Lucia Shen, MPH ’25, a Horstmann Scholar in the U.S. Health Justice Concentration and the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, will deliver the student address at the 2025 Yale School of Public Health Commencement.

Shen is currently managing editor of the Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics, and a social media content specialist for the Yale School of Public Health (YSPH) Office of Communications.

Shen will speak about the promise and potential of public health as students depart Yale and confront the significant challenges that currently exist in the field of public health.

A native of Los Altos, California, Shen helped design and create the first allcove center in the United States when she was part of a youth advisory group working with staff in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University’s School of Medicine from 2019 to 2020. The allcove model provides low to no cost mental and physical health care centers for youth ages 12-24 in California. Shen called allcove “one of my proudest accomplishments” and said the program reflects her interest in expanding accessible and culturally competent mental health care in public health.

For the past six months, Shen has been a legislative intern working with Connecticut State Representative Cristin McCarthy Vahey, D-Bridgeport/Fairfield. Shen’s responsibilities included conducting research and advocating for bills related to public health, private equity, and health care. Rep. McCarthy Vahey is Co-Chair of the Connecticut legislature’s Public Health Committee.

Previously in 2024, Shen served as a government relations intern for Trust for America’s Health in which she drafted regulatory letters and policy briefs in support of strategic public health advocacy efforts.

During her time at YSPH, Shen became a founding graduate branch executive board member and research and policy lead for the Yale Student Mental Health Association. She also served as the graduate affiliate for Berkeley College and was a student representative for the YSPH Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences.

Shen has a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychological and brain sciences from The George Washington University, where she graduated Summa Cum Laude.

The Dorothy Horstmann Scholars Program at Yale is named after Dr. Dorothy M. Horstmann, MD, (1911-2001), who was an American epidemiologist, virologist, and pediatrician whose research on the spread of poliovirus in the human bloodstream helped set the stage for the development of the polio vaccine. She was the first woman appointed as a professor at the Yale School of Medicine, and she held a joint appointment in the Yale School of Public Health. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and served as president of the Infectious Disease Society of America.