McGrath Graduate Fellowship · Cambodia 2025
A public health reflection on agriculture, migration, gender, and community wellbeing across one of Southeast Asia's most resilient nations.
Background
This immersive learning experience was part of the McGrath Graduate Fellowship Program at the University of San Francisco — an international program offered through The Change Institute that focuses on leadership, social change, and global engagement. As the only Master of Public Health student on the trip, I approached each visit with a public health lens, paying close attention to the social, economic, and environmental forces that shape people's lives and wellbeing.
From the temples of Angkor Wat to rural agricultural cooperatives, and refugee-serving schools to international development organizations, each stop offered a new window into how deeply health is shaped by the systems that surround it — not just healthcare systems, but economic systems, cultural systems, and political ones too.
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Field Reflections
Each visit shaped my understanding of how history, environment, and economic systems converge to influence the health and wellbeing of Cambodian communities.
Cultural Heritage
Watching the sun rise over Angkor Wat was one of the most striking moments of the trip — not only for its beauty, but for what it represents. Understanding a community's history and sense of identity is foundational to understanding its health. For Cambodia, that history is layered and complex, marked by both ancient greatness and profound loss.
Education & Equity
Our visit and meeting to the Jesuit Refugee Service offered a powerful reminder of how education functions as a social determinant of health. For refugee communities, access to quality schooling is a pathway to safety, stability, and long-term wellbeing.
Environment & Livelihood
The communities living around Tonlé Sap Lake gave me one of the clearest illustrations of how environment and livelihood are inseparable. This connection makes them especially vulnerable to environmental change — and it underscored how ecological health and human health are not separate concerns.
Gender & Economy
Visiting a women-led vegetable cooperative and a women-run cashew farm showed concretely how women's economic participation strengthens entire communities. These cooperatives are not just agricultural enterprises — they are public health interventions.
Migration & Development
Our meetings with IFAD and IOM brought a macro-level perspective to what we had witnessed on the ground. Migration is not just a political issue — it is a health issue, shaping access to services, social support, and stability.
Partnership & Enterprise
A visit to Mawsim, a gin distillery born from Japanese-Khmer collaboration, offered a case study in how international investment can support local enterprise — and what that means for community economic health when built with intentionality and cultural respect.
Public Health Lens
Across every visit, a consistent thread emerged: health cannot be separated from the systems that surround it. Here are the four core themes that shaped my perspective.
Housing, income, education, and migration status all shape health outcomes in tangible, visible ways — not as abstractions, but as lived realities I witnessed firsthand.
Women's economic leadership at the *vegetable agriculture cooperative* and cashew factory is not just a development story. It is a public health story — one about power, agency, and the conditions that allow communities to thrive.
Communities around Tonlé Sap make it impossible to separate ecological health from human health. The environment is not a backdrop to people's lives — it is the foundation of them.
Organizations like IFAD and IOM demonstrate how decisions made at the international level shape the everyday conditions that determine whether people can stay healthy, safe, and connected.
"Buddhists and Christians alike, in dialogue, want to recognize similarities as well as difference in their traditions. It is good that an orange is an orange and a mango is a mango. The colors, the smells, and the tastes are different, but looking deeply, we see that they are both authentic fruits. Looking more deeply, we can see the sunshine, the rain, the minerals, and the earth in both of them. Only their manifestations are different. Religious experience is, above all, human experience. If religions are authentic, they contain the same elements of stability, joy, peace, understanding and love. The similarities as well as the differences are there."
--Thich Nhat Hanh
"We don't live alone. We live with each other with nature"
--unknown
"Without ever naming it a profession, they practice ecology in its truest form, living in harmony with the natural world"
--unknown
Photography
These images were taken across Cambodia — from the quiet routines of floating villages on Tonlé Sap to the meeting rooms of international organizations in Phnom Penh. They don't capture everything, but they hold something real: the texture of the places, the faces of the people, and the landscapes that made abstract concepts like social determinants and economic development feel concrete and human.
Hover over any photo to expand it. Use the arrows or slider to move through the full collection.
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