Do The Change: Challenging and Reimagining OEHS
This podcast focuses on highlighting upcoming leaders in their fields and how they got to where they are today with a special focus on the field of Occupational Health and Environmental Health Sciences & Health Equity. So we are going to be talking about all the hills and valleys of their journeys and get some insight into non-traditional paths into the field. Sponsored by the Northern California Education and Research Center for Occupational and Environmental Health at the University of California Berkeley, San Francisco, and Davis.
Do The Change: Challenging and Reimagining OEHS
Do the Change: Reimagining OEHS with Kevin Ru (Part 1)
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In our most recent episode of #DoTheChange, we'll be featuring an amazing conversation with Kevin Ru, MPH, who currently studies increased risk of chronic disease in janitors. We'll talk about different ways people can get involved in occupational and environmental health and areas of concentration. We'll also explore how today's changing society might impact the field and open up opportunities for new professionals. Tune in to hear Kevin's tips on how to succeed in the field of OEHS. You can find the full transcript of this episode on our website: https://www.coeh.berkeley.edu/do-change-kevin-ru
Hey guys, welcome to the Do the Change podcast where we're challenging and reimagining occupational and Environmental Health Sciences. In this podcast we focus on upcoming and current leaders in the field and dive into how they got to where they are today and their advice for those interested in the field. My name is Joanne and I'm a current undergraduate here at Berkeley and our guest for this episode is Kevin Ru. Hi Kevin.
KEVIN RU, MPH:Hello everyone.
JOANNE TEH:So I'll start by introducing him. Kevin is an MPH student in epidemiology bio-statistics graduating in May this year. He is passionate about addressing chronic disease disparities in marginalized communities. Through data-driven insights he helps to contribute to the mitigation of Occupational and environmental health exposures and promote safer workplaces for those most disproportionately affected. Born and raised in California, Kevin also received his BS in biology with a minor in society and genetics from UCLA. Awesome, how are you today, Kevin?
KEVIN RU, MPH:I'm doing pretty well thank you so much for having me on here, it's a pleasure. How are you?
JOANNE TEH:Good, good same with me. I guess we can get started about like what you do, right, because I just said that you do epidemiology and biostatistics but many people don't know what those words actually mean, me included actually.
KEVIN RU, MPH:Yeah definitely, so I am studying epidemiology and biostatistics as Joanne described and essentially epidemiology, really the goal is kind of to understand disease patterns and trends, understand exposures, what might lead to certain diseases, how we can essentially we're really interested in a lot, oftentimes a lot of the systemic causes of certain diseases and conditions and how we can prevent those and mitigate those and for me particularly my interests are really in chronic disease disparities for like marginalized populations where we see a worse wealth outcome. So Epi, that's where Epi comes in with a lot of these different study designs and Tech techniques in essentially exploring that and actually evaluating that in collecting data and understanding the extent to which these, why these populations might be at more at risk for certain conditions and diseases compared to others.
JOANNE TEH:What does like a usual day in your life look like when you're like doing this are you just going to classes, what type of research do you do?
KEVIN RU, MPH:Yeah, no I think a day in life it really ranges, it really depends on the day, some days I might have classes that I'll start out the day with. Other times I might be just going off into work first things like that and for me work looks like a variety of different ways. Besides working at the center for occupational environmental health as well, I am also pretty involved in working, I work with some faculty and some research surrounding occupational health in particular. Yeah so my Capstone project has been working on this California janitor workload study, specifically I'm interested in and have been assessing the impact of unionization on the relationships between physical workload and adverse health outcomes in these group of janitors that have been studied in this larger cohort. And I think that's it's really it's really great to be a part of that since it's pretty relevant right now in terms of how big um the labor movement has been recently especially in this past year there's been a lot of Union activity and there's been a great big insurgence and interest in unionization and the labor movement overall. It's been really interesting being able to work on that, assess those associations and even be able to present that at some conferences. This past month I was able to go out to Utah the NORA, the annual NORA conference at the Rocky Mountains hosted by the Rocky Mountain Center For Occupational environmental health, which was really great just being able to present that work and also I'll be going to the annual SER meeting, the society for epidemologic research in Austin in June to also present on that. So it's been great being a part of that. So long story short I think that every day is a bit different for my week and I think it keeps things exciting, engaging.
JOANNE TEH:That's cool working with janitors in labor unions, that's awesome, but like how does that tie into epidemiology? Like my idea of epidemiology is like disease so like how does the labor unions part of that get tied into that?
KEVIN RU, MPH:Yeah definitely, I mean with understanding diseases or just oftentimes we're often interested in just understanding for janitors in particular for example like there's a lot of concerns with chronic pain, specifically muscle-skeletal disorders and these long-term chronic Health outcomes, adverse Health outcomes, mental health in particular is an area of increasing concern especially with the greater strain on janitors from during the pandemic. We found that oftentimes that could be traced potentially to workload and that's what we kind of started out with with the study was assessing the impact of workload on these different associations. And in terms of Union status I was, we were in particular curious about whether Union status was an effect modifier in this relationship and what effect modifier is essentially this kind of third variable where our exposure and our outcome is going to vary essentially like our the relationship is going to be different potentially between these two groups, so essentially we were interested to see if Union janitors versus non-union janitors what were those differences in associations? Would we see more perhaps adverse Health outcomes in non-union janitors compared to Union janitors so that was kind of the start of that question, kind of assessing working from first like understanding just those initial exposures of physical workload, like how hard are these janitors, how frequently are their tasks, their kind of their general daily workload and understanding the variety of health outcomes that were potentially associated with that and then kind of that's where afterwards we kind of brought Union status into that as well.
JOANNE TEH:Wow, that's cool, so it's like really really interdisciplinary.
KEVIN RU, MPH:Yeah definitely I think you really bring in a lot of different aspects. This study in particular was of course Dr Chris Harris's study and very much focused on ergonomics, was kind of at the forefront of it in the sense that especially in janitors in particular they face a lot of biomechanical workload stressors, particularly like the how hard they're exerting, often times with these repetitive constant motions that they're doing on their day-to-day tasks can again lead to these variety of these chronic health outcomes, so it's been interesting applying more of my Epi, more of my technical Epi background and more the study design and statistical side of things into a field, especially a field such as Ergo where I feel it's continually advancing and really starting to potentially make a big difference for workers in the field.
JOANNE TEH:Mhm. That's cool. Do you ever find that you're involved with like the more like social justice aspect of it or like the labor unions and like fighting for workers rights, are you ever involved with that?
KEVIN RU, MPH:I've mostly been on kind of the back end of things of kind of just assessing and understanding the potential implications of unionization and things like that, but I think that's, you bring up a great point and it's definitely something that's increasingly important in terms of being, making sure that workers actually understand their rights and know what is available to them and their resources available to them and that's often times why we've seen in some of the literature why union workers often have this kind of protective benefit because they have more support, more resources and more information available to them and have greater protections and worker safety as a result of unionization and those collective bargaining contracts.
JOANNE TEH:I see so it's all kind of intertwined.
KEVIN RU, MPH:Yeah.
JOANNE TEH:That's pretty cool. How did you even get involved with this work with janitors? Is that kind of like your end goal like working with janitors continually?
KEVIN RU, MPH:Good question, I think for me I was for when we were searching for a Capstone I was kind of just looking around I've always been interested broadly in occupational environmental exposures but didn't necessarily have a specific data set in mind or a study group that I was ,that I knew I was going to get involved with and was able to work with and the opportunity kind of came up to work on this specifically looking at unionization, it was a perfect opportunity kind of for me to jump into that space and work into that I wouldn't say that janitors are necessarily, studying like the janitors aren't necessarily my end goal by any means but I would say I think it aligns a lot with my interests especially in working with more marginalized populations I feel like of workers. I think a lot of my interests are are working with more much of the more vulnerable workers where I feel again like often times there's just less protections in place for them and it's I think it's important to have more studies conducted to shed more light and make sure that there's increasing regulation and support for these workers.
JOANNE TEH:Wow, that's awesome. I guess to like back track a little bit even more, how did you decide that you liked working with Occupational Health like what fueled your interest in the first place?
KEVIN RU, MPH:Yeah, definitely. I think for me my inspiration was really pretty personal in the sense it was just witnessing my mom works at a nail salon and having witnessed over just watching her come home over the years like growing up and seeing kind of the toll of just her occupation that really had on her over the years just seeing like even, just witnessing her hands like the cracked skin from just working with all these chemicals all constantly, the fatigue from the work being in again very kind of similar to janitors actually in often these very repetitive motions except for her she's often very stationary for most of the day as well and just seeing kind of the damage that just the occupation itself had taken on her over the years was pretty impactful and I always had an interest in occupational and that's really what stemmed my interest in occupational environmental health exposures in particular and then when I came here and had the opportunity to work at the COEH I feel like being directly exposed to in just really the more broader field and world of occupational environmental health and just seeing how interdisciplinary and how everything was very intertwined was really inspiring for me and why I have been very, got drawn in and havent looked back since.
JOANNE TEH:Awesome, that's really cool. I bet your mom is happy about that like that's it comes from such a place close to the heart. I've also seen some stuff online like working with gel nail polish can you like an allergy over time, scary stuff.
KEVIN RU, MPH:Yeah, yeah I have heard about that too, people developing allergies later there's just I feel like there's so many potential hazards often in a lot of these different occupations that just come out it's pretty-
JOANNE TEH:So like when you mentioned working marginalized populations you just mean like workers who are like vulnerable workers you said? Could you define that a little bit more?
KEVIN RU, MPH:Yeah, yeah. I would say that's also a thing there's been a lot of definitions of vulnerable workers I feel especially the word like precarious comes up a lot. There's not necessarily a specific definition of precarious work or precarity of work, like just a general consensus a lot of the definitions often surround the idea of just workers often it's a low wage work potentially with little job security, little worker protection, overwhelming worker demands like just larger workload burden, things like that can often be associated with I'd say precarious work. Of course just dangerous work in general I feel like also definitely falls into that scope as well is how I would potentially define that.
JOANNE TEH:Yeah I think that's useful for people who like, like I also have an interest in helping these type of populations but I would I didn't previously know what the term for it is or like what the field of study around it looks like currently. So yeah that's really interesting. I guess I have another question that backtracks a little bit more in your life. Maybe we should have started from like the start of your life towards now, but now I want to ask you so like in your bio I read that you did a BS in biology at UCLA, were you always interested in human biology, how did your like path look?
KEVIN RU, MPH:Well for me I was initially premed actually for quite some time so the classic bio major to line up with that perfectly. I mean for me bio was always interesting I did enjoy just in general the stem and was always very interesting to me and I did enjoy learning about the life sciences a lot but it wasn't until my senior year where I did my major or towards the end of my undergrad when I did my minor in society and genetics and I was really exposed to more of that interdisciplinary nature between like the life sciences scientific field health and just really understanding the social determinants of health and particular that was when I was really exposed to the concept and the idea of social determinants of health and all these different factors that are at an interplay in defining and dictating someone's health, overall health and well-being and that got me more interested in public health. I started taking some Public Health courses during my undergrad and then during my gap year I, well I graduated during Covid and during my gap year I worked in Covid testing and surveillance which really was at the at the time before like just being out there in the field where for public health, very much in the midst of Public Health and kind of really enjoying that type of work and wanting to get more involved in it that's kind of what led me to apply for my MPH here at Berkeley and where has led me to where I am now.
JOANNE TEH:I feel like it's a, you're the second person so far in this podcast who was premed turned occupational environmental health, I feel like it's kind of a tough decision to make because you invest so much into being Premed in your undergrad years like what were your, what were your large determining factors.
KEVIN RU, MPH:Yeah, definitely I think it's it's definitely tough because I at the heart of it all I really enjoy just working with people and being able to just directly engage and interact with individuals and I think being a doctor or just being a medical professional you're really just right there you're always seeing patients interacting with patients face to face things like that but I think as I was just being exposed to a lot more different perspectives and again a lot more knowledge towards the later end of my undergrad during my gap year I think I really became a lot more interested in just understanding the systemic like the root causes of a lot of these different Health outcomes like rather than coming from a standpoint of kind of trying to cure and like kind of patch up all these different conditions and outcomes I was more, I really became a lot more interested in more of a preventative approach. I feel like often times in just in a lot of different fields and situations in general I feel like we often take a response approach where if something bad happens something occurs then we kind of have this legislation then we kind of place these protections in place, etc so I was really interested in finding ways to just establish these protect preventative measures in the first place and kind of being able to contribute to that and I think through public health and especially within my discipline I think that's really the, one of the big aspects that we're doing is kind of understanding what are these specific exposures what is exactly leading to a lot of these Health outcomes that might be affecting some groups more disproportionally than others and things like that. It was tough I'd say but I really enjoy what I'm doing now and I just I actually I really fell in love with research as a whole I'd say.
JOANNE TEH:Awesome, wow that's like a really good perspective into administering care, Health Care for the population. Do you think the fact that it was like you were graduating during Covid, do you think the fact that Covid was going on in the world at that time played a role in your decision? I mean yeah like you had the experience with Covid work.
KEVIN RU, MPH:Yeah I'd say so definitely. I'm sure for a lot of people Covid definitely really changed a lot of people's perspective and I feel like exposed a lot of us to a lot of different things that we maybe just wouldn't really consider before I think especially what during my gap year working like in that kind of space and engaging with a lot of individuals and and often being the ones educating them just on like oh this this these are the testing guidelines these are the quarantine guidelines, etc just like it's simple stuff such as that I feel like you really start to understand how impactful I think just even just education, like public health education for a standpoint just informing the public is really public health is at the center of it, we're trying to protect and promote the people's, the population's health and well-being, right? And I think Covid really showed me, the pandemic really showed me kind of the extent to that in which and how important and much needed that is throughout the country and the world.
JOANNE TEH:Is that kind of how you landed on epidemiology biostatistics?
KEVIN RU, MPH:Yeah, yeah I think I would say so.
JOANNE TEH:That's awesome do you have any like kind of ambitions, maybe end goals in your research that you like can think of now?
KEVIN RU, MPH:In my research, not I wouldn't say I have any end goal in particular that I can think of at the moment, but I will say that I am very much committed or intending to kind of continue on my research journey and educational journey as well since I am planning on applying to PHD programs in the fall in epidemiology, so I'm hoping to really continue to do the work that I'm doing and hopefully whether that's applying that's in staying within Academia or into federal or state government, I think that's that's really where I see myself at least as in the end goal.
JOANNE TEH:You mentioned that you could work like how does what does jobs in working, sorry hang on, let me rephrase. You mentioned working in the federal or state governments versus Academia how do, what do jobs look like for your field, those types of jobs?
KEVIN RU, MPH:I'd say it's very broad you, there are definitely a lot of different options a lot of individuals with epidemiology degrees they could often go into just straight data analytics, some might be very more interested in the statistic side of things they might become biostatisticians whether for it's the state government etc or for Consulting companies or for Health Care organizations such as Kaiser, etc. Often a lot of more on the data side of things there's research analysts similarly there might be helping with conducting the study design carrying out studies, analyzing data, health scientists very similar roles as well, I'd say there's also of course just epidemiologists roles in general where you're often like they really there's a lot of different departments and different fields like especially if you're looking at the city or just the state or County levels, addressing a lot of different things from with different focuses from mental health to environmental lead exposures to just really across the field a lot of different range of possibilities I'd say in terms of different occupations. And there are individuals that of course use, continue on to they do still are interested in medicine and still but they want that more of that public health background and part of their, to include in their training and kind of enrich their training as well and keep that perspective as they go into and become a physician or medical professional so there are individuals that also go on to medical school as well. I'd say there's a lot of different options within the field.
JOANNE TEH:What's your personal outcome that you'd like, what's your personal preference?
KEVIN RU, MPH:My personal preference, I'd say I'd either want to work I think ideally I see myself either one day becoming a professor, maybe say if I did choose to stay in Academia because I do really enjoy teaching and just working with students in addition to research or just working within the state specifically whether that's for NIOSH or like the department of industrial relations the DIR, just focus on kind of these occupational environmental exposures.
JOANNE TEH:That's awesome.
KEVIN RU, MPH:And just promote individuals' health, yeah.
JOANNE TEH:That's cool, that's cool. Have you had experience teaching OEHS before?
KEVIN RU, MPH:Not OEHS directly I would say. I have had some experience teaching as a tutor through the DREAM office. I'm currently well I today I actually just gave my final review session for the epidemiology methods 2 course so just kind of being able to teach students is something I really enjoy and this was kind of a really great opportunity to kind of put that to practice.
JOANNE TEH:Are you, does that mean you're like a GSI?
KEVIN RU, MPH:No, so it's a bit different from, it's similar, it's but a tutor it's just it's separate from like a TA or GSI.
JOANNE TEH:Cool, wow that's awesome. I feel like a key part about this field that I talked about with many of the previous podcast guests is like science communication, right, and so far a lot of them talk about science communication to the people, the populations of workers that they're specifically working with but I think this is interesting because now you're talking about science communication to teach like the next generation.
KEVIN RU, MPH:Yeah, yeah. I think that's a good point because I think at the end of the day communication really is key in how understanding and being able to adapt and be able to actively and accurately portray your information effectively there's the word effectively portray the information to different audiences is really key I think I'd say in just this field in any field really especially a field as interdisciplinary as this and where you have so many different stakeholders so many different people from different backgrounds who like you were saying at the beginning like individuals might not even understand what specific terms might mean and or just general aspects of Public Health so starting there and understanding where your audience I think is really key. But yeah I think it is exciting training, I mean I consider myself I'm only the very first year students so I'm only one year like older than them if you want to call it that but I think it's great seeing kind of we're all in the same boat, everyone's super so just so passionate about being and stepping into this really important field of just going on to become the next leaders in public health and beyond.
JOANNE TEH:I heard similar things from previous guests that like they feel like those who are involved in OEHS are really passionate about it what do you, how do you think what do you think about that?
KEVIN RU, MPH:Yeah, I'd say definitely. I feel I've met a lot of individuals I mean they've been doing this for many many years now and this is, they poured their life's work into this and it's definitely really passionate especially when we're thinking about how many people are potentially affected and like especially we're just looking across different occupations, understanding, because these are individuals that are working in these fields or whatever occupation that might be they're facing these exposures and hazards on a daily basis. This is their job they're going for to support their livelihood their families, etc and they're consistently being exposed potentially to dangerous hazards dangerous chemicals, etc but they really have no choice at the end to day and that's where it's really important for a lot of these professionals across all these different fields, you have the doctors, you have the exposure measurements assessors, you have the people conducting the studies, people running there's so many people that come together to or just for really anything there's just so many people that are coming together to kind of keep the machine going and kind of really evaluate these different exposures that make it that's, I feel like that's why it's so easy for individuals to become so passionate about it of course.
JOANNE TEH:I love to see it. I've met so many people and I've talked to so many people in the field who just like can just keep going on and on about their topic and that's just really wholesome, I think.
KEVIN RU, MPH:Yeah.
JOANNE TEH:Hey guys this is Joanne, your host for this episode and we have reached the end of part one of this conversation with our wonderful guest. Don't click out yet, because part two of this conversation has already been posted so check out our page to finish the conversation. Don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel and follow us on Spotify and Instagram @dothechangepodcast.