Student Spotlight: Anna Salnikova
Staying committed to a graduate degree program while holding together your personal, professional, and academic life is a major accomplishment—but doing it while your country is at war is another type of challenge altogether. Despite the odds, recent MPH graduate Anna Salnikova has proven that it is possible.
Salnikova’s story began when she was awarded a Fogarty Fellowship in 2019 to pursue a certificate in epidemiology and biostatistics from UAlbany. After her year abroad, she returned to her home country of Ukraine and proceeded with her career in public health. Inspired by her time at UAlbany, Salnikova then decided to enroll in the online MPH program. However, during the second semester of her studies, she suddenly had to move with her family to a more secure location due to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, an experience shared by many other Ukrainian civilians.
“We were constantly on the road, spending time in seven different countries throughout 2022. It was not easy having to constantly adapt to living in a new foreign country and managing daily activities while also processing what was happening. Throughout this time, I was still proceeding with my MPH – it was not just a degree to me, it was something stable, predictable, and secure in all the uncertainty we lived in,” says Salnikova.
Despite these difficult circumstances, Salnikova completed her MPH in December of 2023. She emphasizes the importance of having the option to complete her studies online, without which her accomplishment would not have been possible. Reflecting on her time as a UAlbany student, she now sees unexpected connections between her academic work and her lived experience.
“I did not have much experience with mental health as a public health issue before enrolling at UAlbany – I was mostly working on projects related to HIV and TB response. I became familiar with mental health epidemiology through my coursework, and as part of the certificate program I obtained a small research grant for an analysis of depression among people with TB and TB/HIV,” says Salnikova.
Her interest was further fueled by her internship for UAlbany with the School of Global Public Health at New York University.
“The project I worked on involved research on mental health and substance use disorders in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Through the lens of my own experience, I can say that mental health is highly relevant in Ukraine today. I would like to use my skills to address this problem now and in the future. For my integrated learning experience for the MPH, I developed a course proposal focused on supporting mental health via physical exercises and breathing techniques. I am now considering ways of implementing my course to benefit people who are facing mental health challenges,” she explains.
In addition to sparking an interest in the epidemiology of mental health, her experiences since receiving the Fogarty Fellowship have reaffirmed her commitment to addressing public health at the global level. “I have always been interested in global studies. I would like to collaborate with public health professionals in other parts of the world and learn about how their systems work. I think it’s very important in this field to learn from each other and work together.”
Today, slowly, Salnikova is beginning to look ahead to the future.
“The past two years were extremely difficult, but now I am relatively well and trying to become myself again to the extent that it is possible.”
Now that she has completed her MPH, Salnikova is planning to move further with her career.
“I am happy where I am now, but I will be also considering new professional horizons in the near future to share my skills and knowledge and gain even more,” she says.
Regardless of where her career takes her, public health professionals like Anna Salnikova will without doubt play a key role in building a better future for Ukraine and beyond.