Finding her way to public health

By Emily Leighton

When Elizabeth Xue, BMSc’24, was seven years old, her school principal in Singapore handed her a box of thermometers and masks. There had been an outbreak of hand, foot and mouth disease at her school, and as one of the class prefects, she was tasked with helping deliver the kits to track students’ symptoms.  

“I didn’t understand what was happening at the time,” she recalled. “But looking back, that was probably my first introduction to public health.” 

In the days that followed, she watched teachers, principals and health officials come together – an entire system mobilized to keep students safe. The experience lodged somewhere deep, even if she wouldn’t recognize it until years later, when her studies began to echo those early lessons in prevention, community and care. 

True to that early lesson, Xue is graduating this month from Schulich Medicine & Dentistry with a Master of Public Health (MPH). 

Born in Singapore and raised in Markham, Ontario, Xue’s academic journey followed a steady path through the sciences toward population health. She completed a bachelor of medical sciences degree at Schulich Medicine & Dentistry, specializing in epidemiology and biostatistics. 

Captivated by the power of data and the use of evidence to shape policy and improve lives, Xue developed a passion for population health. Her undergraduate thesis analyzed the health outcomes of more than 15,000 patients, revealing how numbers could become instruments of change. 

The MPH program appealed to her because of its one-year, course-based design and team-based learning environment. 

“I learned so much from my peers,” said Xue. “It's a diverse cohort, people come to the program with a wide range of professional backgrounds, so hearing their experiences and perspectives was eye-opening.” 

Her practicum placement at BlueDot – a Toronto-based company that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to track infectious diseases – was another major turning point. Xue worked as an epidemiology analyst intern, sifting through global health data to identify epidemic risks.  

“AI helped us filter thousands of articles every day,” she explained. “Then we’d interpret the patterns and turn them into reports for clients like public health agencies or pharmaceutical companies.” 

She also shadowed other teams at the company, from software engineers to client success managers, even joining a call with NATO to discuss one of her reports.  

“Seeing how the data I analyzed made its way into real-world decision-making, it was incredible,” she said. 

Now, just weeks into her new role as a health analyst with York Region Public Health, Xue is applying those same lessons – interpreting inspection data, assessing compliance and helping guide evidence-based programs and policies for a region of more than a million residents. 

“It still feels surreal,” she said. “I’m learning every day. There’s so much more to explore.”