Welcome to Monica Gagnon, SHE's Global Public Health Intern

Advocacy is key to our work since one of our goals is to restore dignity to women and girls through policy changes and community dialogue. We launched our advocacy campaign at a national level in Rwanda with our 2010 "Breaking the Silence" campaign that included a march down the streets of Kigali to gain national attention to the taboos about menstruation.


We are now beginning to scale our advocacy efforts at a global level and are always looking for fellow instigators to join us in developing innovative ways to address the barriers to access to sanitary pads. Monica Gagnon has become a fellow SHE instigator this summer as our SHE's Global Public Health Intern. Learn more about Monica in her own words:

"Hello! I’m a Master’s in Public Health candidate in health policy and management at the City University of New York’s School of Public Health. In my day job I coordinate a residency program in family medicine in East Harlem, with the goal of increasing access to quality primary care in underserved communities. My main interest in public health is overcoming barriers to access to health, which is what drew me to SHE.

As an undergraduate at Oberlin College, I majored in religion with a focus on gender, and traveled to Mali to study gender and development. SHE combines my interests in gender and social justice by finding innovative ways to address barriers to women’s health access. I am very excited to be joining the team and delving into the global policy issues that affect SHE’s work.

When not thinking about public health, I enjoy playing field hockey, doing the Sunday NY Times crossword, watching French movies and dreaming about my future goat farm!"