Ashton Body ('24) Awarded 2024 General Education Prize

The Department of Anthropology at Harvard University is glad to share that Ashton Body (’24, Social Anthropology concentrator with a secondary in Global Health and Health Policy) has been selected as one of the recipients of the 2024 General Education Prize. There were many excellent submissions, but the Prize Committee was particularly impressed by her essay describing how GENED 1063 World Health transformed how she sees policy work, problem-solving and care. We hope you will join us in congratulating Ashton on this honor. 

Based on Ashton’s work in the Cambridge Afterschool program and passion for youth development, her final project for a GenEd course she completed in Spring 2022 was a children's book titled "Bluey's Big Worries" about a fish with anxiety that she wrote and illustrated, designed to provide young people and educators with a fun, accessible, and colorful way to bring mental health and various toolkits into everyday discourse. From this project, with Professor Goldie's support, this book is turning into a multi-book series accompanied with a curriculum pack for educators, resources for young people and families, and more. For the GenEd prize, Ashton submitted a reflection essay on the experience has shaped Ashton and her aspirations as a pediatrician. Taking Professor Andi Wright's Care in Critical Times this semester, Ashton shares that she has been able to think about children's mental health and development not only through a global health lens but also an anthropological one - working to design a curricular pack centered around storytelling as a form of care. All projects mentioned above culminated from the same fundamental belief in medicine as a toolkit for social justice and a pursuit of health equity through various pathways all rooted in community voice and partnership. 

Ashton shares with us:

"Bluey's Big Worries," a children's book about mental health that I created for GenEd 1063 World Health: Challenges and Opportunities, came from caring for some very special people in the Cambridge Afterschool Program, collaboration with a dear mentor Professor Sue Goldie and the Global Health Education and Learning Incubator team, and years of support from the Anthropology department and my mentors who I am forever indebted to (like my thesis advisor Salmaan Keshavjee). These teachings--to lead with care, humility, and curiosity--shape how I approach community partnership and the pursuit of health equity, and I am so grateful to learn in such a wonderful community. I deeply believe in the power of storytelling and am excited to see where these adventures take me in medicine, advocacy, and beyond.