journey has taken me to various countries, and I always strive to make a tangible impact and transform my knowledge into action, regardless of where I am on the globe.
Tell us a little bit about your volunteer experience on the Reproductive Medicine Associates of New York’s LGBTQ+ patient task force. How did that experience shape your goals or where you are today?
That experience really opened my eyes when it comes to the barriers to care faced by LGBTQ+ people. I got a deeper understanding of the financial inequities and interpersonal violence faced by queer people.
Many patients came to our clinic with stories of constantly being misgendered by physicians and patient-facing folks at other companies. On top of this, so many trans folks had medically transitioned without being made aware of how it would affect their fertility and what their options were. There was a clear lack of competent—let alone compassionate—care in the REI [reproductive endocrinology and infertility] field.
We were able to understand the scale of the problem and consequently make changes at our company to address them using data. This experience led me to my current program (MPH in epidemiology) because, even though it was on a relatively small scale, I saw first-hand how important the data was when it came to addressing these huge, mostly structural problems.
How did you hear about the ASA Pride Scholarship?
I recently became as ASA member and stumbled upon the scholarship while browsing the website.
How will receiving the scholarship help?
Receiving this scholarship will help alleviate the huge financial burden of graduate school and allow me to focus on the exciting research I will be carrying out this fall.
What are some of your goals for the future?
My graduate studies have helped me hone my interest in the intersection of health and technology. I hope to pursue further education within this nexus, and I’m looking forward to leveraging technological advancements to promote global health equity in my future work.