Public Health Alum Tackles Aging with a Fresh Perspective

Anni Wang is focusing her public health education on the aging population, searching for activities that improve and prevent chronic conditions among older adults.

In 2019, Anni Wang relocated from across the world to pursue a career as a pharmacist. In the years that followed, everything changed: she switched careers, became a yoga instructor, and adopted a new mindset about healthcare.

“The pandemic made me realize how important prevention is,” she said. “I wanted to learn about the ways to prevent diseases, even chronic conditions, not just treat them after they’ve become a problem.”

Today, Wang, MPH, BS ’23, is a public health professional dedicated to improving the health of aging populations, specifically through simple movement and physical activity. She discovered this specialty as an undergraduate student at Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences (MCPHS) and will make it the focus of her Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), which she will begin this fall.

“Everyone ages and you can’t avoid it, but there could be ways to avoid some of the chronic conditions many older adults deal with,” she said. “It’s an important issue that I want to study and address.”

A healthcare career was always a given for Wang, who grew up in China, where her parents are doctors. However, the first few years of college didn’t look anything like Wang expected. Less than a year after she arrived in Boston, the pandemic began, and she found herself exploring her options.

“I became a certified yoga instructor, and the people in my classes would talk about how yoga and exercise improved their health,” she said. “Hearing their experiences was one of the many reasons I decided to change majors.”

Wang switched to public health during her third year at MCPHS and fully committed to exploring as much about her new field as she could. She helped launch an initiative to combat loneliness and isolation among older adults, now called Operation Elder Connect.

“I got to see the whole project, from beginning to end,” she said. “Dr. [Keri] Griffin involved us in every step, from the design to the pilot program, and then reporting our findings. This project confirmed that I wanted to work with the aging population.”

When she graduated from MCPHS, Wang only wanted to learn more. “I felt like I was just scratching the surface of public health. The decision to pursue my master’s was very simple.”

Wang attended Columbia University, where she felt right at home in the Master of Public Health program. “Columbia squeezes all the foundational public health courses into one semester, but it was easy for me. I was grateful because I had already learned most of it at MCPHS.”

During her master’s program, Wang pursued an internship with the New York City Health Department. She was hired as a Research & Evaluation intern, focusing on programs for older adults at a community center in the city. There, she combined all her interests for the first time.

“I ran a year-long chair yoga program for adults 65 and older,” she said. “At the last class, we handed out a health questionnaire, and most of the participants said being active made a big difference in their health. It proved to me that yoga and other exercise can be accessible and beneficial to anybody.”

Wang graduated from Columbia in May and said she isn’t finished learning. In the fall, she will return to China to pursue her PhD in Public Health at the University of Hong Kong. “My research will involve using wearable devices to see how physical activities affect chronic diseases among the aging population.”

Since her early days at MCPHS, Wang’s career has taken unexpected turns, reshaping her vision of healthcare. As she prepares to begin her doctoral studies, she said she’s focused on building upon the foundation she has established.

“The most rewarding part of this journey has been taking what I learned in school and applying it in the real world to help people.”