Health Leadership Impact Fellowship

Makayla Dawkins, MPH, is a public health researcher and community advocate whose work bridges health equity, youth empowerment, and systems-level reform. Grounded in lived experience and academic training, her work spans sexual and reproductive health access, child welfare, anti-trafficking initiatives, and community-based violence prevention. Her graduate research examined sexual health outcomes among foster youth, highlighting the impact of stigma, cultural humility gaps, and caregiver awareness on health trajectories.

She has contributed to a range of community and federal initiatives, including Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Family and Youth Services Bureau, supporting Ryan White HIV programming through the Connecticut Public Health Department. Makayla has facilitated health literacy programming, developed sustainable menstrual equity initiatives serving thousands of students per semester, and built youth workforce and mentorship pipelines focused on allied health exposure and career readiness. Her leadership extends to national panels on foster care reform, storytelling, and culturally aligned mental health supports.

Makayla is a Connecticut native through and through. Born and raised in New Haven, Connecticut, she went on to earn her Master of Public Health (MPH) through an accelerated 4+1 program at the University of Connecticut. She also received her Bachelor of Arts in 2023 from UConn.