Akilah Heggs Named APHA Maternal & Child Health Section Fellow

2015 Oct 16

Akilah Heggs, a doctoral candidate in the School of Public Health at Georgia State University, has accepted the appointment of student fellow by the American Public Health Association's Maternal & Child Health Section for the 2015-2016 term.

APHA's Maternal & Child Health Section Student Fellow Program aims to develop leaders in science, program and policy related to the health of women, children and their families. The program provides fellows with professional experience, education and mentoring.

Heggs, whose concentration is in health promotion, is a clinically trained pediatric audiologist who spent the first half of her career advocating for the early detection and treatment of hearing loss in infants and young children. She has worked at the Georgia Department of Public Health, where she oversaw the state's comprehensive newborn hearing screening system.

As a doctoral student concentrating in health promotion, Heggs has participated as a trainee in the Maternal and Child Health Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and Related Disabilities (LEND) program and worked as a graduate research assistant with Georgia State's Center for Leadership in Disability, which is housed in the School of Public Health.

As part of her fellowship program, Heggs will be a presenter on the topics of disparities in physical activity in Georgia and ways to improve inclusion for adults with disabilities during APHA's annual meeting in Chicago on Nov. 1.

"I see my career as one in which my clinical background and the study of public health promotion are constantly intermingled," Heggs said, "because my interest in both are fed by the same underlying desire to improve the health status of diverse and vulnerable populations."