Anh Tran’s path to Union Adventist University’s Master of Public Health Program was far from a straight line. It started with trips up and down treacherous mountain roads in Vietnam.
Her mother works in the pharmaceutical industry; her father is a physician. From an early age, she saw the stark contrast in health care, medicine and nutrition available to people around her in Ho Chi Minh City and those she met at the mobile clinics run by her parents and their friends at a rural orphanage.
“It’s not always about money,” Tran explained. “Transportation is hard. Many people survive on just what they can self-produce and harvest from their gardens. They don’t have stores. It can take an hour or two to get to the nearest clinic, and even further to find a pharmacy. We could not arrange for a big semi to transfer goods and medicine up and down the mountain. So what did we do? My mom would make a lot of trips to donate over-the-counter medications.”
“My parents are really good, strong, ethical role models,” Tran continued. “They set the foundations for me to be even more involved in the community.”
In 2017, Tran came to the United States to study applied biology at the University of Evansville in Indiana. Then in her junior year, the pandemic hit, bringing the world (and her education) to a temporary halt. After quarantining in her college dorm room, distant relatives in Omaha invited her to wait out the pandemic with them. While falling in love with Nebraska, her mind kept turning back to the villages and orphanage she grew up visiting in Vietnam.
“I thought, I have this time, what can I do with it?” Tran remembers. “My friends and I started thinking of project ideas that were within our capacity as undergraduate students. That’s when it kind of struck me that, Oh! I actually know more about this stuff than I thought.” From her room in Omaha, she started fundraising and using the connections her parents had built through their mobile clinics to organize supplies and volunteers to visit rural areas in Vietnam to help families affected by COVID and bring them food.
“That’s when I realized how I can be a piece of the puzzle,” Tran said. “As a teenager, I had thought community involvement was just a hobby, but then, after COVID, I realized, Hey, I can turn helping people into a profession.”
Following her graduation in Indiana, she accepted a job as a clinical research coordinator at a lab in Lincoln. “Visiting my family in Omaha, I got to know the vibes of Nebraska,” she laughed. “I love Nebraska so much, and I really like Lincoln. Ho Chi Minh City is big and loud, and all I want to do is to escape the noise. The convenience that comes with living in a big city is great, but I need my sleep! Lincoln is big enough.”
As she started her career in medical research, her goals for the future came into focus. Her dream job is to promote dental public health in rural Vietnam. She wants to run mobile oral health clinics while providing treatment, supplies and education to underserved communities. Working towards that goal, she decided to earn two graduate degrees before leaving Nebraska: one in public health and the other in dentistry.
“Oral health is not something that should be neglected, but unfortunately, it is,” Tran said. “Teeth are so important for quality of life. You can prevent so much disease by just having good oral hygiene. But in communities I’ve seen and worked in, they often think oral hygiene is only for the wealthy. When they are having hard times — struggling even to put food on the table and a roof over their heads — brushing teeth is just not a priority, and they often can’t get good quality dental products.”
With her dream job as her guiding light, she started looking for accredited public health programs in Nebraska. When she saw Union Adventist University on the list, she immediately thought of events she had attended on Union’s campus for volunteers of the Good Neighbor Center and how much she enjoys the farmer’s market on Sundays at the College View Church.
“At the time when I was applying, I thought, Instead of going somewhere I’m not even sure how people are, why don’t I just go for a program where I already feel a connection?” she said.
She is exuberant when she talks about the Public Health Program at Union. “I really, really love small classes,” Tran explained. “I feel more confident. I don’t have to worry that I’m asking too many questions. Everyone is so supportive. The professors take the time to get to know you, to learn your background, to hear your story — to understand your why.”
One recent example of her teachers going the extra mile was helping her prepare for an interview for a public health internship with the State of Nebraska. “Two professors took time out of their schedules to sit down with me and practice,” she said. “That is valuable, you know? You don’t get that kind of connection and support just anywhere. The welcome and support I have received from everyone I’ve met so far at Union is beyond anywhere else.”
She also appreciates that Union’s program is designed for generalists and doesn’t require incoming students to choose a specialization. “In public health, there are so many directions and pathways you can go,” she explained. “If I had to choose a specialization in January, it would have been biostatistics. Well, that’s not the case anymore. The more I learn about public health, the more I’m interested in epidemiology. I’m glad that we get a broad idea of what public health is and everything you can do with your master’s. Specializations can come later with certifications, fellowships and on-the-job training.”
“The professors at Union are very knowledgeable,” Tran continued. “It’s not just textbook knowledge. The faculty have rich work experiences in very different parts of the public health world. I’m learning from their insights and experience working in different industries and with different populations.”
Tran’s chosen career path still has many twists and turns ahead — three more semesters of public health, then dental school and creating a sustainable model for her mobile clinics, to name a few. But she is confident the effort will be worth it when she has come full circle to return to those mountain roads in Vietnam she once traveled with her parents. Thinking back to those times and her volunteer experience during COVID, she says, “I’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly sides of community work. It’s worth it.”