Associate Professor, Department of Health Policy and Management
“For students who are coming to grad school and may not exactly know what they want to do, understanding policy is essential. To me, policy is the foundation of change. Especially in women's health and in maternal and child health, policy drives everything.”
For Sarah Blake, PhD, policy is the cornerstone of public health. With a career built around health policy research and advocacy, she now imparts her expertise in the field to her students at Rollins.
“For students who are coming to grad school and may not exactly know what they want to do, understanding policy is essential,” she says. “To me, policy is the foundation of change. Especially in women's health and in maternal and child health, policy drives everything.”
Although she once had ambitions to work in international relations, the more she engaged in community service work, the more she saw the needs that existed domestically, and eventually her focus shifted. She spent time volunteering in her community at women’s shelters and advocating for reproductive rights, the latter of which led her to her first job at the Women’s Legal Defense Fund in Washington, D.C. There, she lobbied for the Family Medical Leave Act. This experience is what sparked her passion and inspired her to embark on a career in women’s health policy.
“I got really fired up, and I got inspired that even one person can make a difference,” she says. “And then I went on to grad school and entered a Master of Public Policy program. It's about finding what inspires you, and your passion.”
Since joining the faculty at Rollins in 2001, Blake has continuously done impactful work in the field of women’s health policy, especially regarding maternal health and maternal mortality in Georgia. She works on several projects funded by CDC and the Georgia Department of Public Health which aim to understand the impacts of COVID-19, mental health, and more on maternal health outcomes.
Blake also often collaborates with students and serves a mentor for their projects, on top of teaching several courses. In an interdisciplinary department like HPM, where faculty come from a wide variety of professional backgrounds, her expertise adds to the deep pool of knowledge and opportunities for students. One thing that she hopes students can take away from their time at Rollins is that making an impact on the public’s health begins locally.
“There's a mantra that I live by: public health is local,” she says. “To do public health policy, you have to start at the local level to really initiate change.”