Rebecca Arnold

Rebecca Arnold is an adjunct professor with over 20 years of experience in public health practice from the grassroots to national levels, primarily in a global context. She completed her MPH at the University of Iowa with a focus on Community and Behavioral Health as well as marketing, communication, and participatory research methods. Rebecca's work experience highlights include community health education as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Madagascar; senior program management with a multi-media entertainment-education initiative in Tanzania; and leading a USAID-funded capacity strengthening project with the government of Bangladesh while working for Johns Hopkins University Center for Communication Programs.

Within the MPH program, Rebecca teaches MPH 680 Leadership and Management. She integrates her own experience in leadership, and program design and management into her instruction, with a specific focus on managing resources (financial, technical, operational, human) into her course, focusing on how a well-managed budget is part and parcel of public health leadership. Additionally she works with students to examine different leadership styles for implementing public health programs using a person-centered perspective that encompasses voices that have historically been marginalized.

Her current practice work is at the Martin Luther King Community Center in Rock Island, IL, as the Resource Development Manager. The MLK Center has a long history of providing vital social services to under-resourced populations of color. In addition to her resource development role, she is also one of the leads on a participatory community assessment that will deliver actionable items for economic opportunity, social equity and meaningful participation among citizens living in the poorest Census tracts in Rock Island.