Catching Up with Jasmine A. Mack: SGHS Class of 2010 By K. Coats
If you’ve ever had the pleasure to meet South Gwinnett High School (SGHS) alumna Jasmine A. Mack, there are a couple of things you’re bound to notice. Firstly, her gorgeous face has a way of looking at you with a clarity and understanding well beyond her years. She seems to take in and evaluate everything. Secondly, this is a woman who is not satisfied with the status quo – not for herself or those around her. In fact, her major career goals center around disrupting the status quo in the best way possible. Jasmine is currently a NIH-Cambridge Scholar, biostatistician, and PhD researcher as a part of the National Institutes of Health Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program. She is using her position to help tackle a problem that is particularly acute in Georgia, but also prevalent around the county: maternal mortality. “Georgia has the highest maternal mortality rate in the United States,” Jasmine explains, “and there are stark racial/ethnic differences in the prevalence of pregnancy complications. I hope that my work will address these issues in conjunction with beneficial policies to eradicate ‘obstetric deserts.’” These ambitious goals didn’t come lightly, and Jasmine’s path through the medical field has had many twists and turns. Jasmine graduated from SGHS in 2010. As a student, she was a member of Beta Club and Advanced Chorus. She also took advantage of the Gifted Internship program. As for influential teachers, Jasmine says, “I really liked AP Calculus with Mrs. Kimberly Queen. She made learning calculus very engaging. I considered majoring in mathematics when I was in college given my grade school experience.” One of her favorite things about her community growing up are the
Gwinnett County parks. “Living in bigger cities like Boston, I really appreciate the greenspace in my hometown,” Jasmine recalls. “The amount of parks in the area in addition to having Stone Mountain Park nearby is wonderful. I find being in nature very healing.” Jasmine went on to Emory University after high school and earned a BS in Biology and Psychology/Linguistics in 2014. From there, she eventually earned two master’s degrees: a Masters of Public Health (MPH) from Boston University in 2016, focusing on Maternal and Child Health, and a MS in Biostatistics from the University of Michigan in 2021. Of course, while going above and beyond expectations, Jasmine is also going above and beyond borders. She is now splitting her time between Durham, North Carolina and Cambridge, United Kingdom as she works on her PhD focusing on Obstetrics and Gynecology and Statistical Genetics at the University of Cambridge where she expects to complete her degree in 2025. “I am completing doctoral training between the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the University of Cambridge,” she explains. “My research is at the intersection of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Statistical Genetics, with application in maternal and child health research. I currently focus on the genetic and environmental contributions to adverse pregnancy outcomes, such as pregnancy-related hypertension and gestational diabetes.” But her work also takes a turn for the personal as well. She adds, “I am also interested in statistical genetic methods related to studying ancestrally diverse populations given that, historically, genetic studies have focused solely on participants of European ancestry.” In fact, diversifying the biomedical field is one of Jasmine’s larger goals, both for herself and for others. Biomedical research wasn’t her primary goal when she graduated high school. Her original plan was to be a pediatrician. “I was on the pre-medicine track while in college,” she remembers. “In my senior year of college, my advisor told me that I should consider public health. At the time, I didn’t know what the field really entailed, but I decided to apply to MPH programs and landed at Boston University.”
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