Emily’s interest in maternal and child health (MCH) began with her experiences as a child in the healthcare system. She has a chronic illness that was diagnosed early on in childhood and due to this she was exposed to the healthcare system from a young age. This experience allowed her to recognize her own privilege in being able to access care and made her interested to know more about the lack of access to care that children face.
When deciding on a graduate school, she chose to attend Drexel's Dornsife School of Public Health for her MPH, as the program design would allow her to focus on maternal and child health and continue growing her passion for MCH.
"This experience expanded my knowledge on the immense role that books play throughout the entire life course and the impact that books can have as a tool, especially in a place like the NICU where parents could be experiencing trauma." - Emily Flanders, MPH '26
While at Dornsife, Emily completed her practice experiences—the Applied Practice Experience (APE) and Integrative Learning Experience (ILE)—with A Book A Day.
A Book A Day is a Philadelphia-based non-profit organization that focuses on literacy and access to books for children. Emily worked on the Bonding through Books project, their NICU literature initiative which creates opportunities for parental-infant bonding at Jefferson Hospital.
The interview below was conducted with Emily to learn more about her experience working with this project.
What did you do on the project? What were the goals of the project?
My project was focused on creating a program evaluation for the Book A Day team to see what the current program implementation is and what could be adapted for the project, as they intend to expand the project to St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children.
The project is also focused on increasing access to culturally representative and multi-lingual books, so I also evaluated the impact on having these books accessible for patients.
Through my APE last year, I was able to begin working on the interview guide for this initiative, and then through my ILE, I analyzed the interview results that came from staff and volunteers who work at Jefferson and are connected to the A Book A Day program. I also conducted focus groups with Jefferson staff, A Book A Day staff, and St. Christopher’s staff to analyze the implementation of the program.
Did you produce any products as a result of this project?
I created two deliverables for the ILE project with A Book A Day. The first deliverable was the long-form program evaluation paper that resulted from my work on the Bonding through Books initiative. The second deliverable was a more digestible formatted version of the results for the organization’s stakeholders that detailed both the program’s results and external resources on the importance of bonding through literacy initiatives.
What did you learn from the experience?
Through this experience I was able to apply my qualitative skills to a real-world application and strengthen my research skills overall. I was able to go beyond the coursework that I focused on, and integrate qualitative results with quantitative data, highlighting the mixed-methods approach.
This experience also expanded my knowledge on the immense role that books play throughout the entire life course and the impact that books can have as a tool, especially in a place like the NICU where parents could be experiencing trauma.
My ILE also allowed me to see the bridge between community-based organizations and clinical care, and how they can work together to further their impact, especially for a vulnerable population.
How did your training at Dornsife prepare you for the experience? How did the experience augment your training experience at Dornsife?
Being a Community Health and Prevention student was a huge help in preparing for this experience with A Book A Day. This project was directly engaged with the community, and my previous coursework helped guide me on interacting with the community.
In Dornsife, I was also able to conduct mixed-methods research in class which helped me with the overall framework of my project. Dornsife helped prepare me to have the tools for program evaluation and apply these skills to my ILE project. Due to my MCH studies, I was able to see the emphasis on the life-course perspective and the importance of parent-child connections.
How did this experience impact your future career goals?
This experience helped emphasize that community health is where I want to be in my future public health career. Getting to see the impact that community-based organizations have on their local environments was a key piece of my ILE, and I hope to continue to work in roles that are focused on beneficial programming that reflects communities' populations and the challenges that they face.
What advice would you give to current MCH students?
I would encourage current MCH students to ask questions and get involved because there is so much opportunity within MCH at Drexel. Make connections early on and don’t be afraid to ask because there is someone that will be happy to help you!
Drexel students who are interested in maternal and child health are encouraged to contact the MCH Center at MCH@Drexel.edu for more information about center opportunities.