This fall 2025 semester Professor Ndola Prata has six exceptional undergraduate students from the PH181 course Poverty and Population who have communicated with their United States representatives, expressing their strong arguments for contraceptives as foreign aid for USAID, comprehensive sex education in public schools, abortion pills, community protection from hunger and climate stress, food security and women's access to reproductive care. These students are Rishabh Ganesh Balamitran, Raka Bose, Alyssa Chan, Rosalie Güitrón, Santiago Dordi, and Srisha Raj. They were mentored by 2 DrPH candidates, Graduate Student Instructor Bhavya Joshi and Frederick Edward Kintu Mubiru.
Rishabh Ganesh Balamitran is a junior at UC Berkeley majoring in political economy. As an avid student of political science and economics, he published a paper with The Real Progressives titled "Comparative Analysis of Modern Monetary Theory and Textbook Economics", arguing for a paradigm shift in how we think about economics. At the same time, his interest in public policy led him to volunteer for a year with Sunrise Silicon Valley, while his passion in his education made him valedictorian of Cambrian International Academy’s class of 2023 and earned him a spot on the Dean’s List for the College of Letters and Sciences for the Fall 2024/Spring 2025 semesters. Outside his major, Rishabh is a huge sports fan (especially football, soccer, basketball, and cricket) and hopes to pursue a minor in data science alongside his undergraduate degree.
To read Rishabh's communication, please click here.
Raka Bose is a third-year undergraduate student at UC Berkeley majoring in Neuroscience with a minor in Public Policy. She is interested in the intersection of science and policy, and is passionate about health equity across the globe. She aims to apply her scientific background to create evidence-based solutions that will improve population health and promote equitable access to care.
To read Raka's communication, please click here.
Alyssa Chan is a fourth-year student at UC Berkeley pursuing a B.A. in Molecular and Cell Biology with a Minor in Public Policy. She is deeply passionate about promoting equitable access to healthcare for all. Her specific interests lie in reproductive justice and expanding access to reproductive healthcare, including abortion, contraceptive, and menstrual services. On campus, she is involved in several public health organizations focused on health policy research. In addition, she conducts neurological and cancer research and ultimately plans to attend medical school.
To read Alyssa's communication, please click here.
Rosalie Güitrón is a fourth-year undergraduate student at University of California Berkeley studying Legal Studies, Spanish, and Political Economy. Raised in San Bernardino, California, she developed an early awareness of how environmental and economic policies shape the health and quality of life of working-class communities. These experiences led her to focus her studies on how law can address the structural roots of inequality. At UC Berkeley, Rosalie studies how law intersects environmental justice and public health. Her work focuses on how environmental and economic policies discriminately harm communities that are often unaware of the health risks they face due to limited access to information and resources. Through her work at Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment, she has supported attorneys and researchers on projects related to climate change, including methane emission reduction through orphan oil well remediation, and she fuels her passion by working to improve public access to climate and emissions data. By helping make environmental research more transparent and actionable for policymakers and the public, she works to increase awareness of environmental racism and promote accountability in policy. These experiences have strengthened her understanding of how policy translates research into tangible changes. After graduating, Rosalie plans to join the U.S. Air Force before attending law school. As a first-generation college student, she will become the first attorney in her family and use her education to advocate for environmental and economic justice in communities like her own. Outside of school, Rosalie enjoys running, cooking, and spending time with family and friends.
To read Rosalie's communication, please click here.
Santiago Dordi is a Public Health major and Demography minor at the University of California, Berkeley. His academic interests center on the use of population statistics and data analysis to understand global health trends, demographic change, and social inequality. Santiago is particularly interested in how demographic methods can inform effective public health interventions and policy design. He plans to pursue a career at the intersection of population research, health systems, and evidence-based policy.
To read Santiago's communication, please click here.
Srisha Raj is a third-year student at UC Berkeley studying Statistics, with concentrations in Demography and Public Policy. She is passionate about improving reproductive health in developing regions and writes on bioethics, human dignity, and family policy as a Young Voices Fellow in Washington, D.C.
To read Srisha's communication, please click here.