Finding a passion for rural public health
Rural Health Innovation Scholar Julian Levine is an emerging rural public health leader in West Virginia
- 3 min. read ▪ Published
Julian Levine is passionate about access to public health services in his part of West Virginia.
“I think it’s just critically important,” he said in a recent interview.
Through his role as project manager for community engagement at the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine’s Center for Rural and Community Health, Levine works within the region to identify and scale up community-led health projects that are having a positive impact.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Levine found himself working closely with the local health department.
“When [COVID-19] vaccines were coming out, they suddenly had to figure out how to manage a giant vaccine initiative. I spent months working with them,” Levine said.
“At the time the regional clinic was seeing 1,000 people a day,” Levine said. “Our county is 1,000 square miles and we have about 35,000 people.”
“That work really put my sights on public health as a more practical skill,” he said. “I have a clinical social work degree, so I originally worked in behavioral health in a free and charitable care setting. I was very interested in serving the marginalized population, but also interested in integrated care, in models that connect social needs with the primary care environment.”
That’s why when Levine found out about UC Berkeley School of Public Health’s Rural Health Innovation Program through the West Virginia Rural Health Initiative, he leapt at the chance to study toward a Master of Public Health degree with a full scholarship.
He applied to the program, and is now about to enter his second year of studies as a 2024 Rural Health Innovation Scholar.
He says that it’s very empowering that Lynn Barr, the visionary and funder behind the Rural Health Innovation Program, set out to train this army of younger or mid-career public health people to serve in rural areas. “It seems like such a forward thinking way to give students the ability to work in areas where they wouldn’t be able to if they had to pay in the traditional way,” he said
And the program has allowed him to meet his “people”—others who are passionate about rural public health. “One of the amazing pleasures of the program is that I found a group of people that I continue to communicate with,” Levine said. “My crew of five or six people around the country who’ve become a little community of practice, a community of learning. I was not expecting that to happen. It’s really wonderful to have a group all around the county— all serving rural areas—all working together.”
Levine says something he particularly likes about the program thus far is the connection between research and practice. “One of the things I loved about UC Berkeley is that the school is explicit about the fact that research and practice are inherently political, and inform how we spend our resources,” he said.
“I’m hoping to continue to use what I learn in a very practical way on the ground. Either supporting people directly, or supporting people who help people directly. If you have passionate people who are working on the ground with the right knowledge, it really changes the outcomes for the people who get served by that health system.”