Junior Sana Boghani is Blazing a Path to a Career in Public Health Communications
When junior Sana Boghani first came to the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, she immediately began investigating opportunities on and off campus that could benefit her long-term goals and interests. She declared her major in communication studies as an incoming freshman, but the academic and extracurricular endeavors she’s undertaken since becoming a Vol have helped develop a clearer idea of what her future career could look like.
“I always enjoyed my English and research courses in high school, so no other major resonated with me except communication studies. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with the major initially and what my niche would be in communication studies, but I ended up discovering that at the end of my freshman year and beginning of my sophomore year,” she said.
Finding a niche
In her senior year of high school, she conducted a year-long research project about social support utilization among breast cancer survivors that culminated in a 5,000-word academic paper and a 20-minute oral presentation. Once she came to UT, one of the many student activities Boghani immersed herself in during her first year at UT was penning The Wellness Formula, a column for the student-run campus newspaper, The Daily Beacon. It was when she was talking about these health-centered projects to School of Communication Studies Lecturer Megan Fields that a connection was made.
“She asked if I had considered a career in health communication, but I didn’t know what that was about or what that entailed, so she connected me with Dr. Laura Miller,” Boghani said, noting that Miller’s primary area of expertise and research interests is in health communication.
Once Boghani met with Miller, she quickly realized that health communications—specifically public health—was the niche she’d been hoping to find in her field. She made public health her minor and plans to earn a master’s degree in public health after completing her undergraduate studies.
“My ‘why’ behind choosing this area is to really focus on improving the quality of life for people and improving health equity for all individuals and communities—regardless of background, literacy and other factors—so that they are able to access optimal health in their daily activities and not just in a medical sense. I want to empower people to access health in a way that best works for them,” she explained. “Health communication is all about delivering health-related information and knowledge in a way that is accurate and culturally appropriate, and those are the areas I’m interested in developing.”
Since then, Boghani served in two different internships her sophomore year that align with her interest in health communications: first, as a communications intern for St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital’s Department of Global Pediatric Medicine, and then as an intern for the Knox County Health Department (KCHD).
The two internships were fully remote and hybrid, respectively, which allowed the busy student to work at both during the summer of 2024. Each gave her a look into different aspects of communication and grew her skill set in ways she said will help set her up for future success.
In her internship for the KCHD, Boghani got to see first-hand what it looks like to ensure a community gets vital information via health communications. She initially applied for an internship through the department and was told she didn’t get one, but she received a request later on to evaluate a variety of public-facing materials like pamphlets, fliers, and brochures and ensure those materials were accessible to a wide audience. She provided that evaluation and gave KCHD’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee her results in two presentations.
“That internship reinforced my goal in bridging the gap between health communications and public health, and I realized that goal has a lot of value in the field and there are many ways to make it a reality. By focusing on those documents for accessibility, I was taking health literacy into account, so I had to think about who my audience was and how to communicate with them,” she said. “That internship translated my goals into practice, and I could see what it may look like to make those two disciplines work together.”
At the St. Jude’s internship, Boghani did a variety of work such as editing pieces written for the Department of Global Pediatric Medicine, transcribing interviews her supervisor conducted with global partners of the hospital, and writing some blogs. While this internship did not have a public health focus, it did give her an opportunity to put into practice foundational skills that she can transfer to a variety of communication jobs.
Igniting the Volunteer spirit
The St. Jude’s internship grew out of a chance meeting when Boghani was giving a tour of the College of Communication and Information in her service role as one of its Land Ambassadors. One of the parents attending the tour asked her questions about her career interests and, when he found out she wanted to pursue health communications, he handed her his St. Jude business card and told her to reach out—which she did a couple months later.
Serving as a CCI Land Ambassador is just one of several roles that Boghani has held both on and off the UT campus. The jobs, volunteering, and extracurricular activities she’s pursued have created a very busy life for the student, but everything she does has contributed to her life positively; hence, she continues to look for those opportunities. She also serves as the UT Global Studies Club president, was a member of the UT Chamber Singers for three semesters, and has worked for the Ignite Program at UT since 2023.
The Ignite program through the Clay and Debbie Jones Center for Leadership and Service is an extended orientation that connects new Vols to a variety of experiences on campus, and it has been formative for Boghani in fostering her leadership skills and making her feel at home at UT.
“Ignite was the place where I truly found my sense of community on campus. Community is at the core of what it means to be a Tennessee Volunteer, but that realization of, ‘I really do belong in a community here on campus.’ arose from my involvement with the Ignite program,” she said. “In any experience, I always try to find that sense of community where I am surrounded by great people who uplift me and inspire me to be a better leader and person.”
While she wasn’t a participant in Ignite during her own first year, Boghani applied to and accepted a job as a team leader for the program. She had a lot of uncertainty around her success in the role, but when she was asked to come back again the next year, she realized that she’d made an impact.
“My experience in the second year was much better in terms of knowing how to more effectively facilitate the program for students. And I was more comfortable and confident with being myself and bringing my own story forward,” she said.
Boghani moved up from being a team leader to her current position as the Ignite student director of experience, where she is getting hands-on experience in planning sessions and working behind-the-scenes of the program.
Research-minded
As research was one of the draws of declaring the communication studies major, it’s no surprise that Boghani has excelled in this area of her studies. She is in the Communication Studies Honors Program, which requires her to take three graduate-level courses. These courses tend to be more research-heavy than undergraduate classes and have reinforced her passion for academic scholarship. .
“I found those courses very valuable as someone who loves to conduct research, analyze existing scholarly work, and improve my skills as a writer,” she said.
One of Boghani’s research papers she wrote for a graduate-level organizational communication class with School of Communication Studies Associate Professor Emily Paskewitz was so well-done that Paskewitz admonished her to submit it to the Southern States Communication Association Conference. The paper, which is about Boghani’s experience working with the Ignite program and the leadership skills she’s gained from it, was accepted and Boghani will present it at the conference this April.
In addition to her communication studies work, Boghani also conducted research for her minor in public health with Department of Public Health Assistant Professor Phoebe Tran in her first and second year at UT. She worked on two projects focused on state-wide access to outpatient stroke and cardiac rehabilitation, respectively, both of which she presented at UT Discovery Day and the Exhibition of Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement (EURēCA).
Her dedication to academics will result in an early graduation date in December 2025, which means Boghani will have some time to catch her breath in between her undergraduate and graduate studies. She’s appreciated her UT experience so much in both her major and minor areas of study that the Master of Public Health from the UT Department of Education, Health, and Public Sciences is at the top of her list of programs to apply to for her graduate degree.
“I fell in love with UT my first semester and I’m really fortunate to be here,” she said. “I think the fact that UT is such a huge school has a lot of advantages; there really is something for everyone in terms of student organizations, majors, and other programs that immerse you into the Knoxville community.”
Junior Sana Boghani is Blazing a Path to a Career in Public Health Communications written by Hillary Tune and originally published on the College of Communication & Information site.