Ciyana Smith is a Master of Science in Public Health student in the Department of Health, Behavior, and Society at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She hold’s a Bachelor of Science in Biology from UMass Boston. In addition to working as a graduate assistant with Hopkins USTAR she is a research assistant for the Collaborative for Research on Women’s Nutrition Project. After graduating, Ciyana began her career at UMass as a research assistant on two maternal and child health projects. Her prior work focused on birth equity and providing evidence-based information on child development post-exposure to medications and vaccines during pregnancy and breastfeeding. As a Dorchester, Massachusetts native, Ciyana hopes to improve maternal health and birth outcomes through her training as a pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum care Doula and public health researcher. Her research interests are health literacy, sexual health education, and maternal health disparities.