Star of the Month
Tanner Grudda
Bloomberg School of Public Health
Congratulations to our Star of the Month for May 2025, Tanner Grudda from the Bloomberg School of Public Health!
Tanner has been actively serving our community for the past two years volunteering with our amazing partners at Healthcare for the Homeless to support their Safe Syringe Program. Read our interview with Tanner below to learn more about his experience!
Tell us about yourself! What brought you to the Bloomberg School of Public Health, and what made you want to get involved with the organizations you work with?
I grew up in Côte d'Ivoire and Senegal before coming to the States for undergrad. My first research experience was studying Canada goose phylogeography. I wasn’t particularly interested in ecology or genetics, but found that I loved doing research. After graduation, I started working as a processing technician for Johns Hopkins Genomics, generating data for other investigators linking genetic differences to disease. I wanted to more directly have an impact, so I soon sought a position studying one of “big four” infections: hepatitis, HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis. I worked with Dr. Chloe Thio studying hepatitis B virus for several years before realizing I would hit a ceiling in my career without being qualified as an independent investigator. I applied to BSPH, knowing their deep history of disease research saving lives globally. At BSPH, there is this intense focus on identifying and fixing global problems that hold people back (e.g. how much more could people flourish if life expectancies were equal between countries?).
As public health professionals, we’re called to prevent the possible, cure the unpreventable, treat the incurable, and comfort the untreatable. In the research arena, this takes years, often decades. Hepatitis B virus is a bloodborne pathogen, so we frequently rely on samples from people who inject drugs including people from Baltimore. Though I’m working on a cure for people with lifelong hepatitis B infection, I wanted to see how I can contribute to efforts preventing the initial infection. Through SOURCE, I was put in touch with the exceptional Molly Greenberg at Health Care for the Homeless (HCH).
Can you share a little bit about the service work you are doing?
At HCH, I volunteer with the Safe Syringe Program. For people who inject drugs, safe injection practices are the best way to prevent infectious disease spread. Hepatitis B and C in used needles can remain infectious for a week, vastly increasing the risk of exposure when supplies are reused. People infected with hepatitis B virus have it for life, so not having safe injection materials even just one time can have long lasting ramifications. It is similar for hepatitis C virus and HIV, also bloodborne pathogens. At the Safe Syringe Program, we make injection kits with new needles and syringes, sterile water, injections site sterilizing wipes, antibiotic cream, and several other components to minimize the risk of infection. People who inject drugs will use regardless of access to clean supplies, so not providing clean injection materials makes it highly likely they will acquire a deadly infection eventually.
The power of consistency at community scale is far more than what we learn in the classroom. You can pipette until your thumb falls off and strive for Nobel prize for your dedication, but that is something that takes a lifetime assuming you don’t burn out first. Showing up every day, week, or month to help people in your community is something you can do right now.
How does your community service work complement what you’re learning in the classroom at the School of Public Health?
Working with HCH to prevent viral infections of people in Baltimore dovetails perfectly with my work to cure one of those resulting infections. Preventing possible infections in Baltimore parallels early work to identify unclean water as a large contributor to global infection rates and vaccine design to prevent a multitude of deadly infections. The interplay between learning the history of infectious disease prevention, labwork to cure ongoing infections, and community work to prevent infections is both an intellectual and humanitarian reward.
What is the most important experience you’ve had or most critical thing you’ve learned so far through working with our community?
The power of consistency at community scale is far more than what we learn in the classroom. You can pipette until your thumb falls off and strive for Nobel prize for your dedication, but that is something that takes a lifetime assuming you don’t burn out first. Showing up every day, week, or month to help people in your community is something you can do right now. That immediate impact, yes, can be rewarding to you, but more importantly, it is rewarding to the people of Baltimore and the city itself. Baltimore is at the beginning of a renaissance period and ensuring the health of our people is something we must be doing consistently, at community scale, or we will certainly abandon entire groups within our city.