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Pursuing Public Health Policy in an Inclusive Community   

“Rollins really caters toward making an inclusive environment in which graduate students can engage with the campus community,” he says. “At Rollins, you don’t just go to class, leave, and that's it. It’s about more than just academics; we’ve built a community that will also extend beyond these two years and support our public health mission in the future.”

As a California native, coming to Atlanta to attend graduate school at Rollins was a big move for Hans Khoe. He had spent the past four years studying political science at Westmont College with dreams of someday becoming a lawyer, but after experiences doing COVID-19 research and working for the San Francisco public defender’s office, he knew that he wanted to pursue health policy. Rollins was the perfect place to do that. 

“I wanted to come to Rollins because I heard that Atlanta was the public health capital of the world,” he says. “You have the CDC, The Carter Center, and so many other organizations and opportunities. And Rollins has so many faculty who are influential in policy that I wanted to learn from, so that was a driving factor in me choosing this school.” 

Khoe has found many ways to explore real-world applications of health policy while a student at Rollins. One of the most significant was his Applied Practice Experience, which he completed with the CDC Division of Violence Prevention as an intern at the Injury Prevention Research Center at Emory. He spent his summer pouring over global data about violence against children and considering how it can be prevented. This culminated in a presentation of his work at the Safe States Conference. 

Student life and campus involvement have also been cornerstones of Khoe’s time as an MPH student. In 2023, he served as the president of the Rollins Student Government Association, which supports student organizations and cultivates community for Rollins students. This sense of community is something that he notes is unique and important to the culture of the school. 

“Rollins really caters towards making an inclusive environment in which graduate students can engage with the campus community,” he says. “At Rollins, you don’t just go to class, leave, and that's it. It’s about more than just academics; we’ve built a community that will also extend beyond these two years and support our public health mission in the future.” 

This spring, Khoe will begin a public health law fellowship through the CDC. He hopes that this experience will build upon the skills he has learned at Rollins and allow him to dive deeper into the role that public health plays in crafting legislation that will affect health policy and society at large. 

“I want to see health policy enacted, and I want to see how communities are affected by it,” he says. “Those two things together are how I believe we can create change, and that's how I want to effect change in the future.”