Finding Purpose in Public Health with Emma Drybread

 Summary: In this inspiring episode, we chat with Emma Drybread, a passionate Master of Public Health student, about her journey from volunteer trips to Baja California to her vision of empowering underserved communities. Emma shares how her personal experiences with health challenges and her dedication to creating change have driven her to pursue meaningful work in public health. Join us as Emma discusses the value of chasing purpose over profit, the transformative power of education, and her hopes for the future of community health. 

Recorded, Edited & Produced by Christy Gonzalez, Harper Xinyu Zhang, and Tanya Gale

Transcript

Cougar Hall: [00:00:00] Welcome to Y Health, a podcast brought to you by the BYU Public Health Department. I'm Dr. Cougar Hall, a professor here at Brigham Young University. Whether you are a student, parent, or BYU fan, this podcast will help you navigate the world of public health. Our podcast strives to help individuals receive accurate information regarding public health. 

So whether it's global or local, we will discuss how it pertains to you. Just kick back and relax as we talk about why health. Emma Drybread. Welcome to the Y Health podcast. 

Emma Drybread: Thank you. I'm excited to be here. 

Cougar Hall: We are so excited to have you on the show. You're one of our absolute rock star master of public health students graduating soon, right? 

I would love for you to introduce yourself to our guests, Emma, where are you from? What brought you to [00:01:00] public health? The whole story, if you don't mind. 

Emma Drybread: Okay, I don't know where to start. It's kind of hard to pick a place to start, but I'm from Folsom, California. Grew up there, lived there my whole life, and I always wanted to go into teaching, surprisingly. 

From a young age, I wanted to be a teacher. I took classes in high school about how to become a teacher. I volunteered in elementary school. really set on that for a long time, but simultaneously my family also started going to Baja California, Mexico when I was about 13 and I started learning Spanish when I was 6 and I started seeing needs that were outside of the world that I was living in. 

I was seeing what it was like for people to live in poverty, not have their basic needs met, and My perspective on what I wanted to do with my life started to shift after we started taking those trips and I didn't even know what public health was. [00:02:00] So it was something I kind of stumbled upon later when I was in college But when I found it, I I felt like that was the right path for me to go down. 

Cougar Hall: Really cool So were these vacations to Baja or? Were these working with an organization, going and volunteering and service? What took you to Baja so many times? 

Emma Drybread: So my mom and I think both my parents, they kind of started doing some research of organizations that we could volunteer with. So they found a couple of orphanages and other places we could volunteer. 

And we drove from Sacramento down to Baja, about a nine hour drive. And we started doing that twice a year. So we'd do vacation stuff too. We'd spend time at the beach. But we also spent a lot of time also just meeting people in the community. I did a young women's project of making sock monkeys and collecting stuffed animals. 

And we would just go out in the streets and see where people didn't have a lot and kids playing in the dirt. And we'd go give them these toys. And we became friends with [00:03:00] people in the community that we are still friends with today, 11 years later, and we still go back and visit them every year. It's been awesome to foster those relationships and also help people very individually. 

Cougar Hall: No, I love it. I so appreciate you sharing that. I mean, what a cool thing. I think, you know, Family vacations are really important. There's actually a lot of research that says, you know, the importance of wholesome recreational activities as a family, right? To add another layer of meaning and purpose on some of those family activities together. 

Clearly this is in your DNA. I mean, this is really cool. Uh, take us then from high school to university studies and Keep going. You're doing great. 

Emma Drybread: Another aspect of something that was kind of, there's kind of a lot going through my head when I was young. I wanted to be a teacher. I was really passionate about, you know, I really wanted to learn Spanish. 

I didn't know how I was going to do it, but I knew that I needed to learn Spanish because I wanted to [00:04:00] improve these relationships with people I had in Baja. And also I had a lot of anxiety as a kid. I was always looking for something that would. Help me find a sense of purpose. I was diagnosed with what's called PANDAS when I was 6 years old. 

And PANDAS stands for Wait. Pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders associated with streptococcal infections. Wow. Yeah, it's kind of a long thing and it only affects about 1 percent of the population. It's pretty rare. And what happens is you have some sort of strep infection and instead of your body getting rid of that infection, it'll target other parts of your body, hence the autoimmune, and it causes severe OCD. 

and it's like an overnight change in your behavior. So from the time I was six years old, I became very, very anxious, very obsessed with a lot of things. And no matter what I [00:05:00] did, I just felt incomplete. I felt like I couldn't do enough and no matter how hard I tried, it was never enough. And so that was also this other aspect of this search for meaning, the search for purpose. 

Through my time in school and dealing with that anxiety, I just kept on coming back to Baja because that was the one place that I felt some peace, some purpose. And when I got to college, I did a semester before serving a mission. I graduated high school about a semester early and I went down to Guanajuato, Mexico, and I taught English down there for three months. 

And that was a trial in itself, but also it was kind of crazy how it happened because I was supposed to go to the Dominican Republic and they didn't get my passport pictures and stuff in time. So they sent me to Mexico and it was just this other draw I had to Mexico. Then, yeah, [00:06:00] did that semester, got called to serve a mission in Mexico City. 

So I went back to Mexico, only about four hours from where I'd been teaching English. So ran into some of the people that I met when I was teaching English down there. And I just kind of kept feeling this pull while I was still dealing with a lot of these psychological issues and coming back from my mission, I started to really work through some of those issues. 

And for me, it was really a miracle. A lot of people don't overcome. Um, OCD and severe anxiety. And I won't say, you know, you ever completely recover, but a lot of the healing I found was a miracle to me. And I knew that because miracles had happened in my life, that they could happen in other people's lives too. 

And that's kind of how I feel about some of these problems in the world that are deemed adaptive problems [00:07:00] or wicked problems that don't have an answer. I believe that miracles can happen and that we're a part of those miracles happening in other people's lives. And so when I found public health, when I decided, you know, I really want to help these communities, even though some people were like, that's not a good idea, you can't just go like change these communities. 

I was like, you know what, I'm going to do it anyways. 

Cougar Hall: So really cool. So from your mission, then you went to BYU Idaho? 

Emma Drybread: Yes. And you 

Cougar Hall: studied public health, is that right? 

Emma Drybread: Mm hmm. Yeah, and I minored in Spanish while I was there. You minored 

Cougar Hall: in Spanish. So at this point, you're speaking some pretty good Spanish. 

Yeah. Which is gonna be helpful as we get into what you've been doing here at BYU as well. Yes. You came to BYU. You've been here for a little more than a year. Master of Public Health or MPH program. You're one of our absolute rock stars. You have a great cohort though. Tell me every MPH student does approximately a 300 hour fieldwork experience and it's typically in the summer of, you know, after [00:08:00] your first year of courses. 

Is that what you did and tell us about your fieldwork because I think it's pretty cool. 

Emma Drybread: Yeah, so that is what I did. I did it this summer, and it started with Eric Nelson and Alicia Reddolph's program evaluation class winter semester. I was working with a team to do a program evaluation for their summer learning program at South Franklin Community Center, and this program is It's typically only a month long, serving primarily children from Title I schools in the area. 

And South Franklin, for those who don't know where it is, is just in South Provo, kind of now down near where the food bank is, lower income community. It's a program that has been developing a lot over the years. But there's a high demand for it because not only is it helping the kids progress and get ready for the next school year or catch up to their peers if they're behind, but the kids get really excited about it too, and they start to enjoy learning. 

So [00:09:00] what my team did was we evaluated the program, looked at some of their data, saw how the kids were improving their scores, and gave them some feedback as to things they could improve to help the program run more smoothly and to better collect and organize their data. So as I was working on that project, I asked, uh, the director If they had any internships. 

'cause I was looking for field work and she asked me, she's like, why don't you run our program , run the whole thing. And I was like, okay. You know, she didn't ask me for a resume or anything. I was like, we'll do it. And I was really excited about it and I still am excited about it even now with that over, I was really sad once it ended. 

So I kind of got thrown into things. I didn't really know fully what to expect. I had a pretty good understanding of the program, but there's such a high turnover that often documents would get lost. There wasn't really any training. I just had to figure out [00:10:00] how to do it. So, I started right when the semester ended, so first week of May, and I finished like second week of August. 

And so I had to do all the preparation and writing job descriptions, hiring some people to help me, talking with the teachers, creating presentations, training some of the students who had graduated from the program so they could come back and help the younger kids. And so Really just making sure logistically everything worked, planning all of the field trips, making sure data was being collected so we could analyze their test scores, writing the annual report at the end of the year, helping the grant writer. 

So kind of a lot. 

Cougar Hall: This is amazing. Tell me a little bit about the population. How many students does the program serve during the summer? What ages? What grade levels? 

Emma Drybread: Yeah, so it's for kids entering second grade through entering eighth grade. And typically from Title I schools, a lot of them come from immigrant [00:11:00] families, not all of them. 

We had quite a few kids who didn't speak any English and were still learning. And a lot of older kids in the program. They knew what it had felt like because they'd been there before and they would help those younger kids, they would translate for them. It was really cool to see those relationships between the kids and the friendships that they made because they had similar struggles. 

And I think that helped them gain a lot of confidence in the classroom too, which is why it was such a unique environment and one that propelled them forward and helped them progress so quickly. 

Cougar Hall: Amazing. Tell me about, because you do a lot with assessment and a lot of, you know, monitoring and program evaluation as an MPH student. 

Can you quantify the advancement? Like, when it comes to, say, reading, how much did the students progress over the summer? 

Emma Drybread: Yeah. So every single kid improved their reading scores with only 13 total days in the classroom. [00:12:00] And looking at their test scores, there's Especially the fourth through seventh graders, because those were recorded a little bit differently than the younger kids, but they improved by at least one or more grade levels in reading within those 13 days. 

That's a 

Cougar Hall: taxpayer as a recovering high school teacher. Thank you. You know what? This is about you, Emma. Can I take just one minute and give you a personal connection? Yeah. You've been vulnerable with us and you told us some of your challenges, especially, yeah. beginning at age six. And my experience is a little different, but also similar and maybe similar to the students that you served this summer. 

I have most of my report cards. My mom kept everything and put it, you know, I suppose it's a scrapbook, but I have so many of these things from my childhood. I have a report card from the second grade. And maybe if there's listeners that are about my age, they remember these report cards. There was excellent or superior, and then all the way down to below grade level. 

And [00:13:00] everything on my second grade report card at the mid year at Christmas was below grade level. And there's a note from my teacher, Ms. Ward, and she says, despite, despite Cougar's continuous effort, he still does not know how to read. Then there was another note that said, Cougar's acting out in class and is a disruption, and he's also being physical with other students on recess, 

And so it's amazing. This is what happens when you're not able to learn. You're not able to keep up with your class. You start. seeking attention elsewhere. And talk to any elementary, junior high, high school teacher, and they can talk about the students who really are trying, but it's not coming. And now they're a behavioral management problem, right? 

And that's the path I was going down. On that report card, if you flip it over, you can see my mom in her cursive. We don't write in cursive much anymore, but my mom in her cursive, [00:14:00] she said, I would like to schedule. a consultation or an appointment with you. And my mom met with Miss Ward and Miss Ward said, he's trying. 

It's not happening. He's not learning. He doesn't know how to read. And my mom said, what can I do? And Miss Ward gave her a list of some tutors in the area and said, if you can afford it, Cougar would benefit from some one on one tutoring two days a week. I come from tremendous privilege, Emma. My mom was able to pay for that tutoring. 

And it took a while, but by the fourth grade, I was caught up. And I don't know that I'm not the brightest guy. I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I was able to get through school and also get through my undergraduate, my graduate studies. But I have often thought, what if I'm not from a family of privilege? 

There's no way in heck that I was going to. I was going down a different path if I don't learn how to read. And as a parent, that's all I wanted. [00:15:00] I just hope my kids learn how to read. And they were all reading really well by the first grade. And I just, I've always considered that such a blessing. But I think about the students that you're serving, students who are coming from Title I schools. 

They're low income, you know, they're disadvantaged in many ways. And it's so easy to fall through the cracks if you haven't learned how to read. And in 13 days you provided for many students what my mom was able to provide for me. And just so I'm sorry, I'm taking away too much time. It's not about me, but as you're talking, I'm getting emotional. 

Because I realized this isn't just 300 hours. You got your program done and you can move on and you can graduate. You've changed lives for generations. I'm an educator at heart and this is what it's about. So can I just say thank you? Big hug. We get excited about our careers and what we're going to do, but you're in a situation where moving forward, I'm [00:16:00] anxious to see what you do because it's not just about, you know, How you make a living. 

It's how you make a life. I can see it in your eyes. You're chasing meaning and you're doing things that are really, really purposeful. Uh, so thank you. And now we have to continue. Maybe they'll cut all of that out. I hope they will, but now we need to continue. Where do you move? How do you move forward? 

Cause you had this tremendous experience this summer and you can see how things. can be very unorganized, but you've learned the skills in your graduate program to get things organized, to make sure that we've got alignment with our objectives and with our resources and with what we're doing, and you're able to monitor and evaluate those things. 

You're able to do good better, so to speak. Where do you go from here? How do you build upon what you did this summer? 

Emma Drybread: Yeah, I feel like I'm starting to see the stars align because I go back to when I was 13 and those first experiences that I had in Baja and seeing how education was one of the [00:17:00] biggest barriers there. 

There is this little girl that I met when she was three and now she has two younger sisters and I'm still in contact with them all, but she's 15 now and she still doesn't know how to read. And, um, Seeing how their family has been stuck in this poverty cycle for so long. I'm like, these are the kids that need help. 

And I didn't know how to help them when I was 13 years old, but I feel like now I've gained the tools. I have the education to be able to do something about it. And so even though I keep, you know, in the back of my head, there's all the like, well, you also need to get a job so you can pay rent and, you know, take care of yourself. 

But in the back of my head too, it's like, no, like I need to do something that's purposeful. And this is where I've been felt drawn to go my whole life. I just didn't know what was in front of me. And I feel like I'm starting to see where I need to go. And more than anything, where God wants me to go. 

[00:18:00] Because that's That's how I've made all of my decisions and so I really want to take what I've learned from summer learning and be able to apply it. specifically in these communities that my family has visited and be able to maybe do some sort of after school program for these kids who are not learning in the classroom or whose teachers refuse to teach them because they have learning disabilities. 

So that's kind of where I'm headed and I've had a lot of support from professors here in the MPH program. I'm also taking classes in the MPA and professors there have also said we're willing to help you. One of my professors, he recently started a small nonprofit with his wife and he knows a lot about nonprofit management. 

And he's like, I'll help you get some students to help you get it started up and figure out all the tax information. And so that's been a huge comfort to me because I was like, okay, yeah, I can create a program. [00:19:00] I've gained those tools, but how do I deal with all the logistics of it? But I felt a ton of support being here at BYU, people willing to. 

back me up as I move forward and do something that I've always wanted to do. 

Cougar Hall: This is really exciting. I think so many of our graduates are coming out thinking, so who am I going to work for? And how do I network? And certainly you're going to network and you're already networking, but you might not be working for anyone. 

You might be working for yourself. You might be taking things that you've learned and going back to age six, all the experiences that you had. I love how you said it feels like it's kind of coming together. And certainly the Lord is directing you for sure. Some of the kids that you. impacted this summer, they're going to be in a whole different place when they're 51 because of you. 

I think that there's this feeling right now, and maybe your generation's captured this more than any others, is like when you chase meaning, when you do what you feel like you're supposed to do. And you put your singular focus there. The other things take care of themselves. I don't know that my generation or my parents generation had [00:20:00] those guts, but I feel like your generation does because of social media, because of the ability to monetize things like YouTube or crowdsource or all this kind of stuff. 

It feels like more dreams are possible. 

Emma Drybread: Yeah 

Cougar Hall: to go. I don't know if you really feel that way or if i'm just making this up I listened to a podcast the other day where someone said you have to do what you feel your calling is and then It'll take care of itself and i'm like But the rent's due on the fifth. 

Emma Drybread: Yeah, 

Cougar Hall: it's kind of like do you feel that is that palpable? 

Emma Drybread: I think so I had a conversation with my roommate about this as i've been sorting through Because I feel like this is an internal dilemma that i've had it's like Okay. I feel this pressure from society that I need to get a good paying job and I need to, you know, be working for somebody big and kind of like all these external pressures, but there's so much more in life than making [00:21:00] money. 

And I think maybe that is something more of our generation that we've been thinking more about. I don't know, but my roommate and I were having this conversation talking about all of our dreams and things that we want to do in our lives and how You know, some people might say, don't do it. Like that's stupid. 

You're not going to make any money. You're going to be poor. But what does that matter? Like, what is the purpose of life? And I think. If we're doing what the Lord wants us to do, that he will provide. 

Cougar Hall: I'm having so much fun with this conversation, and I got a little emotional, I apologize. But you are an absolute rock star. 

And I'm thinking, if I were coming out of my master's program, I felt a tremendous amount of pressure. Because I had just spent a lot of time and a lot of money, just, just resources in general, investing in myself. And now I need to make money and I need to be able to get into a home and to have benefits. 

All the things that, like, those are stresses that we feel as we come out of our [00:22:00] education. And yet I feel like, you know, maybe I, In fact, I, I just heard this on a podcast, another podcast I was listening to about someone saying, Hey, my generation, we might be wired differently, but we're chasing meaning and we're, we're doing what we feel like we are called to do. 

And when we do that, and when it's a full send, I'm all in, this is what I care about. This is what I want to do with my life. Then those other things take care of themselves. And I thought, wow, I don't know if my generation. Had that faith, had that trust. I'm feeling like, as you're talking about maybe a future in the nonprofit sector and moving forward, cause you would be a corporate darling. 

You could write your ticket and make a lot of money, but I feel like you might be going a different direction. Tell me about what's going on in your head and your heart when it comes to career and security, because it feels like this is a huge step into the dark and into the unknown. [00:23:00] And that fascinates me from where you're at in life to how you're thinking about those things. 

Does that make any sense? 

Emma Drybread: Yeah, and it's definitely been an internal dilemma that I've had. It's something the past year I've been thinking a lot about. As I've worked in the nonprofit sector, knowing that there's not a lot of money in that, but there's so much meaning. And I really want to live my life in a way that I find meaning every day. 

I don't want to just go to work and come home and live the same thing, like Groundhog Day. And this was a conversation too I was having with my roommate a couple of weeks ago. We were just talking about all of our hopes and dreams and things that we want to do and this pressure that we feel to make money, which is so important because we need to pay rent. 

We need to eat. There's a lot of things that get expensive and health care and all of those things. But something that I've. come to understand is when we let ourselves [00:24:00] be guided and directed by the Lord and everything that we do, he promises us that he will always provide. And that's something that I've come to know, especially, I think with those mental health struggles that I had as a kid, you know, I had to rely on the Lord to get through that. 

And I think it's so easy to just give into what society says is or just. do logically what makes the most sense. But when you are driven by your heart and you are turning it over to the Lord, always constantly seeking his guidance and direction, he will make it possible and everything just kind of feels right. 

And I know when I've made decisions, I feel peace about it. You know, maybe it's not a clear, yes, you need to do this or no, you shouldn't do that. But there's nothing stopping me. And that's what I've come to terms with right now, as I've been thinking about maybe starting this organization and going back and helping these kids.[00:25:00] 

It was funny because a few weeks ago I had this thought, okay, you should go talk to this one professor and tell him all your ideas. And I was like, no, you know, I probably should do some job searching and I probably should maybe think about getting a real job and not just going to Mexico and doing this thing. 

But then. The conversation just happened. It wasn't something that I went and looked out. We were going up to a conference in Salt Lake with a few people from a class, and he started asking us, like, what do you really want to do with your life? And when I told him he was like, Emma, do it. And I was like, yeah, like I need to do it. 

And so I, that's kind of my answer. I do think maybe it is more of, uh, our generation thing. Maybe it is something we're starting to understand more, but I also think it's very individual and it comes from that faith and that trust that we have in the Lord and that he's going to direct our paths. 

Cougar Hall: Yeah, I can feel it. 

I mean, you have a maturity and a spiritual maturity that, uh, I'm envious of. [00:26:00] It's terrific. I do feel like it's a different world. We certainly need money and it's nice to have security, but there's a lot of different ways to be able to take care of those needs now. And I'm seeing people who are not doing the nine to five or the 40 to 60 hour work week, but because of, of social media and things like YouTube and how you can monetize. 

On all sorts of different platforms so that you can do the other things that you really need to do and, and to fundraise different avenues for fundraising and supporting a nonprofit effort like what you're talking about, it does feel like it's wide open. So I just want to encourage you because I do think this is an era where you can chase those dreams that are. 

going to provide for you, but also are meaningful. And again, it's not just making a living, it's making a life. It's using your time in mortality. And when we feel called and we feel like this is what we're supposed to do. My story is a little [00:27:00] different, but I had roommates who, We're studying business and finance and they were doing really well two years out after graduation. 

And it took me years and years and years as a public school teacher to actually get to where they started, you know, their first contract. And yet I knew that's what I was supposed to do. And it brought me so much joy and the Lord did take care of me. I had faith that like, I don't know how this is going to work, how I'm going to provide for my family, but I'm going to move forward with this. 

And I have felt his hand kind of touch. guide me and direct me at different intersections, if you will, in my life. I had someone tell me once, they said, you know, The Savior didn't just save you in Gethsemane or in Golgotha. He has saved you over and over and over again. And I felt that with my career and I felt that with my family. 

So I'm not just talking about sin and repentance. I'm the enabling thing. of our Savior's atonement. I think that's what's giving us this ability to [00:28:00] try some things that maybe it is a leap into the unknown. I'm not sure I was supposed to go there in this discussion, but I could not be more impressed with you and you have prepared yourself well. 

You've had, uh, so many different experiences in life that I think have you poised to really make an impact. And I feel that way about a lot of our students, our undergraduates and our graduate students. So I so appreciate your time and you sharing your story. And, uh, I think we're going to have a couple of other MPH students, some of your classmates on the podcast as well, uh, definitely feel like this discussion was supposed to happen and I'm sure it'll be helpful for some of our listeners. 

Maybe as a wrap up, Emma. What is it that's really charging your batteries right now? Is there something you're reading, something you're listening to? You do a lot of reading, too much reading just for your school work, right? But when you have a moment and you can kind of decompress and learn for you, what is it that's got you going?[00:29:00] 

Emma Drybread: I love audio books. My favorite thing is to turn on a book when I go running and kind of transport myself somewhere else. Actually, yesterday, I just started listening to an audio book that I haven't listened to in a few years. And really that book, was one of my driving factors in making these decisions of where I wanted to go with my life. 

It's called Love Does by Bob Goff. He's a Christian author, also a lawyer, and he just tells stories about how he's seen God's love in his life and how he's come to understand God's love and that love is a verb. It's not something that you do and That book has meant a lot to me and hearing his stories and how he's just taken advantage of every opportunity that's presented itself to him and how that's led him to help so many people. 

That's been highly influential for me. He's also very entertaining. I found myself laughing as I was running this morning, listening to his stories, just thinking about how crazy it is when you take advantage of all of those [00:30:00] opportunities and things that happen. 

Cougar Hall: Yeah. I think you're going to be able to write a book as well. 

In fact. I hope you're blogging or sharing your story. Can people find you on social media, on LinkedIn? Where do we learn more about Emma and your adventures? 

Emma Drybread: Yeah, I have a lot of my stuff on LinkedIn. Maybe one day I will write a book. That's something that's on my bucket list. 

Cougar Hall: Well, you're doing great things. 

It's an honor just to kind of have this contact point with you. And I wish you the very best and sincerely thank you for your time. Cause you're, you're about as busy as they come, but thanks for joining us on the Y Health podcast. 

Emma Drybread: Thank you for having me. 

Cougar Hall: Thank you for joining us today. Catch us on our next episode, and don't forget to subscribe to future Y Health episodes.