Quadruple Jumbo Dr. Evan Griffith, VG26, V21, VG21, VG17 Receives Tufts Presidential Award for Civic Life

Graduating students demonstrating exceptional civic leadership and community service are recognized annually by Tufts University with the Presidential Award for Civic Life. This year, 14 students from across Tufts’ schools were selected for this honor, including Dr. Evan Griffith, VG26 (Ph.D.), V21, VG21 (M.P.H.), VG17 (MCM), longtime student at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine.

In his decade at Cummings School, Griffith says, “It's so meaningful to me to be a member of such a close-knit, research community. It’s in line with my values and the way I want to do things around community engagement in my work, which is focused on community-based, bottom-up approaches. To be acknowledged for that means a lot to me. The ethos of the way I want to move in the world is really represented in that.”

The award is the university’s highest honor for civic leadership and service, conferred on graduates for their impact on local, national, or international communities and academic achievement at Tufts. Griffith will also be initiated into the Honos Civicus Society, an honor awarded to graduating Tufts students for their commitment to community service and civic engagement.

Griffith was nominated for the Presidential Award for Civic Life by Dr. Megan Rokop, assistant dean for Community Engagement and Outreach, and Dr. Hellen Amuguni, professor in the Department of Infectious Disease & Global Health and project lead of the One Health Collaborative at Cummings School. Griffith first connected with Amuguni while in veterinary school through the One Health Fellowship program in Rwanda. She has been a mentor to him ever since.

“Evan models global citizenship,” Amuguni wrote in his nomination. “He made the courageous decision to focus his career on supporting pastoralist communities who are often politically, economically, and socially marginalized. His work is grounded in long-term relationships and genuine partnership with communities. Rather than speaking for pastoralists, he works alongside them, helping surface their priorities and amplify their voices in research and policy spaces. Evan’s path illustrates a sustained commitment to civic life, ensuring that marginalized communities are empowered to influence the systems that affect them.”

Griffith began his career at Cummings School as a student in the Master of Science in Conservation Medicine (MCM) program, before entering the dual-degree D.V.M./Master of Public Health (M.P.H.) program. He completed his Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences in the Department of Infectious Disease & Global Health.

Civic engagement is central to Griffith’s One Health work around the world and his activities on campus. During his Ph.D., Griffith co-developed the Community One Health Index (COHI), an assessment tool for pastoral communities. COHI measures the current state of human, animal, and environmental health, from infectious disease burden to water quality, drawing heavily on local knowledge to guide One Health initiatives. He worked with Turkana pastoralists, the local county government, and other partners to develop and pilot COHI in northern Kenya.

“COHI is a normative tool that reflects the local values and aspirations of the community,” says Griffith. “Now that we have the method in place and built it, we can implement it.”

Griffith’s dissertation describes how NGOs, local governments, and communities can utilize COHI to support pastoral communities. He has published several research articles on his One Health initiatives in Turkana, including a recent publication in PLOS One on stakeholder perceptions of One Health, the impact of Covid-19 on food security among pastoral communities in Africa, and the delivery of Rift Valley Fever vaccines by drone in Rwanda. He presented his research at the Eighth World One Health Congress in South Africa and the AFROHUN Fourth International Conference in Kenya.

“The foundation for my work comes from Tufts,” says Griffith. “One Health is this idea that the health of people, other animals, and the environment are all intertwined and interconnected. To have expertise in those different disciplines within the university and the ability for cross-campus collaboration is really neat. Tufts is well-known and respected in northern Kenya and has a long history of pursuing this bottom-up approach that centers on the community.”

Connecting with local community members across sectors—from veterinarians to health providers to herders—is integral to his work. “The way that I do research is from a civic engagement process—it's embedded in the approach. This level of community engagement is important when you're trying to affect real change. The real world is messy and unpredictable. You can't control all the variables. I appreciate the ability to be working across these different aspects of society, building consensus, and co-creating knowledge.”

Griffith co-founded East Coast Wild, a wildlife health and education nonprofit, and serves on the board of the Pastoralist Adaptive Initiative for Resilience, a nonprofit supporting pastoralists in Kenya. He is an associate editor of CABI One Health & Pastoralism: Research, Policy and Practice and secretary of the Network for Ecohealth and One Health.

Back on campus, Griffith has held several leadership roles, including serving as chair of the Graduate Student Council. He developed and taught a selective course this spring on One Health case studies, looking at a broad array of scenarios, from addressing antimicrobial resistance in India to mpox in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, giving students the opportunity to apply practical tools like gender analysis and fuzzy cognitive mapping.

After graduation, Griffith will head back to Africa to continue his work with Amuguni, applying COHI in more pastoral regions in Kenya and Ethiopia, funded by the Tufts Springboard Research and Scholarship Program. He is also part of the Tufts Ethiopia Global Health Activity team, working to combat zoonotic diseases.

“I'm grateful for the opportunities I've been part of at Tufts and excited to keep working in those areas going forward,” says Griffith. “I feel like I'm part of a collective in One Health, working to improve people's lives.”