EP175 Lead, Literacy, and Livelihoods: Environmental Health Education with Kate Porterfield

In this episode, we speak with Kate Porterfield (MPH '22), an NYU double-graduate in Global Liberal Studies and Environmental Public Health Sciences, who has navigated a unique career from teaching fifth grade to leading international research. Kate shares powerful stories from her work with Pure Earth, including an investigation into lead poisoning in Ghana, where she details the toxic reality of the Agbogbloshie e-waste dumping ground. This experience, she explains, was the pivotal moment that drove her from desk research to pursuing a Master's of Social Work in clinical practice. She argues that Public Health and Social Work are deeply intertwined. The conversation closes on her core philosophy: that education can be used as a tool for public health by teaching the foundational skill of empathy to achieve meaningful behavioral change. This perspective ensures that every person is seen not as a statistic, but as an individual that matters. To learn more about the NYU School of Global Public Health, and how our innovative programs are training the next generation of public health leaders, visit

You can listen to EP175 Lead, Literacy, and Livelihoods: Environmental Health Education with Kate Porterfield online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

EP175 Lead, Literacy, and Livelihoods: Environmental Health Education with Kate Porterfield is an episode from I AM GPH by NYU School of Global Public Health.

This episode is 37:06 long.

This episode was published on Dec 4, 2025.

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