Welcome to my website

I'm so glad you made it! Here, you'll see all of my past and current projects such as research papers, certifications, and interests all in one, easy scroll.

About me

My name is Janel Rodriguez. My parents calls me Janjan, my brother calls me Janet, my best friends call me Nels and my East Coast friends call me Nelly. I go by so many different names, but each one is uniquely me. My MBTI is INFJ, I love bouquet making, and for the past year, I've successfully lost almost 30 pounds through activities that I love, such as pilates, pickleball, badminton, and bouldering.

I'm currently a senior Global Public Health major with a Korean minor on the Pre-Medical track at Drexel University. That was a handful to read, wasn't it? Growing up in a Filipino household, I have always been surrounded by nurses and caretakers, so the medical field has never been foreign to me. I began my interest in medicine after my little brother was born. Seeing the hustle of the hospital, the caring nurses, and the animated doctors, I found myself wanting to be on that side of the professional space. Of course, I didn't know about the amount of schooling and testing that I would have to go through to be in their shoes. But now, I can proudly say that I am working hard towards my goal of getting into medical school and have kept my dream of being a pediatrician. Furthermore, I've found that public health combines both my need for activism in the lens of healthcare and history.

PROJECTS AND

PROCESS

Here is a quick snapshot of all my projects. To learn more, click

on the links provided!

Illuminating and Addressing Structural Racism in the Healthcare Industry: Building the Field from the Ground Up

Over the summer (2024), I was tasked with conducting an overview of Jackson, Mississippi, and the Delta region in Mississippi. This multi-year, $6 million project currently has three different locations of interest: Mississippi, Oregon, and Philadelphia. My landscape analysis provides the planning and research team with an overview of Mississippi, from its state leadership to Jackson’s city council, how movements are still affecting Mississippi today, and lastly, our company’s partner Southern Echo, which is a grassroots organization working to uplift Black Communities in Mississippi. My work was presented and critiqued by the Ubuntu Center’s Director, Dr. Sharrelle Barber, a prominent Public Health advocate.

Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Anti-Racism (IDEA) Fellowship

The Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Anti-racism Dornsife Fellowship used to be for graduate public health students only. However, when looking at the application, I never read the words

GRADUATE STUDENTS ONLY

So naturally, I applied. It’s my freshman year of college, I’m new to this school, nothing can go wrong if I don't get in. I sent in my application, got an interview with the Ubuntu Center as well as other Dornsife affiliated groups, and thankfully got a position! If you look at the website now, it no longer says “Graduate Fellowship” and I think I know why. Through this fellowship, I've gained skills in research writing through literature reviews, project management, and outreach and advocacy. Learning from experts in the public health field, such as Director Sharrelle Barber and Deputy Director Jennifer Ware (and so many other amazing Ubuntu people!) has allowed me to take what I am learning in my public health courses and apply it to current research.

Childhood Lead Exposure in Philadelphia

Translational Design Research Slide Deck

For this 3-month-long journey, I first started by researching adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) but was given feedback that the ACEs were too broad of a subject. Most of my research is conducted around where I am from, Los Angeles, so this time around I wanted to learn more about the adolescent community of Philadelphia, where I now currently reside. In doing so, I emailed various Philadelphia health department officials, went to CHOP Policy Lab events to talk and ask questions about lead exposure, and set up meetings with Drexel Dornsife's faculty after finding out who has done research on lead exposure. In the end, I developed the Dandelion Model, which is a way to expose children to the harms of lead in a practical way, through school worksheets.

The Impact of Psychodrama Therapy on Adolescents Exposed to Trauma

While attending a virtual shadowing event where I was able to learn from Nesrin Aldroubi (M.D.), Dr. Aldroubi mentioned how she recently learned about psychodrama therapy and its affects on children with trauma. As someone who is interested in the field of pediatrics and specifically childhood trauma, I went right to work, researching and falling into rabbit hole after rabbit hole. That same day, I was listening to Pediatrics On Call, a podcast that discusses current research in pediatrics at this moment. In one of the episodes, the hosts were talking about how the current mental health treatments in healthcare are unsustainable. With this medical poster, I wanted to present a mental health treatment that may be sustainable for the future of healthcare.

This poster was presented at the first Local Conference of Youth held at the Academy of Natural Sciences.

Softwares Used: Canva, Milanote

Experience

Denmark: Addiction, Public Health, and Harm Reduction Study Abroad

On top of the few public health majors in this cohort, we also had majors such as nursing, criminal justice, biology, chemistry, and law. With everyone coming from such diverse fields came great conversations that bounced off one another so satisfyingly. Before this experience, I had never heard of harm reduction. Coming to a school in a major city such as Philadelphia, active drug users and areas such as Kensington (a place that I am comparing to Los Angeles’ Compton) are not hidden from the public eye. After my experience in Copenhagen, I started spreading my knowledge to all of my friends around me, teaching them how to safely administer Narcan, what Narcan is, and harm reduction as a field, and how Copenhagen is actively working with their community rather than against them. After the study abroad, I was also interviewed by a Danish journalist who came all the way from Copenhagen to meet with my professor and his students to talk about our experience in Denmark.