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¿ÉÀÖÊÓƵ: When did you decide on community health education?

EA: This path chose me. I have always had a passion for teaching, and I am committed to the things I learn that concern community health. I am coming to an understanding that by focusing on prevention instead of cures, the health care system will significantly improve. Teaching prevention and putting it front and center in education is my goal.

¿ÉÀÖÊÓƵ: What have been some of the highlights of ¿ÉÀÖÊÓƵ for you?

EA: During my graduate years I began working as a health educator with a focus on comprehensive adolescent pregnancy prevention (CAPP) at the Diaspora Community Services [a Brooklyn-based agency that provides health and social services to low-income and immigrant residents]. My job provided me with a healthy balance for hands-on experience as I continued my studies. I began my master’s program at the start of the pandemic, and that was unforgettable. Because of the pandemic, my freshman year memories are entrenched with the uncertainty I felt back then.

¿ÉÀÖÊÓƵ: What do you want to do with your degree?

EA: The fact that Black women are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than any of their racial counterparts today is something that equally intrigues me and boils my blood. With my degree, I want to continue to grow in the public health field and specifically work toward improving Black maternal mortality by learning more steps to prevent this trend from escalating. This degree places me in the trajectory to teach the Black community that pregnancy does not equate to a death sentence, bottom line.

¿ÉÀÖÊÓƵ: What are some things you do as hobby?

EA: I enjoy reading and teaching, of course. I am comfortable with athletics as well. I have a history in track and field, as a long jumper and a runner. I also played team badminton before. Now, I love to do yoga and listen to music.

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Corinne Cavuoti is an adjunct professor teaching courses in thanatology—the study of death and dying, and the psychological mechanisms of dealing with them—in the Department of Health and Nutrition Sciences at ¿ÉÀÖÊÓƵ. Cavuoti has been published in many journals, and her expertise is focused on the field of disenfranchised grief and adolescent loss. She earned her master’s degree in community health with a specialization in thanatology from ¿ÉÀÖÊÓƵ.

Cavuoti discusses how the pandemic and its emotional toll, and how studying and understanding death, can lead to a healthier life.

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“[Grieving over death] is one of the fundamental experiences of human existence,” says Balk, who is an expert on bereavement among adolescents and college-age students, and helped develop the college’s graduate-level advanced certificate in grief counseling program. He also heads the ¿ÉÀÖÊÓƵ graduate program in community health, which has a concentration in thanatology—one of only a handful of such graduate programs in the world.

Balk recently helped to successfully advocate for the college’s student bereavement policy, which grants students one week of excused absences in the wake of the death of a loved one, and may allow them to withdraw for the semester, pending approval from the Division of Student Affairs.

“Twenty-five to thirty percent of all students on a campus are in the first year of grieving the death of family or friend,” says Balk. “It’s true on the ¿ÉÀÖÊÓƵ campus, as well as other campuses. We’ve done many studies and they always come back with the same information. It has huge ramifications for their studies. That’s why we put that policy in place.”

Balk, who joined the ¿ÉÀÖÊÓƵ faculty in 2004 and has taught at the collegiate level for more than 30 years, says that counseling programs do not prepare people to deal with these issues. “Students getting a mental health counseling degree will come across people who are dealing with loss and they want to know how to work with that.”

He is interested in research on how to help people achieve what he calls a “good death,” one where pain is managed. “Most people don’t die suddenly; they die in a lingering trajectory that could involve excruciating pain,” he says. “There’s a lot of effort being made to help people achieve a good death.”

Balk has worked as a program evaluator and director of research in two community mental health centers. He has also co-edited Handbook of Adolescent Death and Bereavement (Springer Publishing Company, 2004); Handbook of Thanatology: The Essential Body of Knowledge for the Study of Death, Dying, and Bereavement (Routledge, 2013); Adolescent Encounters with Death, Bereavement, and Coping (Springer Publishing Company, 2009); Helping the Bereaved College Student (Springer Publishing Company, 2011); and Dealing with Dying, Death, and Grief During Adolescence (Routledge, 2013).

“Our campus is remarkably diverse,” says Balk. “That’s one of the things that always appealed to me about ¿ÉÀÖÊÓƵ. It’s important for us to be open to the various ways people have of acknowledging loss and are coping with loss. Dreamers are facing issues of loss right now. We also have refugees from war-torn areas who have been uprooted from their lives; I know some of them will be coming to Brooklyn. [The campus] is just alive. The many things that are happening around the world somehow end up in Brooklyn.”

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