Molly Pezzulo did not have to go far to find her passion for global health - she found it here in the Capital Region. A Saratoga Springs native, she received her BS in Public Health in 2015 from UAlbany and then continued on to earn her MPH in Epidemiology in May of 2017.
“Having the exposure to a variety of public health courses during my undergraduate career provided me with a great foundation to pursue my Master of Public Health, and it was without hesitation that I wanted to continue my graduate studies at Albany,” says Molly. Like a growing number of students at the UAlbany School of Public Health, Molly is also working to complete a Graduate Certificate in Global Health Studies as an “add-on” to her MPH.
Molly first learned of the University’s Center for Global Health through the School of Public Health Student Voices from the Field seminar. Having the opportunity to learn about her fellow students’ experiences living and working abroad opened the door for Molly to begin her career in global health.
Throughout the first year of her MPH, Molly worked closely with the directors of the Center for Global Health and her academic advisor to pursue a global health focused internship. As a result, she spent the summer of 2016 as a Global Health Fellow at the World Health Organization (WHO) Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.
More recently, she spent time working in Las Trojes, Honduras as a Research, Monitoring and Evaluation consultant for Pure Water for the World (PWW), a non-profit organization that partners with the UAlbany Center for Global Health.
“I would not have been given the opportunities to live and work abroad without the support of the Center for Global Health. UAlbany gives its students unique opportunities to work with faculty and foster professional relationships that last long after graduation.”
Molly has carried her passion to serve others to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), within the Office of HIV/AIDS, where she is in the USAID Global Health Fellows program. She first learned of this opportunity “while participating in the Center for Global Health’s seminar on careers in global health.”
At USAID, Molly currently focuses on advancing the integration of critical health services for underserved populations supported by the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). Her projects involve two areas of health service integration: family planning and HIV targeting adolescent girls and young women (AGYW), and the role of nutrition on HIV and tuberculosis health outcomes.