Collaborating to address food security

My name is Leeann Ji, and I am a second-year Master of Public Health (MPH) student at the Gillings School. I’m in the Global Health concentration and plan to graduate in Spring 2024. This past summer, I completed an MPH practicum with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s Region Office of Asia and Pacific (FAORAP) in Bangkok, Thailand. It gave me the opportunity, as a student, to work directly with multiple governments on regional responses to critical issues at the intersection of water, food and health.

Though my career began in financial services, I switched to public health to chase my true passion of feeding people.

As an undergraduate, I studied international affairs and conflict resolution with the goal of working in diplomacy and humanitarian response. It wasn’t until junior year, when I began volunteering at George Washington University’s urban garden that I became deeply interested in food systems.

I particularly want to help ensure people have access to food by improving the sustainability of food systems in places made vulnerable by climate change.

For my practicum, I worked FAORAP’s water team to respond to three main issues: water scarcity in Southeast Asia; collaboration among the water, sanitation and hygiene and agricultural sectors of Pacific island states; and pollution of the ocean from agriculture — primarily from runoff containing fertilizers. I also published a policy report on the importance of gender equality, disability and social inclusion policies in water management projects.

This practicum gave me the opportunity to work on projects for the People’s Republic of China, Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR), Indonesia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand and Timor-Leste. I also got to travel to Vietnam and Cambodia and eat a lot of extremely delicious (and spicy) foods!

My family is from China, and I have spent a significant amount of time in East Asian mega-cities; but nothing could have prepared me for the experience of day-to-day life in Bangkok, an incredibly cosmopolitan city mixing skyscrapers and megamalls with grand Buddhist temples and palaces.

I attended workshops on water accounting and allocation alongside staff of national ministries for hydropower, environment and water in Vietnam, Lao PDR, Thailand and Cambodia. Seeing these government officials engage with each other and invest time into learning new water management strategies was exciting; it felt like my undergraduate diplomacy and foreign policy dreams were coming true!

On a team made up of climate experts, oceanographers, environmental advocates and academics from different countries, I was the only team member with public health experience. Our projects focused on systems and upstream drivers of food insecurity like water scarcity and pollution, allowing me to tap into foundational MPH knowledge.

The type of work we were doing has historically suffered from a siloed approach with efforts split among the academic, government and private sectors. The “One Health” approach — which recognizes the connections between the health of people, animals, plants and the environment — has increasingly tied together work related to public health, water and food systems.

I came to UNC knowing I wanted to do a practicum with FAO, and I found this opportunity by cold emailing people at FAO’s Bangkok office. Gillings School faculty members, especially within the Water Institute, provided input on what experiences to highlight in interviews and what to expect from the process. I had a lot of financial support, from both the Gillings School and the Carolina Asia Center’s Bringing Southeast Asia Home initiative, that made my practicum possible.

One of my favorite courses at the Gillings School has been Dr. Jason West’s “Global Climate Change: Interdisciplinary Perspectives,” which brought in experts to speak to our class about various climate change-related topics. This prepared me for my FAO project on ocean hypoxia and eutrophication from agricultural pollution. Additionally, the “Cultural Humility” course that all first-year global health students take really shifted my perspectives on global public health work.

For anyone considering a public health degree, even if their interests are not explicitly or traditionally public health focused, I would encourage them to take the leap. The MPH has helped me develop valuable research and critical thinking skills that make me a unique and competitive candidate in policy-oriented spaces.

Note: Gillings students are responsible for securing their own practicum experiences.