Emory students use photography to express public health issues
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* Aaron Warnick

![Figure1](http://www.thenationshealth.org/https://www.thenationshealth.org/content/nathealth/52/3/10.1/F1.medium.gif)

[Figure1](http://www.thenationshealth.org/content/52/3/10.1/F1)

A black-and-white photograph by student Cody Henry was a winner in the Global Health Student Photography Contest.

Courtesy Emory University Global Health Institute

In the fall at Emory University, flyers showing a black and white photo of feet bottoms advertised a photo exhibition on campus. On the sole of one foot were the letters “BLM.” On the other was a toe tag with the name “C. Henry” and the word “Racism,” indicating cause of death.

Cody Henry, a second-year MPH student at the Rollins School for Public Health, organized the flyer composition and took the photo. He said the image represents the need to eliminate racial health disparities and view racism as a public health crisis.

Henry’s photo was one of the winning entries for the 2021 Global Health Student Photography Contest organized by Emory’s Global Health Institute. The annual competition comes with prizes for winning entries and a months-long exhibition on campus. Founded in 2008, the contest was started by former institute director Jeffrey Koplan, MD, MPH, and Bob Yellowlees, an Atlanta philanthropist who wanted to encourage the institute’s students to marry global health and the arts.

The contest was launched as “an opportunity to both document global health issues and better understand and connect with the people and communities with whom they were working,” Rebecca Braggett, director of student programs at the institute told *The Nation’s Health*.

Photos from the Global Health Institute’s international exchange student program usually offer a globe-spanning glimpse of public health. However, the COVID-19 pandemic limited international travel, so the 2021 contest had entries taken only in America.

“We believed that turning the lens on the U.S. at this time was appropriate because of our country’s ongoing struggles with COVID-19, vaccine hesitancy, health disparities impacted by racial and social justice issues and resistance to public health mitigation strategies,” she said. “It drives home the point that global health happens everywhere, including in our own backyard.”

One of the winning entries in the recent contest round was “Man Waiting for Light Rail,” taken in May 2020. It shows a high-contrast scene of a man standing alone on a Seattle train platform as a car on the opposite tracks approaches.

Alan Hai Guo, the photographer, said the man was practicing physical distancing, but wearing a mask incorrectly and touching his nose and mouth. Baggett said she identified with the photo’s composition, saying it conveyed “the struggles, loneliness and isolation we all faced during the pandemic.”

For more information, visit [https://globalhealth.emory.edu](https://globalhealth.emory.edu).

*   Copyright The Nation’s Health, American Public Health Association