- Are you curious about careers in science?

Hi, I'm Janellyn, and today, I'm with health geographer, Dr. Dee Jordan.

Dee, tell me, where are you and what do you do?

- I'm a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine.

I'm a health geographer, and I study health and disease risks.

I consider the physical features of a place, the weather, the climate, as well as all the inhabitants of that area, and analyze how that might increase or reduce disease risk over time.

- How do you conduct your research?

- In the research I conducted for my PhD, I focused on the tsetse fly and the parasitic illness it causes in Sub-Saharan Africa, called African Sleeping Sickness.

In that work, I looked at the physical and environmental features, such as the type of vegetation, temperature and humidity that made the place suitable for the tsetse fly.

- How is STEM incorporated in health geography?

- It's infused in the research questions I investigate.

Technology and math are prominent in the data analysis.

Computer programming languages are also used in my work to run scripts to generate results from the data that I collect in the field to produce graphical output, such as maps.

- What is your advice to kids, particularly girls, who are interested in a career like yours?

- Stay curious, ask questions, get good mentors, focus on your studies and dream bigger than yourself.

And geography is everywhere, and my work takes me to all those places.

But it's the people in the place that make my heart the happiest.

Knowing that my work can have an impact on their existence drives me.

I enjoy the people the absolute most.

- I'm so happy I got to navigate the world of health geography with Dr. Dee Jordan.

Explore your possibilities!