精东影业 senior's public health study honored by CDC
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has named Boston College senior Sebastian Cota as one of seven recipients of the 2023 Williams-Hutchins Health Equity Award, which recognizes outstanding projects by undergraduates in the CDC John R. Lewis Summer Public Health Scholars Program.
Cota鈥檚 award-winning study compared the prices of four food staples at grocery stores and bodegas in Upper Manhattan to evaluate barriers to food access in the historically Dominican neighborhood of Washington Heights, with the goal of preventing food-related chronic diseases like diabetes, obesity, and hypertension. He conducted it while enrolled in the Summer Public Health Scholars Program at Columbia University鈥檚 Mailman School of Public Health, one of seven Lewis Scholars programs around the country.
鈥淚n New York City, there are bodegas on every block, but supermarkets are not as common,鈥� said Cota, a student in 精东影业's Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences. 鈥淚 wanted to get a sense of where structural inequalities prevent people from accessing quality and affordable fresh food, which impacts health outcomes.鈥�
Hispanic populations in the United States are at risk when it comes to food-related chronic diseases. According to 2018 data from the U.S. Office of Minority Health, Hispanic adults in the U.S. are 70 percent more likely than non-Hispanic white adults to be diagnosed with diabetes and 1.2 times more likely to be obese. Access to healthy and nutritious food鈥攁nd the time and money to buy and prepare it鈥攊s crucial to preventing these diseases.
鈥淭he most effective way to treat these diseases at scale is through prevention,鈥� Cota explained. 鈥淭o make sure patients can live their healthiest lives, we need to look at both the affordability and quality of the food near them.鈥�
"In my career, I want to combine public health with my practice as a [health care] provider. If you鈥檙e working in a neighborhood that鈥檚 medically underserved or in a food desert, you need to understand the context to provide effective care.鈥�
During his summer program at Columbia, Cota completed a six-week internship at the School of Nursing鈥檚 Center for Community-Engaged Health Informatics and Data Science, located near the part of Washington Heights known as 鈥淟ittle Dominican Republic.鈥� When designing his Lewis Scholars project, Cota chose to focus on the prices of four staples of Dominican cooking: eggs, milk, cooking oil, and mayonnaise. He recorded the prices of these items at 38 bodegas and 40 supermarkets and compared the results using an independent samples t-test (a statistical test that is used to compare the means of two groups).
On average, he found, groceries were significantly pricier at bodegas than supermarkets, which tended to be in more affluent areas. These results are telling, but 鈥渏ust a starting point,鈥� said Cota.
鈥淎nybody can highlight a disparity, but we can鈥檛 just blame individual bodega owners and walk away,鈥� he said. 鈥淭he important thing is thinking about the next steps to making people鈥檚 lives better.鈥�
In Cota鈥檚 presentation, which he gave at the Lewis Scholars Summer Showcase and Expo in July, he focused on several possible directions that future research could take.
鈥淲e need to do more qualitative analysis to hear the stories of both community residents and the bodega owners,鈥� Cota said. 鈥淲hat are the barriers to providing affordable groceries, and how can we use what owners tell us to advocate for policy change? What do community members need, and can we respond by creating more food pantries or free cooking classes?鈥�
He fully intends to take some of these next steps himself. After graduation next May, he plans to attend a public health master鈥檚 program and medical school before returning to his hometown of Los Angeles to practice as a physician in the community where he grew up.
鈥淚n my career, I want to combine public health with my practice as a provider,鈥� he said. 鈥淚f you鈥檙e working in a neighborhood that鈥檚 medically underserved or in a food desert, you need to understand the context to provide effective care.鈥�
Cota, who is Mexican American, grew up in southeast LA and is the first in his family to attend college. His interest in public health emerged from his own experiences seeing members of his community struggle with food insecurity and linguistic, social, and financial barriers that affected their health and access to care. In high school, while volunteering at the county hospital, he witnessed these disparities daily in one of the nation鈥檚 busiest emergency rooms.
鈥淧atients would regularly wait 10 to 15 hours to be seen and then be unable to afford basic care or insulin,鈥� Cota recalled. 鈥淪eeing that level of injustice, both in the hospital and in my community, was deeply frustrating. I just felt that it was not right.鈥�
This sense of injustice sparked a mission. Before he even enrolled at Boston College, Cota reached out to Professor of Biology Philip J. Landrigan, M.D., director of the Global Public Health and the Common Good program, about the possibility of studying public health. At the time, there was no such major at 精东影业, but Cota worked with Landrigan to create an independent course of study and became one of the first students to enroll in the Global Public Health and the Common Good major this fall.
In addition to winning the CDC Williams-Hutchins Health Equity Award鈥攏amed for the first African American man and woman to complete 30-year careers in the U.S. Public Health Service鈥擟ota鈥檚 Washington Heights study also won first place in the pre-med category at the 2023 Latino Medical Student Association National Conference in September.
鈥淚t truly is a blessing to have these opportunities,鈥� Cota said of this second honor, which came as a surprise. 鈥淥nly six percent of U.S. physicians are Latinos, and it鈥檚 so important and inspiring to meet peers and mentors who can guide me and share their experiences with me.鈥�