by Rhonda Mullen Watts In his commencement address to the 22nd public health graduating class at Emory, graduating student Aun Lor told his classmates, "As public health people, we uphold human rights and dignity. We have a common vision." He scanned the crowd of 2 16 masters and doctoral degree candidates. "We are the people who make the world a better place," he said. "We are the ambassadors of hope." Indeed, these graduates from 37 states, the District of Columbia, and 34 countries have already begun spreading this hope throughout the world. Some have taken jobs in foreign lands while others are working at home on domestic public health challenges. Some are pursuing further training--in graduate programs or in the field--to prepare them to become the next generation of leaders in public health. In this feature, you'll meet three of these ambassadors of hope, who are taking the mission they discovered at this school into the world.

"I lived for four years as a child of war. I lost five members of my family. I lived in an overcrowded camp, Khao I Dang, for more than a year.... Despite injustice, there is hope." - Aun Lor

un Lor was one of the quieter students enrolled in Stan Foster's class on international health policy. A shy young man, he listened intently but seldom participated in class discussions. Neither his professo r nor his classmates knew much about him. But then an assignment changed that, leaving an indelible mark on the teachers and students who came to know Lor's remarkable story. The assignment was a standard one for students learning about health policy around the globe: to choose a country and identify its most critical public health problems. Lor chose Cambodia, his birth land. The crucial health problem he identified was th at of land mines. During his class presentation, he shared the facts of the destructiveness of land mines. He talked about the large numbers of children who had been maimed or died. He outlined how mines had affected not only the health but also the econo my of the country. He closed his presentation with a photograph of some of his family. With his father, mother, three of his brothers, and one sister projected on the screen behind him, Lor gave the problem a poignancy rarely discovered in a classroom. He had lost half of his family in what history now calls the killing fields. Land mines, starvation, and murder had played a part. Only his mother, three other brothers, and he survived the Khmer Rouge scourge. That semester Foster watched Lor transform into an outspoken advocate for human rights. During the rest of his studies at the school, Lor continued to educate others through his own experiences. He helped develop an interdisciplinary course at the scho ol that explores human rights. He helped found an international student association that promotes health and human rights. To honor Lor's efforts, Emory University chose him as one of only six Humanitarian Award winners throughout the campus for 1996-1997 . At Commencement, Lor received the James W. Alley Award, presented to the public health student who has provided the greatest service to disadvantaged populations during the school career. Lor received the additional honor of presenting the student addre ss at graduation. As in Foster's class those two years earlier, Lor shared his story with the audience. "I lived for four years as a child of war," he said. "I lost five members of my family. I lived in an overcrowded camp, Khao I Dang, for more than a year." At one point Lor himself would have been killed by Khmer Rouge soldiers had not his mother pleaded for his life. One day when he was 5, Lor dug up wild potatoes in the forest while watching cattle, his war time job. When he came in from the fields at d ay's end, not far from the hut where he lived, two soldiers stopped him and accused him of stealing the potatoes. His mother, hearing the commotion, rushed outside to beg for her son's life. Lor's mother told the soldiers that she had already lost three o f her children. That if they were to kill Aun, they would have to kill her, too. She asked them to think of their own mothers. "These soldiers--they were only 16 or so themselves--had been dehumanized by the Khmer Rouge leaders," Lor said. "My mother appe aled to their humanity. She re-humanized them. I am reminded that in every human being there is a sense of humanity. As public health students, we must hold onto that hope." Lor uses his own story to inspire others. "I share this with you," he said at graduation, "to show that despite injustice, there is hope." Lor has channeled the war atrocities through which he has lived into a mission to improve lives around the world. He hopes to involve himself in the political arena of public health to accomplish his goal. A three-year fellowship in public health preve ntion at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will help prepare him to translate this goal into reality. One of 25 fellows chosen from more than 300 applicants, Lor will rotate through many CDC divisions, receiving on-the-job training and participating in epidemiological field investigations, health data analysis, and disease prevention and health promotion. Although Lor originally considered a career in medicine, he now plans to pursue law school at the completion of his fellowship. He believes a career in diplomacy is the best route for turning around some of public health's biggest challenges. For examp le, to approach the problem of land mines in Cambodia--a challenge of particular concern to Lor--he believes that both sides of the warring parties must be convinced to cease the use of land mines now and in the future. "We have to work this problem from the political side," Lor says. While tuberculosis and AIDS are growing problems in Cambodia, Lor believes that land mines are equally detrimental to the public health of the country. His research has confirmed that 10 million land mines now exist in Cambodia--the equivalent of one f or every person who lives there. "Land mines prevent roads from being built and lands from being farmed," Lor says. "Because of land mines, people are unable to travel to places where they can access medical care. A lot of foreign investment turns away be cause of these land mines." Lor, however, is hopeful that this public health threat has a solution. Destruction of existing stocks of mines, clearing of all mines from fields and roads, a land mine awareness program, rehabilitation of those injured by land mines, and an agreement by warring factions to cease their use of land mines are all strategies that need to be applied to the problem. "This is a problem we can solve," Lor says, "because it is a man-made problem." After receiving his master's degree, Lor returned to Cambodia for the first time since immigrating to the United States. "It was a shock for me going back to Cambodia," he says. "I didn't remember the physical environment at all. Seeing the results of war--so much poverty, shanty towns everywhere, homeless children--was a shock. I thought I was prepared, but I wasn't." During his month-long visit to Cambodia this summer, Lor investigated a position as program manager for assisting war and mine victims and homeless children for the Ministry of Health. The recent coup and fighting in the country, however, stifled those plans. In fact, Lor left the country just days before fighting broke out. If the country manages to find peace, he hopes to return. "My trip made me realize that my work is there," Lor says.

Although Lor thought he was prepared to visit his native country, he found himself shocked by the changes war has wrought. Land mines in Cambodia have not only devastated his family but also affected the entire country in m yriad ways. They will be Lor's research priority.

s a ninth-grader living in Nepal, Erin Brand volunteered to work in one of Mother Theresa's clinics for the dying. Brand's youth made no difference at the clinic, where workers tried to give some dignity to dying people. "I did what any other volunteer did," Brand says. "We cleaned, bathed, and fed the patients, simple tasks really." Her early exposure to Mother Theresa's work as well as other experiences she had while living abroad directed Brand toward a career in public health. A US citizen born in Panama, Brand spent the first 18 years of her life abroad--in Panama, India, Tuni sia, Liberia, Nepal, and Guatemala. She is a self-described "CARE kid." Her father, who has worked for more than 30 years for CARE, one of the world's largest international development and relief organizations, today serves as regional director for the or ganization in Tbilisi, Georgia. Her mother has worked as a nurse for both the Peace Corps and the US Embassy. After completing undergraduate studies in California, where her mother's family lives, Brand worked as a counselor for a family-planning clinic and as an HIV educator. During a four-month trip to Bangladesh, in which she traveled with two doctors to a remote boarding school in northwest Bangladesh, she saw large numbers of children with goiter. "That disease is so easily prevented," Brand says. "So much of public health is so simple. You just have to inform people." She returned to the states eager to pursue a master's degree in public health. Brand's decision to attend the Rollins School of Public Health depended on a fortuitous circumstance. "I didn't even know about Emory," she says, "but around the time I was applying to schools, my parents met someone overseas who had graduated from the school here. They were so impressed I decided to study here." Brand describes her years as a master's student as a "wonderful experience. I really threw myself into it," she says. She served as the 1995-1996 president of the Student Council, acting as a bridge between Dean James Curran, then new on the job, and m embers of the student body, who were settling into new spaces in the recently completed Grace Crum Rollins Public Health Building. She completed internships at the CDC and CARE as part of her thesis research. By her graduation this spring, she had earned the honor of being listed in Who's Who Among Students in American Universities and Colleges. Brand's thesis, which involved developing a web site on partnerships, ultimately led to her current position as a communication specialist at CARE. The site--found at www.linkingpartners.org--is an interactive learning tool to promote partnerships and link organizations to other networks doing similar work in public health. As communications manager, Brand remains responsibl e for promoting linkages. She is the conduit between managers in the field to the home office in Atlanta, enabling access to information and preparing manuals and documents for a lay staff. Brand also summarizes quarterly reports on food commodities. Partnerships are vital to Brand's approach to public health. At the beginning of her graduate career, a lecturer concluded a presentation with an Ethiopian proverb, "When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion." By the end of her graduate studies, B rand realized that "partnerships are like spider webs. Together they can tackle the magnitude of poverty and human development needs throughout the world."

Outside the international offices of CARE in downtown Atlanta, Erin Brand takes a break from her job as communications manager for the development and relief organization.

or the past six years, Population Services International (PSI), a nongovernmental organization based in Washington, DC, has supported an AIDS education program in its office in Bombay. The work is difficult, with program staff going each day into the city's red light district to educate a largely illiterate population that has little access to health care services. Because of the dedication of the group and the rapport that they have developed with prostitut es in the district, they have made some progress. They have taken a mobile AIDS education message to the streets and immunized children of sex workers against ordinary childhood diseases. For two months last year, Svati Shah, then a student at the Rollins School of Public Health, worked in PSI's Bombay office. "Because I was there for such a short time, I was unable to do outreach work to sex workers," Shah says. "However, I found the n iche where I was needed." Shah became a documenter of the project, beginning an evaluation study, helping write a grant proposal, and reporting on the program's activities to headquarters in Washington. Shah describes her experience in Bombay as a turning point in her career. "Suddenly, I was functioning as a public health professional," she says. "They can't teach you that in class. It is not quantifiable." Upon returning to school to complete her master's thesis, Shah built on her firsthand knowledge by conducting a literature review and an analysis of the political economy of the red light district in Bombay. She approached her study with a social marke ting strategy, in which she examined the status of women in the red light district. "The women in the red light district are basically owned by the brothel owners," she says. "Many of them cannot physically leave. The rate of abduction of young girls is h igh, especially because sex clients consider younger girls to be cleaner and less likely to be infected with HIV." Although prostitution is illegal in Bombay, an unofficial complicity between the police and the brothel owners helps the district flourish, according to Shah. To honor her scholarship, the Rollins School of Public Health presented Shah with the Eugene J. Gangarosa Award at commencement this spring. The award, whose namesake is the former director of public health at Emory and current professor emeritus in th e Department of International Health, is presented to the graduating student who has demonstrated a creative approach to solving public health problems and who shows promise for outstanding service in the international arena. This fall, Shah enrolled as a doctoral student in sociomedical sciences at Columbia University. She is studying political economy, medical anthropology, and critical theory, using those lenses to examine international public health problems. One day, S hah hopes to build on her work in India. "I would love to go back," she says. Lor's graduation words lend a fitting close to this article: "We have a common vision that we must rise above the narrow confinement of our own existence to the greater concerns of all humanity. . . . We are guided by our common vision as we pr epare our courage to face the challenges ahead."

Svati Shah's thesis on prostitution in Bombay garnered her an award at commencement and launched her into a PhD program to study sociomedical sciences.