I’m Kirsten Bondalapati, a 25 year old who was raised in Bloomfield Hills, one of the many Detroit suburbs. I grew up with four siblings, a kind mother and an encouraging father. I was first introduced to Detroit as a teenager, sneaking out with friends to catch live music downtown. I continue to associate Detroit with positive memories and invite those around me to make their own positive memories with the city.<\/p>\n
I went to the University of Michigan for undergrad, initially starting out as a pre-med like every body else and their mom, finally settling on a dual major in history and psychology. During my time at Michigan, I realized I wanted to help change health care using a broad, systems-level approach, rather than clinical, one-on-one interactions. I moved down to the great south to go to graduate school at Emory University, spending two years in Atlanta, GA. I finished my Master’s of Public Health (that’s an MPH, y’all), specializing in behavioral sciences, mental health and a little bit of health education. During my time down south I made lifelong friendships and learned an insane amount about the crazy complex “hows” and “whys” which contribute to peoples’ wellness and illness. Through the course of many, many, many, MANY internships, temp. jobs, and even full-time positions (when I’m lucky…recession anyone?), I have worked in social psychology research, substance abuse research, wellness promotion, student health assessments, ADHD research, complementary medicine research, health care evaluations, student professional development and healthcare claims data analysis.<\/p>\n
Today, I reside in the great city of Detroit and am currently working at Hospice of Michigan, an incredible non-profit organization that offers a variety of end-of-life health services across 56 counties in the state of Michigan.<\/p>\n
Over the course of the next year, this blog will serve multiple purposes. It will contain a reflection of my experiences in living and working in Detroit as well as a means for myself to research, learn about and discuss key public health issues within the city.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’m Kirsten Bondalapati, a 25 year old who was raised in Bloomfield Hills, one of the many Detroit suburbs. I grew up with four siblings, a kind mother and an encouraging father. I was first introduced to Detroit as a teenager, sneaking out with friends to catch live music downtown. I continue to associate Detroit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":221,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12409\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}