Guided by her parents' example, Asha Collier, MPH, hopes to bring a caring spirit to public health and a future career in medicine

An empathetic personality and a family legacy of healthcare work led former student Asha Collier to UTHealth Houston School of Public Health in San Antonio, where she graduated with her MPH in December 2023.

Collier said both of her parents have always had careers in healthcare, and watching her parents serve and promote health in their community made an impression on her as a kid about what she wanted to do with her own career.

“Dad spent most of his time working at a state-supported living center with people with disabilities,” Collier said. “So at a young age I was exposed to different vulnerable populations as he was working with adults with intellectual disabilities.”

Collier grew up in San Antonio, and her dad is also a native Texan, but her mother grew up a little farther south. Collier’s mom, who works as a registered nurse, is Guyanese Indian, born in Guyana.

Collier said empathy stands out to her as one common element in both her parents’ legacy as healthcare providers and in her own experience working in public health.

“And that's something I've always found - public health professionals always have some sense of empathy,” she said.

While pursuing her bachelor’s degree at the University of Texas in Austin, Collier decided she wanted to contribute her own deep sense of empathy to the field of healthcare and become a medical doctor one day. But she also loved the broad and research-minded field of public health.

“In one of my undergrad classes they talked about the top ten leading causes of mortality in the U.S., and the majority were chronic diseases,” Collier said. “And I thought it was so fascinating that we have such high rates of chronic disease that are largely preventable, and I just wanted to continue learning about public health because I really like the preventative aspect of it.”

 After deciding to pursue an MPH, Collier began to work on her master’s degree while still finishing her bachelor’s at UT, which was possible thanks to the School of Public Health’s accelerated master's program.

Collier said she loved that while attending UTHealth Houston School of Public Health, she was able to move back to her hometown of San Antonio, and still be on campus and get to know the faculty and staff at the school’s San Antonio location.

“Growing up [in San Antonio], I've seen the medical center expand, and I thought it would be cool to be a part of that and study at the San Antonio regional campus,” Collier said. “And I feel like it was the best decision I could have made.”

That decision to get involved at her local campus turned out to be a huge boost to her career. Shortly after completing her bachelor’s at UT in Austin and returning to San Antonio to focus on finishing her MPH, Collier became involved with the student association and landed a research assistant position working on projects with Jack Tsai, PhD, the school’s local dean.

Collier’s cheerful willingness to serve and friendly nature meant she soon found herself as the president of the student association the last semester of her MPH program.

She was also able to be involved in research on tracking Covid-19 with Tsai and other faculty members, and presented her first research paper at the Global Health Symposium at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston last year.