The Healthful H.E.A.R.T. Fellows Program
Three Fellows, Three Journeys, One Mission
Michael Boakye Yiadom
Michael Boakye Yiadom is our inaugural HEART Fellow. He holds a Master of Public Administration from Texas Tech University and is originally from Ghana. Michael spent eight years as a fire service officer in Ghana, rising through progressively senior roles that included district-level command over fire safety policy and enforcement for a population of 30,000, and support to a regional command overseeing 240,000 residents. In 2019, he was selected on merit as the sole representative of the Ghana National Fire Service for a UN exchange program in Seoul, South Korea. His work on the front lines of emergency response revealed gaps in health services, an experience shaped further by his earlier role as an HIV/AIDS peer educator in mining communities, where he represented over 17,000 residents in negotiations with a mining company over community development commitments. Michael is now charting a career in health policy and administration and will partner with our advocacy team over seven months.
Bailey Hauswurz
Bailey Hauswurz holds a Master of Arts in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago and a Bachelor of Arts in Sociocultural Anthropology from the University of Washington, and he lives in Seattle. His graduate research was a nine-month ethnographic study of Slab City, an off-grid desert community in Southern California that sustains itself without running water, electricity, or government, and it led to a sole-authored article in Economic Anthropology. He then spent over a year as a Field Interviewer on the University of Michigan's Health and Retirement Study, conducting in-home interviews with older adults under IRB oversight and a federal Certificate of Confidentiality. Bailey studied anthropology out of a conviction that has stayed with him ever since: that the people a system overlooks are often the ones who understand it best. That conviction runs through his earliest research on medical debt, and it is what drew him to Healthful Stories, whose method he shares, asking what happened rather than how someone stayed positive, and holding that a person's account, gathered with care, can stand as evidence in front of a clinician or a legislator.
Natasha Robinson
Natasha Robinson is a medical anthropologist and qualitative researcher from Maryland. Her interest in health and healthcare grew out of her own story and the experiences she witnessed growing up, which left her curious about why some people face more barriers than others in getting the care, information, and support they need. That curiosity led her to medical anthropology. Today, Natasha uses qualitative and community-based research to better understand people's lived experiences with health and healthcare. She is especially drawn to the stories that can get lost behind numbers and medical records, and to how listening closely to those experiences can help improve the way patients and communities are supported. Outside of research, Natasha loves reading, hiking, and traveling to new places. She is also a certified scuba diver and enjoys exploring the world both above and below the water.
Our Mission. Your Journey. One Purpose.
Our fellows share our H.E.A.R.T. values – Healing, Empathy, Advocacy, Research, and Trust.
You must have H.E.A.R.T.
Our impact relies on people who believe health care should reach everyone. The Healthful HEART Fellowship brings on emerging leaders in design, technology, research methods, public policy, public health, and related fields to help build toward mission. HEART stands for the values our fellows carry into the work.
Though the work is varied, our purpose is clear.
Fellows work directly on the hard issues surrounding our advocacy pillars. They gather and analyze lived-experience data, conduct literature and policy research, map the programs that affect underserved communities, and help build the relationships and coalitions that turn evidence into policy. They think through how we approach our narrative storytelling, from how we approach individuals with their consent through to how we conduct our interviews with scientific rigor so we can credibly inform our policy work. They also help us with health communication design, to ensure that our communication approaches reflect our core principles, but also the organization to which we aspire - on that endures and delivers lasting impact.
Are you ready to get started?
Become a HEART Fellow. We are growing this program. If you are an emerging design, communications, social sciences, technology, policy, public health, or advocacy professional who wants to help make sure no one goes unseen, we would love to hear from you.