Haley Griner ’24 has been interested in population and community health for a long time, and the chance to study it at Lehigh is what brought the Tampa, Florida, native here.
She first visited the university in 2016 during an East Coast college tour for her older brother and “absolutely fell in love with it,” she says. Her brother ended up at Flagler College in Florida, “but when it was my turn to go to college, I did some research and found out Lehigh has a health, medicine and society (HMS) major. The College of Health opened the year I came to Lehigh, so it feels like it was meant to be.”
Making a difference in the community
In her last undergraduate year majoring in population health with an HMS minor, Griner is already putting her learning to work to make a difference. She got a part-time job as a barista at Zekraft on New Street, which is owned by a couple who “are very community minded,” Griner says. “I told them about my interest in the health aspects of community work, and they made me the lead of their community outreach program.”
“They’ve created a place where mothers can go to get on their feet, to learn life and job skills so they can take care of themselves and their babies.”
One of the first things Griner did was reach out to the Cay Galgon Life House in Bethlehem, a center for homeless and marginalized mothers. The center’s mission dovetails nicely with Griner’s academic interest in maternal and child health.
“They’ve created a place where mothers can go to get on their feet, to learn life and job skills so they can take care of themselves and their babies,” Griner says.
She began with a donation drive for the Galgon center in the Bethlehem Zekraft location. She plans to take the Zekraft team and spend a day volunteering there, maybe wrapping presents for the Christmas program for mothers and babies. Griner says future plans include building a vegetable and herb garden there and doing some revitalization work.
A career in health
After graduation in the spring, Griner’s academic and career plans are to work on her master’s degree and Ph.D. in the College of Health, with the goal of becoming a field epidemiologist. “I love the idea of traveling to different parts of the world to study populations and figure out how to improve their health,” she says.