Jody Heymann began to better understand the relationship between working conditions and health while working in a fishery in Tanzania as a Peace Corps volunteer.
“I met families where a parent had recurrent malaria, and they were not well enough to take care of their kids,” she said. “I met families whose working conditions affected whether they were sick.”
Heymann, the dean of the UCLA Jonathan and Karin Fielding School of Public Health, was recently appointed to the Institute of Medicine, a National Academy group that serves as an expert advisory board on worldwide health studies and issues.
“It’s an honor to use science to lead changes in policies that you and I and our neighbors … can use in everyday life,” Heymann said.
Heymann has worked in public health since she was a teenager.
She worked at a camp for children with Down Syndrome and in a school for nonverbal autistic teenagers, experiences she said inspired her to find a line of work where she’d get to help others.
She thought that work would be medicine, she said. But after earning her medical degree, she realized that as much as she enjoyed working with people one-on-one, she wanted to learn about the intersection of work and health on a broader scale.
Alison Earle, Heymann’s former research assistant and colleague, said Heymann has a broad range of intellectual skill – both in the humanities and the sciences, as she was a physics and history student as an undergraduate.
Earle, who works as a senior research scientist at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University, said she has known Heymann for more than 20 years, and the two have developed a strong friendship over the course of working together for so long.
“So much of her career has been about … helping people fight hard battles and do well by their family,” Earle said. “With all her intelligence, she didn’t have to do that, but she (decided) to apply her mind to something that makes the world a better place.”
Heymann’s generosity also extends to opportunities she gives to those she supervises, said Erin Bresnahan, director of new initiatives at the Fielding School of Public Health.
Bresnahan worked under Heymann for four years while at McGill University in Montreal before coming with her to UCLA in 2012. At McGill, Heymann let Bresnahan take on health and social policy projects and attend a conference at the United Nations, activities which weren’t a part of Bresnahan’s job description. But, Heymann knew they were issues Bresnahan was passionate about, Bresnahan said.
“Someone who gives you the opportunity to take on new challenges … I don’t think (that is) very common in a supervisor,” Bresnahan said. “To me, that’s really valuable.”
Heymann is among several other Fielding School of Public Health faculty members who have been appointed to the Institute of Medicine, including Jack Needleman, who was appointed in 2012.