Defining Success on Your Own Terms: A Population, Health, & Place Ph.D. Alum’s Path to Community Impact
Dr. Avery Everhart
Assistant Professor
Geography University of British Columbia
For Avery Everhart, the Population, Health, and Place Ph.D. program at USC Dornsife offered something both rare and formative: the freedom to define her own scholarly path and the interdisciplinary training that made it possible.
Now a tenure-track assistant professor of geography at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, Avery teaches across the full spectrum of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) education, ranging from large introductory courses to more specialized research seminars for fourth-year students.
Beyond this position, Avery’s portfolio reflects the breadth of her interdisciplinary training: She collaborates on several Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)-funded projects and serves as the principal investigator on a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council-funded grant examining transgender misinformation, data, and statistics.
Often describing herself as a medical geographer, she focuses on how space and place can shape health outcomes, access to care, and lived experience. As she notes,
“My time in PHP was crucial for helping me to develop my toolkit methodologically to pose these kinds of questions, but also for helping me to think critically about the why aspects.”
She credits her ability to bridge disciplines to PHP’s emphasis on self-directed scholarship. Rather than prescribing a narrow path, the program equips students with tools and encourages them to define success on their own terms.
“This program really rewards self-starters and people who are ambitious about doing interdisciplinary work…PHP only expects you to gain tools for success, and to define success for yourself…What we make of the program, the training across disciplines, and the time spent in conversation with peers and mentors is entirely up to us. Opportunities abound.”
When asked to reflect on her time in the PHP program, Everhart describes it as a moment that challenged her intellectually while affirming her values. She gained a technical skillset alongside a new way of thinking about and looking at health and the communities she works with. For Everhart, PHP was a program that gave her not only the freedom to chart her own path, but also the skills to do impactful, community-engaged research that builds power alongside those it serves.