Q: Your full name and any completed credentials:
Olivia Blanton, MPH
Q: What universities have you attended, degrees earned and graduation years?
I completed my B.S./MPH through the ABM program at UAB from 2020-2024. I started my Ph.D. here in the fall of 2024!
Q: Which program within the Department of Environmental Health Sciences are you currently enrolled?
I am currently enrolled in the Environmental Health Sciences Ph.D. program. I primarily focus on environmental epidemiology.
Q: What is your anticipated graduation date from your current program?
Hopefully the spring of 2028!
Q: Tell me about yourself (where you grew up, how you got into public health, how you ended up at UAB, etc.)
I spent the majority of my childhood in Madison, AL (right outside of Huntsville), but most of my family refers to Florence, AL as home. I knew I wanted to take an academically rigorous path at an early age and that I wanted to serve the public in doing so, but I was not introduced to public health as a career sector until late in high school. As I have studied the discipline in the formal sense, my philosophy and passion for advancing public health have been guided by an increasing sense of collective responsibility to care for one another.
Q: Why did you choose to study Environmental Health Sciences? And why at UAB?
Though I did not know the proper terminology until my late teen years, I have been very interested in exposure science for my entire life. I’ve always asked myself things like “What’s in this food that I don’t know about? How bad for my lungs could standing at the gas pump be?” and now I get to effectively ask and answer those questions as a career. My preoccupation with external factors—i.e., the environment—causing adverse human health effects certainly comes from my family’s involvement with the Manhattan Project at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. I’ve long been amazed by how simply being near a substance can trigger measurable physiological changes. Though my focus isn’t on nuclear materials, I see this same phenomenon play out through climate exposures.
I initially chose UAB because I wanted to attend medical school after earning my B.S. in public health—and what better place was there to prepare for medical school but UAB? Though I ultimately realized medical school was not for me, I stayed at UAB to study public health because I recognized that working with and for the people of Birmingham would prepare me to address a wide range of public health issues shaped by the unique political and industrial history of inequity in the city.
Q: Is there a faculty member who has made an impact on your academic journey during this program?
Support from the entire EHS department has kept me going on my current academic journey. My Ph.D. advisor Dr. Azar Abadi has been the largest single influence during my current program. She has continuously motivated me to interact critically with the world, met my ambition at every step, and supported my development as both a scientist and human.
Q: Have you been involved in any interesting projects or organizations during your time here?
I am a Health Policy Ambassador for the Lister Hill Center for Health Policy at UAB. We are currently working with a local nonprofit known as GASP (Greater-Birmingham Alliance to Stop Pollution) to develop and improve environmental health policy at the local and state level. This has been great in the sense that I get to interact with and improve the lives of Birminghamians in a more direct sense than my research tends to offer.
Q: What’s been your favorite class in the School of Public Health and why?
My favorite class has to be the graduate introduction to geographic information systems course that I am the teaching assistant for. Though I am biased in my opinion, as the class is taught by my advisor, Dr. Abadi, the intro to GIS course is great in the sense that it would benefit public health students in every discipline (epidemiology, health policy, environmental health, etc.) because “place” is a universal exposure that inherently shapes our health.