Mia Blitstein, GED’02

“As an educator, I never could have imagined a health crisis impacting all our students' lives the way the pandemic has,” says Mia Blitstein, GED’02, who earned her M.S.Ed. at Penn GSE in elementary education and is now program manager at @healthynewsworks, a health journalism program for K-8 students in the Philadelphia area. “In 2021, we were able to connect our students to accomplished health experts and community leaders, and provide them with meaningful and rich learning opportunities to act as health reporters for their communities. My role as program manager of Healthy NewsWorks is focused on connecting students from underserved schools with a diverse range of health care experts and important leaders, and giving them the literacy tools to ensure they will feel confident while speaking up. We want them to feel confident asking questions, and we want them to see possibility for themselves in those they interview. We also connect our students to people who can answer their questions about race, racism, and health disparities. Last year, among many interesting people, our students interviewed prolific children's book author Lesa Cline-Ransome; Perla Lara, editor in chief of Impacto! Newspaper; Kenneth Frazier, then-CEO of Merck & Co; Penn GSE professor and psychologist Dr. Howard Stevenson; and NFL football player Malcolm Jenkins. Looking ahead to 2022, I hope we will continue to grow and expand our program, thus widening our impact to more students, schools, and the communities they serve. As health has risen to the forefront of absolutely everyone's minds, the topics our reporters are researching are more relevant than ever. In Fall 2022, we look forward to unveiling our new topics, which all connect to climate change and its impact on human health. I want to empower our students to take charge of finding trustworthy sources, sharing facts, and ultimately, coming up with creative solutions to today's problems.”