Leading with a Passion for Policy: Q&A with 40 Under 40 Honoree Sadiya Muqueeth

Sadiya Muqueeth, DrPH, MPH, knows that efforts to improve health outcomes are only as effective as the policies driving them. As the chief health policy officer for the Baltimore City Health Department, the 40 Under 40 in Public Health honoree strives to ensure that health is always at the forefront of decisions affecting Baltimore’s residents. She also brings this perspective to her faculty position at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she is an alum.

de Beaumont caught up with Muqueeth to hear about her work advancing health and well-being in Baltimore and the many facets of public health that make her tick.  

What was the spark that made you want to pursue public health?

I went to undergrad here in Baltimore, at Hopkins. I was exploring one major one week, another major another week, just floating a bit trying to decide what I wanted to do. There were something about public health that really spoke to me. I was taking a class on virology, and the professor had created it in such a way that you studied the context around the particular virus or bacteria. It was this aha moment in that so much of it wasn’t just the science. It’s a people problem. Our control of disease is a people problem. How do we navigate racism in our society? How do we navigate politics in our society, and who gets services to be able to address these problems?  

What do you like most about your job?

I have the opportunity to serve people who serve people. Policy is a way to decrease barriers for public health professionals to do their job. Policy is a way to increase facilitators for public health professionals to do their jobs. The policy team gets to work with our program staff to make their work more even more effective. We get to touch so many different topic areas.

I’ve worked in foodborne outbreaks, chronic disease health education, sexual and reproductive health among Latino youth, global health system strengthening — everybody’s like, ‘Sadiya, what is the path you’re taking?’ But this policy work gets to hit on all of those areas. 

Which aspects of public health are you especially passionate about?

One is health system strengthening. We have focused so much as a society on strengthening a system of health care, and we really need to amplify the voice of public health and ensure that we have stronger public health systems to deliver on prevention. One of the key factors around that is how we build our capacity to do Health in All Policies work and public health awareness building overall. 

What has been your most rewarding experience working in public health?

There are a number of different experiences that have made me very happy to work in public health. Peace Corps was an amazing grassroots experience, and working at CDC on policy on strengthening global public health systems was a phenomenal experience in my Public Health Prevention Service fellowship. Working at the local health department was this beautiful link to implementation and big-picture thinking. I grew up in Baltimore County, and working for Baltimore City, I get to serve a space that I have grown up in and around, so that’s really rewarding as well. 

What insights or lessons have you taken from your experience in the pandemic?

I was working at the Trust for Public Land, partnering with CityHealth and working on their greenspace strategies. It was fascinating, because parks were the only place people could really go safely. During lockdown, the outdoors mattered so much, and it just reinforced how public health spans everything. It’s both a pro and a con in that you can say, ‘this is public health’ about everything, and then you’re boiling the ocean. Or you can say, ‘this is my scope of essential public health functions, and we need to level up across the board around these … [so that] we can help inform how other people are thinking about public health.’ 

What makes you take pride in your organization?

Having a premier policy office within a local health department, where we are proactive rather than reactive, where we are advancing bold thinking around public health policy, engaging with our health care and our nonprofit partners and other sectors advancing Health in All Policies.  

Are you a public health nerd outside of work? Do you have a favorite public health book or podcast? What about hobbies?

The book has to be The Barbary Plague: The Black Death in Victorian San Francisco. I think the Health Affairs blog is fun. The Maintenance Phase podcast is amazing.  

All my family is in the Maryland and the Virginia region, so I spend lots of time with family. Having gone to Hopkins, a lot of my undergrad friends and my high school friends are still here, so I have a very strong community of people around me in Baltimore. I sit on the board of the Muslim Youth Camp of California. I used to be a camp counselor. Imagine public health energy times 10, and that’s like my camp counselor version.  

I am a serial hobbyist, so I will take up tennis lessons for a while. Then I’ll take up horseback riding for a while and try something new. I tried sewing classes. I love the process of learning. And spending time with my cat, Pasha.