Medina Jackson-Browne: PhD, Not Imposter

In the days leading up to Commencement, the Mailman School website is featuring first-person accounts from nine members of the graduating class as they reflect on their singular paths into public health, some of the surprising lessons they took away from their experience at the Mailman School, and their aspirations for the years ahead.

Among others, you’ll meet an aspiring physician who hit on the winning formula for compassionate care; an executive who teamed up with “Jeopardy”-beating technology to improve cancer outcomes; a scholarship-winning MHA grad set on making his mark at the Mayo Clinic; and a Texas native intent on improving the odds for young women’s access to reproductive health in her home state.

Medina Jackson-Browne calls herself a survivor of the “imposter syndrome.” But the former teacher at a high-needs Bronx School showed authentic determination in her desire to understand the toxic exposures driving high rates of asthma in the community as a PhD student in Environmental Health Sciences.  

After I graduated from college, I saw an ad on Craigslist and applied to the New York City Teaching Fellows program. The program helps mid-career people get a Master’s and assigns teachers with particular skillsets to schools where they can make a difference. Some might think teaching in a high-needs school is scary, but I thought, “well, I’m from Harlem. I attended a failing school. I’m not going to have a problem as a teacher in the Bronx.”

I found teaching to be very fulfilling and I liked being in front of a classroom. What I struggled with was absenteeism—the high number of students who would miss months upon months of school and could never hope to catch up. And because I had six classes with 40 or more students in each, it was hard to find out anything when a student disappeared. When I finally got to meet with a parent, I realized that bad health was usually the reason for excessive absences. It all came into focus when I learned that the rate of asthma in the Bronx was off-the-charts. Although it seems quite obvious to me now, back then, connecting health to educational outcomes was a revelation. That became the focus of my interest in environmental health, and is what led me to Mailman.

For anyone, navigating a first year of doctoral study can be extremely scary. Doing this at an Ivy League School is even more intimidating. I spent my whole first semester suffering from “the imposter syndrome,” when you’ve achieved a kind of greatness but don’t allow yourself to acknowledge it. You’re worried someone is going to find out that you’re not who you are, that you don’t have the skills that you have. It’s something that a lot of minorities go through. You’re here, you made it, but you have this constant feeling that you don’t belong here and don’t know how you got here.

I learned something about myself over the last two years. The things that I feel may be devastating at the time, but when I look back, I always learn something from them. I wouldn’t change anything that happened. I wouldn’t change any decision I made.   

Even before my defense, I’m starting an epidemiology post-doc. I’m helping a group that does healthcare data analytics to build predictive models for companies, hospitals, and insurance companies. One project is on the risk of re-admittance to the hospital. They create these nice predictive models using big data. They had physicians and engineers to build the models. But they didn’t have an epidemiologist to translate what these models mean in the field of public health. Models like these are the future of healthcare.

My new employer is letting me come back to Mailman to defend. I’ll be here for Joe Graziano to stand up, shake my hand, and says, “Congratulations, doctor.” Even then, because I know myself, I don’t know if it’s going to be a relief. I think it’s going to take me a while to believe that it’s real.