04/27

For my second networking interview, I had the privilege of speaking with my professor for my public health course this semester (titled Childhood, Policy, & Health), Prof. Jessica Hung-Chieh Chang (張弘潔).

Prof. Chang is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Public Health at National Taiwan University (NTU). Her research focuses on child public health with her recent publications centering on children and their role in climate activism. While we don’t often think of public health and climate activism at the same time, I found her work provided a really unique perspective on children’s agency in protecting their own health. I was interested to hear more about her experiences and how she came to this different approach to child public health, so I reached out to her for an interview!

To start off our interview, I asked Prof. Chang about her background and what brought her to choose public health. Prof. Chang explained that, from the start, she knew she wanted to work with people, but she felt that the hospital held too much pain and sickness. This led her to choose public health, with the idea of potentially going into hospital administration. However, Prof. Chang soon discovered how broad the field of public health is, including concepts from sociology, psychology, and public policy. Originally, she didn’t plan to become a professor but instead worked in both the public and private sectors between her degrees. After obtaining her PhD, she actually considered working for an international NGO, but then realized her past experience better supported an academic direction, on top of the fact that visas weren’t easy to obtain back then if you weren’t studying with a university. Even though the writing requirements of academia were daunting, she was inspired by one of her own professors, who used her position to support the feminist movement in Taiwan. From this, she realized she could use her position as a professor/expert to provide evidence through research and promote social change, collaborating with NGOs and the government.

Considering the course I am taking with her this semester especially focuses on children in public health, I was curious how she first got interested in this specific demographic. Since undergrad, Prof. Chang already became involved in child-related research. Looking back, she reflected that she had always loved kids and this naturally just led to her career centering on child public health. Regarding her more recent research focus on the environment and climate action, the large contrast between the U.K. and her hometown Taichung’s air quality upon her return from studying and working abroad made her especially note the importance of this issue. That time also happened to be the height of the air pollution social movement in Taiwan and she couldn’t help but notice how rare it was to see blue sky. The headlines about Greta Thunberg in 2019 made it even more clear that children’s participation in climate activism was worthy of further study. 

When I asked Prof. Chang about the skills that have helped her in her research, she emphasized the importance of listening and compassion. Especially at an elite institution like NTU and within the field of academia, it can be difficult for others to feel comfortable, heard, and included. She shared that this is particularly important when conducting research with children to connect with them and help amplify their voice. Her advice on cultivating empathy and people skills really resonated with me as I could see how passionate she is in truly understanding children.

As we wrapped up our conversation, I asked Prof. Chang to share any last words of advice. She said that something she learned during her time abroad in the U.K. was how crucial it is to build self-confidence and voice out your own opinion:

“If you don’t say it, there won’t be another person who will. In this discourse arena, if I don’t speak, this voice for children may never be heard.”

Prof. Chang is an incredibly inspiring individual and I am so grateful to have had the chance to interview her. Thank you Prof. Chang for sharing your time with me! 

Thank you so much for reading! My next interview will be with Chansie Yang, a Wellesley alum and super cool plant biology researcher. Please look forward to it and I’ll see you next time!