Malcolm Lang ’21: INITIATIVE
What is there to do for an English major who takes an internship at a health department?
Malcolm Lang ’21 didn’t know either.
“Quite honestly, the internship wasn’t my first choice,” Lang said. “I was looking more at being a writing tutor, but most of those internships were remote, and I wanted to be more engaged.”
He ended up spending the summer with the St. Joseph County Health Department doing things like distributing masks and hand sanitizer to protesters in the city of South Bend.
Lang learned about the opportunity from Global Health Initiative (GHI) Advisory Committee member Sam Milligan ’68. Pre-health advisor Jill Rogers told Lang that he didn’t have to be in the GHI, want to be a physician, or even major in biology to take the internship.
“I was nervous at first,” Lang said, “but I quickly learned there were other ways I could help.” Like drafting a resolution for the Board of Health that detailed the ways systemic racism affects healthcare.
“I feel like I’m a really versatile person who can do a lot of different things, so why not have a bunch of different things in my repertoire?”
“There is no better foundation for public health than a liberal arts education,” St. Joseph County Health Officer Dr. Robert Einterz ’77 said. “We need those individuals because there are so many other things that make up the health of a community—poverty, food access, education—that aren’t related to science. In fact, science only makes up about 20 percent of what we do.”
Lang said, “My primary focus was to build a connection and rapport between the health department and the local Black Lives Matter movement to address issues regarding healthcare inequities including EMT access, trauma-informed care, and mental health services.”
He also worked with Fetal Infant Mortality data within the Black community of St. Joseph County and learned to assess the disparities in prenatal care, healthcare access, and the health of pregnant women in general.
“This internship showed me that, regardless of who you are, you are capable of helping in different ways,” Lang said. “I think my journey as a young Black man now is to continue to do my part in fighting for change.”
He wants change on campus—for students of color to not feel that they’re always the ones who have to step outside their comfort zone. His brothers at the Malcolm X Institute of Black Studies certainly think he’s capable of leading the change; they voted him as the Outstanding Member of the Year for 2019–2020.
He wants change in Crawfordsville, where he often sees the Confederate flag flying.
He wants change throughout his country. That’s why he took the initiative during his internship to make sure that protestors in South Bend were doing so safely.
“Being a person of color, I understand the purpose and the significance of the protests. I understand the outrage. But we’re still in the middle of a pandemic,” Lang said.
“Who knows how long COVID-19 will be around, but the problems of police brutality and systemic racism have been around long enough. So while people were protesting, I wanted them to be safe. I wanted to ensure that they’ll be able to protest the next day, six months, or even a year from now.”