Promoting health equity

For Jocelyn Florez ’25, public health isn’t just a major — it’s a calling. Through dedication and hard work, the Lenoir-Rhyne senior has blessed everything she’s touched and is looking forward to a dynamic and fulfilling career.

As a Newton, North Carolina native and dual-enrollment student at Bandys High School, Florez had the opportunity for scholarships through LR’s Scholars program, which led her to stay close to home and attend Lenoir-Rhyne. “Home is very important to me. I have a younger brother and sister, and my mom is a single mom. I didn’t want to leave them.”

Initially, she had plans of being a nursing major, but quickly realized it wasn’t the right fit. “I said, ‘I don’t think I want to be a nurse. I can’t do the clinical part of it,’” Florez explained. “I’m very much an administrative person. I’m analytical and like organization.”

Public health offered the perfect combination of skillsets for Florez. “Nursing focuses on tertiary prevention — essentially treating you once you’re already sick. Public health, on the other hand, focuses on primary prevention, like vaccinations and healthy eating, and secondary prevention, like screenings to catch diseases early,” she said.

Florez draws this contrast with an analogy: “It’s like standing at the bottom of a river, where people are drowning. Nurses and clinical teams are pulling them out, treating them. But public health goes upstream to figure out why they’re falling in the first place.”

Leading the charge
Now in the home stretch of her academic career, Florez is making a difference in many important ways. Last year, she helped plan LR’s annual blood drive, highlighting the importance of evaluation in public health. “Evaluation is a big part of what we do,” she said. “If something isn’t effective, we figure out why. Maybe there wasn’t enough signage, or the location was inconvenient.”

This fall, she has worked on campus health initiatives including a social media safety campaign, a flu clinic, and childhood obesity prevention through the Solmaz Institute at LR. In the spring semester she plans to extend her work beyond campus with an internship exploring ways to further impact youth health.

“A lot of people interact with public health without realizing it,” she shared while stating that a great example is vaccine promotion as the field’s core mission is to promote health equity rather than just equality. “Equity means tailoring resources to meet people’s needs — whether it’s addressing social issues, environmental factors, or economic barriers,” she explained.

“It’s great that LR provides free flu shots because most college students, if you ask for $40, they’re going to say, ‘What?’” she explained. “If you don’t think something will happen to you, you won’t take steps to prevent it. But when you tell people 200,000 college students get the flu every year, they start to think, ‘Oh, maybe I should get my flu shot.’”

The road ahead

While Florez has excelled academically — enrolling in LR’s Accelerated Master’s Program for a dual MPH/MBA — she’s not rushing what comes next. “I don’t want to burn out. I might pass the classes, but I want to do well and really reap the opportunities.”

Her advice for future students? Explore. “Take different gen-ed classes, use the Career Center, and keep an open mind,” she urged. “I never thought I’d be in public health, but it turned out to be everything I’ve ever wanted.”