Student Showcase: Chenery Lowe
HBS PhD student, Chenery Lowe, discusses embracing the interdisciplinary, bolstering health equity in genetic services, and strengthening patient communication through her Jane Engelberg Memorial Fellowship project.
Chenery Lowe has long been interested in exploring intersections between the humanities and the sciences. As an undergraduate at Kenyon College, she majored in French and minored in chemistry. Looking to meld her passion for people and science into a career, Lowe decided to pursue training as a genetic counselor. In 2016, she joined the Department of Health, Behavior and Society as a student in the ScM in Genetic Counseling program.
However, Lowe’s journey with HBS didn’t end there. Determined to expand her background in social and behavioral health research, Lowe applied to HBS’s PhD program. During the final semester of her ScM program, she balanced both her master’s coursework in genetic counseling and her doctoral coursework in the social and behavioral sciences.
Now a third-year doctoral student, Lowe spoke with HBS Stories about embracing the interdisciplinary, bolstering health equity in genetic services, and strengthening patient communication through her Jane Engelberg Memorial Fellowship project.
As an undergraduate, you studied French and chemistry. What role did your multidisciplinary training have in inspiring your decision to study public health and genetic counseling?
I have always been really interested in scientific advancements, but also in how those advancements affect people.
Originally, I was interested in medicine, but I really wanted to maximize patient-facing time and realized that I may not get as much of that through a career in medicine. When I came across genetic counseling, I realized that it incorporated the things I was most interested in: talking to patients, understanding what diseases mean and how they affect people – experientially, psychologically, and socially.
I came to public health through my interest in the clinical space. The genetic counseling program showed me how important it is to take a public health population perspective to issues of genetic technology and genetic services.
What led you to pursue your ScM in Genetic Counseling with HBS?
One aspect of the ScM program that especially appealed to me was getting to be a part of two really cutting-edge institutions: NIH and Hopkins. Getting to work with patients and also work with clinicians doing research at the forefront of genetics and genomics seemed really exciting.
A lot of genetic counseling programs are in a school of medicine or a school of biomedical sciences. I was interested in integrating the clinical side with the public health side.
I was also really interested in areas of health equity and disparities and how they interact with genetic services. I felt that HBS was a place where there was expertise and commitment to that work, which was another reason for wanting to choose this program in particular.
You matriculated into the PhD program before finishing your ScM. What factors convinced you to pursue further doctoral training in the social and behavioral sciences?
Being in HBS has been really transformative. I came into the Department thinking much more narrowly about wanting to be a clinician. It was really unexpected to find out I could do that and also start to build a lot of skills in research and public health more broadly.
I’ve been really fortunate to have really great mentors who have helped me develop different parts of myself. Someone who’s been very influential has been my dissertation advisor, Dr. Debra Roter. She encouraged me to apply to the PhD program while I was a master’s student. She encouraged me to think a bit broader, not just about how having a research background can help the field of genetic counseling, but how being a genetic counselor and researcher can help research in the area of interpersonal communication and healthcare quality.
Another major influence was working with Lori Erby, the ScM program director. Through courses and conversations I had with her throughout the program, I started to realize that I wanted to be both a clinician and a researcher.
What was it like to make the transition from the ScM to the PhD program?
I applied to the PhD program during the second year of my ScM. During my last semester in the ScM program, I started to take doctoral seminar courses. I had previously completed a lot of the early classes for the doctoral program, so that definitely helped.
I overlapped between the two programs for a couple months. The semester when I was overlapping was difficult because I was taking a really high course load. I was also commuting back and forth between NIH and JHSPH.
A lot of it was familiar. I was doing a lot of clinical rotations and really focusing on engaging with individual patients in front of me. On the other hand, through doctoral seminars, I was being challenged to take a broader, more theoretical look at the field of genetic counseling.
What has surprised you most as you’ve moved from your ScM to doctoral training?
Through the PhD program, I’ve had a chance to look at theory applied broadly across different health topics. I’ve learned a lot more about the kinds of work that HBS faculty and students are involved in the Department as a whole, beyond a narrower focus on genetic counseling. The doctoral program has really broadened my understanding of different health topics. It’s also exposed me to the process of applying concepts and tools that I wouldn’t initially have considered relevant to my own area of study.
My academic advisor, Sara Benjamin-Neelon, has given me a lot of support in terms of encouraging me to think critically about what I want my role to be as a researcher. She was the one who connected me with the Lerner Center, where I had some opportunities to work on a systematic review and broaden my skillset and exposure to work in public health.
The main project I was involved with there was on an umbrella review, a review of systematic reviews on garden-based interventions for preschool-aged children, which was really outside my field of knowledge. It was interesting to learn about issues that I didn’t have much knowledge of previously and to be part of a really interdisciplinary project.
You received the Jane Engelberg Memorial Fellowship from the National Society of Genetic Counselors, which provides $90,000 in funding over two years. As part of the fellowship, recipients lead a research project to advance the field of genetic counseling. Would you share more about the award and the research project you’ve designed?
I received the fellowship based on my proposal for a communications study. In the field of genetic counseling, there’s a lot that’s abstract and scientific. On the other hand, there’s a lot that is very personal. Communications skills are critical to bridging that gap.
There really isn’t much known about genetic counseling students’ communications skills and the strategies that programs are using to teach students those communications skills.
There was an opportunity, I thought, to learn a lot more about how students communicate and evaluate some strategies that may be helpful in developing those communications skills. As there’s more that’s learned about genetic disorders and conditions, there’s more pressure to develop more effective ways of teaching psychosocial skills that genetic counselors need to effectively communicate information to their patients.
How has the pandemic impacted your research?
The pandemic has showed us how important it is to think flexibly about how to educate genetic counseling students. Even before the pandemic began, my proposal included an online data-collection method and stressed the importance of use of simulated patients in training and as an assessment method.
I think the pandemic is going to cause a permanent shift in genetic counseling practices in favor of more telehealth services. I think my proposal idea included a convergence of factors that were interesting to me and genetic counselors in general before the pandemic, and those factors came into even more focus during the pandemic.
Hopefully, I’ll do most of the data collection this year, and the second year will be focused on analysis. I’ll be primarily conducting the study myself, with a lot of support from my advisors and mentors, including my dissertation advisory committee and a fellowship advisory committee, which includes some genetic counselors and researchers from outside of Hopkins. I have also hired simulated clients or standardized patients who will be involved in collecting the data.
When you look to the future, how do you hope to bridge your different interests in your career?
I am really dedicated to both the clinical space and research. I also have an educationally focused dissertation and have become particularly interested in clinical education.
I think I can imagine a variety of different postdoc options being interesting. I think at least in the field of genetics, there will be so many new opportunities that haven’t even been invented yet, that can’t be predicted now. I hope that having this interdisciplinary background and a lot of core skills that I’ve developed, as a genetic counselor and a researcher, will help me to be more flexible as I move forward.
This interview has been edited and compressed.