Natasha Devlin ’26 finds the pulse of public health
For Natasha Devlin ’26, promoting public health is her passion.
The international development and social change major felt those stirrings while interning in Namibia during the fall semester. Devlin helped create a Planned Parenthood Association website to boost community engagement in the capital of Windhoek and the nearby township of Katutura.
“Learning from others, learning what’s going right and what’s going wrong, and how you can help is so important,” Devlin says. “It’s easy to think of health issues as something you can get treatment for when it happens to you — but, if you think about why it’s happening, you can work to prevent those issues.”
Devlin attended events where colleagues would offer HIV testing, family planning, birth control education, and more. They traveled in a mobile outreach truck to hard-to-reach communities, where they did school outreach.
Before heading to Africa, Devlin interned for Massachusetts Rep. Marjorie Decker, chair of the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Public Health, and for the town of Salem’s Board of Health. Both opportunities allowed Devlin to observe how public entities approach community health and have made her more conscious of how she moves in the world.
“I think a lot more critically about my actions now and how I’m traveling and viewing policymaking,” Devlin says. “I think it’s easy to look past issues and not think that hard about them, but I think what my experiences have taught me is to understand who made the policies, why that’s important, who are they affecting, and to gain a deeper understanding of the world as a whole.”
Devlin has been inspired by courses at Clark like AIDS to COVID: Ethics and Pandemics, taught by Professor Patrick Derr, Culture, Health, and Development, taught by Professor Ellen Foley, and Sociology of Medicine, taught by Professor Deborah Merrill.
“Clark has set me up to think critically about health,” Devlin says. “Health in the U.S. is viewed so differently from how health is viewed in other cultures worldwide. I’ve learned so much about how health and development intersect.”
Devlin’s honors thesis examines the intersection of climate change and sexual health in Namibia. In the future, she hopes to continue working internationally and plans to apply for the Peace Corps before pursuing a master’s or Ph.D. in global health.
“I’m not the type of person who wants to just sit inside,” Devlin says. “I love getting into the community to talk to people. Throughout my internships, I met so many amazing people who gave me insights into public health. It’s so easy to only learn from a book or from a class, but having the perspective of a person who’s actually going through something, like getting an HIV test, and being able to understand their story is so important to me.”
