Medical student awarded U.S. Public Health Service 2021 Excellence in Public Health Award
Fourth-year medical student Nealie Ngo has always been interested in the intersection between art and medicine/public health
since college, when she created a graphic novel about female body image for her senior
thesis at Yale.
She was recently awarded a 2021 Excellence in Public Health Award from the United States Public Health Service (USPHS) Physician Professional Advisory
Committee. The award recognizes medical students across the United States who advance
public health and also exemplify its mission to protect and promote the health and
safety of our nation.
Dr. Donna Woodson, professor emerita in the Department of Medical Education, nominated Nealie for the
honor.
“I had the privilege to be her nominator for this prestigious honor,” Dr. Woodson
told us. “I have been familiar with Nealie’s accomplishments, and they are many.”
Nealie shared her excitement with us about receiving the public health award.
“I am incredibly humbled and honored to receive this award,” she said. “This accomplishment
would not have been possible without the help, support, and encouragement of Dr. Woodson,
a role model I look up to in all things art and public health, and Dr. Hussain, Dr.
Boose, and Dr. Da-Silva, the first people at UTCOMLS who believed in me and my art.”
When she came to UToledo, her interests, especially in public health and art, were
further encouraged by a number of faculty members, including Dr. Woodson, professor
emeritus Dr. Amjad Hussain, former faculty member Dr. Michelle Boose and Dr. Shonola Da-Silva, professor and chair in the Department of Pediatrics.
“These inspiring mentors all helped me to realize my future career goals as both a
physician and a public health leader,” Nealie said. “Within public health, I am specifically
interested in health communications and Graphic Medicine (a field which uses comics,
graphic novels, and other forms of visual storytelling to share health experiences
and/or health information).”
Nealie has made a number of scholarly accomplishments during her time at UTCOMLS.
She presented her work at the Ohio Psychiatric Physicians Association (OPPA) Annual
Psychiatric Update, where it received second place in the poster competition, as well as
abroad, at the British Society of Aesthetics Conference: Art, Aesthetics, and the
Medical and Health Humanities in Kent, United Kingdom (with support of Dr. Hussain
and the UToledo Alumni Fund).
She published two articles in the American Medical Association (AMA) Journal of Ethics
featuring her own comics and art (here and here).
Her current projects include creating an educational comic-pamphlet about the inpatient
behavioral unit for patients in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) who are admitted
due to a suicide attempt at ProMedica Toledo Hospital.
“Seeing the fear that many patients had when they were told their next step in care
was inpatient psychiatric care, as well as the lack of resources made specifically
for the pediatric population, inspired me to work with Dr. Da-Silva to create this
intervention during my third-year pediatrics rotation,” Nealie said. “By giving patients
a tailored resource early on in their hospitalization, I hope to decrease patients’
feelings of anxiety, fear, and reluctance, as well as give them a sense of control
and empowerment regarding their next steps in their road to recovery.”
Nealie is also a Graphic Artist and Research Consultant at Yale CHATogether, a group
focused on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) wellness that was formed during
the COVID-19 pandemic, where she creates comics and graphic novels about AAPI mental
health.
Nealie was recently featured on an episode of the podcast One Click (hosted by Elle Fanning and Jessica Wapner, a science journalist) where she shared her experience with body image alongside a broader narrative about
female body image and its history. The podcast mentioned Nealie's graphic novel as
well.
Congratulations to Nealie for this prestigious award! Nealie will head to Columbia
University’s Mailman School of Public Health in New York in the fall to pursue a Master
of Public Health degree before returning next fall to UToledo to complete her final
year of medical school.
“I plan to focus my degree on health communications and plan to explore more of Graphic
Medicine to bring together art, medicine, and public health,” she said. “I hope to
specialize in psychiatry, where I have an interest in college mental health as well
as child and adolescent psychiatry. I am excited to continue exploring how art and
comics can serve my future patients as tools of education and even therapy throughout
my future career.”