Kaylah Fleming didn’t grow up imagining Pittsburgh. In fact, she hadn’t even heard of it. She grew up in a small Texas town in a military family, seeing firsthand how race and access shaped health outcomes for her relatives.
“That wasn’t OK,” Fleming says. “I needed to do something about it. Public health was that something.”
Now a Bachelor of Science in Public Health (BSPH) student at Pitt, Fleming is turning that drive into action. She’s drawn to human genetics, not just for the science but for the impact, studying how genetic conditions affect African American communities and how research can better serve them. “I like the science,” she says, “but I always come back to the person behind the data, the person who’s suffering.”
Fleming, who is biracial, saw these disparities up close through her mother and extended family. Her focus and ambition were shaped early. Inspired by her father’s military service and disability, she initially considered medicine. High school biology teachers encouraged her to read research papers, ask tough questions and think critically. By her junior year, she was studying Huntington’s disease, a rare inherited neurodegenerative disorder, a passion she has pursued for more than three and a half years. At the same time, she earned an associate’s degree through high school, arriving at Pitt academically advanced but technically a first-year student.
Public health gave her a bigger lens. “I could never see myself as a clinical doctor now,” she says. “Public health lets me think about systems, policies and people, not just symptoms.”
At Pitt, Fleming has conducted independent research and works in the Department of Psychiatry studying childhood depression. She is already planning graduate studies that bridge genetics, public health and policy. Faculty mentor Abi Fapohunda, DrPH, MPH, MS, calls her a “confident and disciplined scholar” whose work was recognized at a national public health conference.
For Fleming, recognition is secondary to purpose. “Huntington’s is always going to be my thing,” she says. “But whatever I do, it’s about how we apply what we know to make people’s lives better.”
-Clare Collins