Biography
Hails from Pennsylvania
BS Public Health & BA Economics
Moravian College 2020
My name is Hannah Hook and I was born and raised in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. I attended Moravian College in my hometown and graduated in 2020 with a B.S. in Public Health, B.A. in Economics, and minor in Environmental Science. I’ve always been interested in diseases and health but began to focus specifically on infectious zoonotic diseases during my public health internship at a wildlife rehabilitation center where we successfully treated many cases of West Nile virus.
I had the opportunity to do fieldwork for NASA gathering primary data in Bangladesh on cholera prevention methods, including a program currently being developed that can predict future cholera outbreaks. I analyzed the data and published my findings in my senior honors thesis. In 2019, I was invited to attend the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, which drove me to explore the impact of climate change on disease prevention and mitigation.
Since graduation, I have been volunteering at Wildlands Conservancy caring for their education animal ambassadors, including Maple the opossum. I hope to continue to travel for research purposes and focus on emerging infectious zoonotic diseases in India, China, and Bangladesh. Eventually, I’d like to pursue a PhD in health policy and advise future pandemic prevention efforts. I chose the MS-IDGH program to strengthen my lab skills and expand upon my microbiology knowledge.
I enjoy spending time outside hiking, biking, camping, and playing sports, and I recently returned from a trip to Glacier National Park. When I take time to relax, I enjoy listening to and playing music and have performed with ensembles in the US and Europe. I have two dogs and two cats that I will miss greatly this year.