A conversation with health communication researcher Olivia Weng

One of the first things Olivia Weng, MSPH, PhD, did when she started her doctoral studies in public health sciences at WashU was to join iHeard, a brand-new project of the Health Communication Research Laboratory, then at the Brown School and now at WashU School of Public Health. iHeard is a community listening and response project that was launched in August 2021 to obtain real-time data on what local people were hearing and believing about COVID-19 during the height of the pandemic. Weng was intrigued by the project because she planned to study how health communication strategies can help prevent chronic disease.  

Just under five years later, Weng will graduate from WashU School of Public Health with a PhD for her research in health communication. Last month, she successfully defended her thesis on core health knowledge — essential health knowledge such as, “Early detection leads to better outcomes,” that can be easily memorized and broadly applied to multiple health topics.  

Before joining WashU, Weng earned a master’s of science in public health in human nutrition at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and worked for several years in a cancer prevention and control program at a local health department. This summer, she plans to join the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Epidemic Intelligence Service. 

Here, she speaks about why she chose public health, the importance of core health knowledge, and the people who helped her succeed in graduate school. 

— Tamara Schneider/WashU Public Health

Video and photo illustration produced by Zachary Linhares/WashU Public Health