Jen Farnsworth is a Senior Violence Prevention Specialist at LAWS Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Services. She recently graduated with a Master in Public Health (MPH) from the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University (GW), with an emphasis in maternal and child health (MCH) at GW’s Center of Excellence in MCH. She is experienced in planning, implementation, dissemination, and evaluation of evidence-based programs that put the community first. As a Violence Prevention Specialist, Jen is responsible for implementing primary and secondary prevention initiatives and activities to reduce domestic and sexual violence across Loudoun County, Virginia. As a co-creator of initiatives with community members, she is eager to tackle relationship issues. Jen manages programs focused on: healthy relationship development among peers or between youth and older role models, setting healthy boundaries and developing skills to engage in healthy communication within relationships, addressing cultural norms, identifying and responding to controlling or abusive behaviors, positive self-concept, and positive community involvement.
My journey into public health seems a little curvy in retrospect. I didn’t know the field existed until I landed there as an undergraduate trying to scrape together something health-related after realizing pediatric nursing was not for me. When I think about the trajectory of finding my dream job as a violence prevention specialist, it was less about the academics and more about my lived experiences in my professional and personal life. During the COVID-19 pandemic, I was finishing up my undergraduate degree in public health. I was also working as a frontline community health worker, where I witnessed firsthand the profound impact resilient matriarchs had on their families’ health. This was the first time I was also exposed to violence prevention and intervention work, as part of my time was spent at a domestic violence shelter. It was in this setting, when helping others flee violence, that I recognized unhealthy patterns in my own relationships, too. Becoming an advocate for myself ignited my desire to advocate for all women and families and pursue my master’s degree. I knew I wanted to attend a program that centered these populations; ultimately, I landed in Washington, D.C. at the George Washington University’s Center of Excellence in MCH.
As I carved my way in a new and exciting field, I loved learning just how comprehensive and broad an MCH degree is. It is fitting that the first MCH Leadership Competency is “MCH Knowledge Base/Context.” One of my professors often told students, “Everything is MCH!” and it was true. Almost every public health issue uniquely (and unfortunately, often negatively) impacts women and girls. I was grateful to tailor my MCH experience to a field that increasingly drew my attention: violence prevention. I began taking more courses that shifted my focus: Women’s Health, Researching Violence Against Women and Girls, and Global Feminisms, to name a few. I became a research assistant to the Girl Rising program, which promotes education for boys and girls all over the world. In my second semester of grad school, I traveled to Mexico City with the Girl Rising team to help train facilitators for several middle schools in Mexico in the curriculum. My team and I also facilitated online training for our partners in Ghana, who replicated the curriculum for the youth in their country. This cemented my belief that the colossal task of dismantling sexism across the world can and must start early!
During my time as a graduate student at GW, I was lucky to find amazing mentors in internship preceptors, faculty, and fellow students. Each taught me that MCH is all about the life-course—from babies to the elderly— which helps ground me in every issue that I encounter. Having a preventative mindset resonates with me: ensure babies are healthy at the onset of life to prevent problems later in life. I learned to search for the underlying causes of unhealthy behaviors and disease (to my fellow MPH students: how many times have we heard about going up that stream? Or the social determinants of health?). While I’ve said that my MCH degree was a crash course in ‘dismantling the patriarchy,’ in reality, it gave me the skills needed to recognize and analyze components that contribute to unhealthy outcomes.
I integrate the MCH knowledge of the life-course perspective, root causes of social norms, and prevention into my daily work. As a member of the prevention and outreach team at the county’s designated sexual assault service provider, I educate and engage communities every day on how to foster healthy relationships at every level: between friends, parents and kids, staff and customers, dating partners, spouses, family members, teachers and students, and more. I love my job because I get to work with community leaders of all ages and from every background imaginable, with the common goal to prevent violence and have more fulfilling relationships. My MCH knowledge base (reflected in MCH Leadership Competency 1) about infants, children, adolescents, young adults, women, men, mothers, and fathers enables me to be a trusted partner in the community. My training as an MCH practitioner ensures that I intentionally partner with populations that were historically marginalized from this violence prevention work. I will be forever grateful that my first job post-MPH directly impacts MCH populations—both now and, hopefully, for generations to come.
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