A trailblazer in the field of public health, Rosario Majano is helping to expand the field with her passion for reproductive health care.
Rosario is a senior in the College of Human Ecology, majoring in Global Public Health Sciences, and minoring in Latina/o Studies. She is involved with the Science Organization of Latinos, works as a course assistant for General Chemistry, and is involved with ACT For Youth (an organization that promotes adolescent sexual health in New York) as a research assistant. Additionally, she is a McNair Scholar as well as a PRYDE Scholar through the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research.
Coming from Stockton, California, Rosario applied to Cornell as a Global and Public Health Science major in the hopes of delving into the intersection of health care and policy. During her senior year in high school, she attended an Association of American Medical Colleges Medical Career Fair in San Francisco where she learned from physicians about how their efforts may impact the health of their communities. Furthermore, they spoke about how the issues may largely be tied to social policies that directly and indirectly affect the health of their patients in their everyday lives. This was the first instance through which Rosario was introduced to the intersection of policy and health care, and since then she has focused her efforts on understanding health in a holistic manner.
Rosario has been nurturing her interest in public health throughout her years at Cornell.
After her sophomore year, Rosario participated in the Diversity Summer Internship Program at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she researched teen pregnancy in Baltimore City. Since then, she has been conducting research at Cornell in the Department of Human Development as part of the Purpose and Identity Lab. Her research is based on understanding the relationship between sense of purpose in life and risky sexual behaviors. She also assists graduate students on a project focused on crime and stereotypes to understand how and why certain crimes are attributed to particular groups.
In the future, she plans to attend graduate school to study reproductive health among adolescents in the Latinx community with the hope of destigmatizing conversations about sexual well-being in the Latinx community. She is also interested in how reproductive health research can be translated into tangible policy solutions that impact the health of underserved communities.
Throughout her time at Cornell, she has found many mentors along the way who have supported her development -- Dr. Stephen Lee in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, her faculty advisor, Dr. Anthony Burrow in Human Development Department, and Dr. Terri Powell in the Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health from Johns Hopkins, to just name a few.
Rosario states that in making a decision as to which university she should attend, Cornell stood out because it was the most financially accessible for her and her family. Additionally, she applied to the College of Human Ecology because of its interdisciplinary and practical approach in addition to all the majors offered within the college. She appreciates how the college is very academic focused but also very applied and very interdisciplinary.
When asked what advice she would give to incoming freshman, she answered by saying “Cornell isn’t always going to be your favorite place, it’s tough, but don’t be afraid to reach for the opportunities presented to you. You were chosen to attend for a reason, you deserve to be here and you deserve to take advantage of the resources and support offered by Cornell.”
