A Little Revolutionary
Renaissance Woman
Hannah Hook graduated in May 2020 with a dual major in public health and economics and a minor in environmental science. An athlete, she was a member of the women’s tennis team and the equestrian team. A musician, she performed with the flute, krummhorn, Baroque, and Celtic ensembles and Collegium Musicum. Hook took time out of her busy end-of-semester schedule to answer a few questions for Moravian College Magazine.
Your academic study reached across multiple disciplines. How did you arrive at your major and minor?
I’ve always been fascinated by the natural and social sciences and health, yet it took me a while to figure out exactly how I wanted to pursue these interests. The driving force toward my specific majors and minor was my interest in studying diseases.
I hadn’t been exposed to any public health courses until I came to Moravian, but I greatly enjoyed the first course I took and knew that I wanted to continue in the department. My public health internship was at a wildlife rehabilitation center and was incredibly rewarding, convincing me to pursue an environmental science track as well. I was drawn to economics mainly because of the statistical and data analysis aspects and the relationship it has with other disciplines. I’ve never really been a finance person, but I discovered that I can study diseases through an economics lens with environmental and natural resource economics. I was lucky that the Add-Venture program at Moravian allowed me to pursue all of my interests.
You worked with Sonia Aziz, associate professor of economics, on her research with NASA evaluating the socioeconomic impact of an early warning system for cholera prevention in Bangladesh. Tell us about your experience in the field.
In January 2019, I traveled to Bangladesh for six days with Dr. Aziz to gather data coinciding with her work. I was in the field every day supervising the data collection, which was completed through household surveys in the Karail slum just outside of the capital, Dhaka. Meeting the people who live in this area was eye-opening; many of the individuals earn less than a dollar a day, and families live in one-room structures made of concrete and corrugated tin. Yet the majority of the people I met were kind and welcoming, with some generously inviting me to stay for lunch. When doing research on interventions such as this, I believe it is important to engage with the individuals who will be impacted in order to contextualize the data. The data that was collected ended up being the basis for my honors thesis.
Diane Husic, dean of the school of natural and health sciences, says of you: “She has an amazing global and multidisciplinary perspective on a wide range of issues, including health, sustainability, conservation, and economic development.” Please explain your perspective.
It is easy to confine ourselves and only think inside of the box that we are comfortable with. Independently, an environmental scientist and an economist are likely to have very different perspectives on issues concerning health, sustainability, and conservation, though neither may be inherently right or wrong. Thinking critically through the lens of multiple disciplines is the only way to understand the full scale of any topic. As globalization becomes more predominant, it is important to realize that everything is connected. Two of the greatest threats that we currently face are COVID-19 and climate change. COVID-19 is just as much an economic and environmental issue as it is a health concern. In the same way, climate change is not just an environmental issue but will have negative consequences on health and the economy as well. We cannot address these threats without having a complete understanding of the problem, which is only possible with a multidisciplinary approach.
Hannah Hook is taking a gap year to gain experience in the workforce before she pursues graduate school.