Monica Desjardins, Navajo Nation
Johns Hopkins University
Monica is a member of the Navajo Nation, she belongs to Honágháahnii (One-Walks-Around Clan) and is born to the Haitian People and to Tl’ógí (Weavers-Zia Clan). Monica is pursuing her Master of Public Health with a focus on epidemiology, health policy and social and behavioral sciences from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. As a Udall Native American Graduate Fellow and an Addiction and Overdose Fellow for the Bloomberg American Health Initiative, she is interested in combining epidemiology with evidence-based advocacy to address mental health disparities in American Indian and Alaska Native communities. Monica worked for the Johns Hopkins Center for Indigenous Health (CIH) and the White Mountain Apache Tribe on mental health and suicide prevention. She is a public health analyst at Research Triangle Institute (RTI) International and serves on a community advisory board for the CIH to aid in the development of a novel measure of intergenerational connectedness. After graduation, Monica plans to continue working in American Indian and Alaska Native suicide surveillance and harm reduction policy.