Meet James Frater, MPH ’24, a health equity champion whose childhood experiences in Jamaica led to the focus of his work today. “A lot of this work has been informed by my own experience and the barriers I’ve faced,” he said.
At Harvard Chan School, he’s been able to gain a broader perspective on the systemic inequalities that can impact health. Working with David Williams-Florence Sprague Norman and Laura Smart Norman Professor of Public Health, chair of the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, and a top expert on issues of racial inequities in medicine-Frater has done research and writing on the topic of Caribbean health inequities. For his practicum, he worked with Community Solutions, a nonprofit dedicated to ending homelessness, to create a policy playbook and implementation guide to help states and cities in the U.S. with strategies to address the issue through a public health framework.