Farhiya Farah: A Career of Intention, A Life of Excellence

Farhiya Farah has spent several summer afternoons in her new office at St. Mary’s University of Minnesota, where she will teach her first course, Applied Public Health Experience Capstone.

She’s been writing syllabi, meeting colleagues, rereading books.

With her Ph.D. in Environmental Health Sciences — a public health degree that emphasizes environmental effects on human health — Farhiya has undoubtedly earned the educational qualifications.

But in this office, with its large window letting in the late-afternoon sunlight, there’s a different type of preparation taking place too.

What Farhiya has realized recently, she explains, is that “my public health life and my spiritual life are not mutually exclusive. They’re actually one.”

“And what ties it together,” she smiles as golden rays grace her shoulders, “is my intention.”

When Farhiya emigrated from Somalia to the United States nearly three decades ago, she had just finished high school. Upon arriving she enrolled in community college, and after completing a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) course, she began work in a nursing home.

“Immediately I was able to double my income. That was an eye-opening opportunity for me — the promise of education,” says Farhiya. “It encouraged me to take more classes at community college until I completed my bachelors in molecular and cellular biology.”

Degree in hand, Farhiya felt ready to establish her network and enrich the well-being of her community. That’s why she applied for a job as a health inspector with the City of Minneapolis. “I was like, this would introduce me to people from all walks of life,” she explains.

As an inspector, Farhiya played a key role in the City’s efforts to preserve a safe environment for its citizens and prevent risks to their health. She inspected food facilities, working with restaurant owners and operators to reach compliance with the City’s health code.

It wasn’t long, though, before Farhiya felt the appeal of education again. She discovered that many of her colleagues had received their Masters in Public Health (MPH), an interdisciplinary degree that centers on preventing disease, prolonging life, and promoting health.

But as Farhiya advanced from working at the local level to achieving on a global scale, she found herself yearning to return home. The constant travel was tiring, and by that time her children had reached middle school.

After all, she says, “I do public health work every day, but public health starts at home.”

This time, instead of finding a new job, Farhiya fashioned one from the ground up. For some time she had been doing projects on the side to supplement her income, but now she chose to take this small consulting business and turn it into her full-time job. “It was a huge risk,” says Farhiya, “but it paid heavily. It really did.”

Farhiya called her new firm GlobeGlow. As principal consultant, she found herself with ample opportunities that allowed her to pursue her passion — health equity.

One of Farhiya’s major accomplishments is the work that she did with restaurant owners and operators whose proficiency in English is limited. The City of Minneapolis, where she had launched her public health career as an inspector, had noticed a pattern of food code violations at restaurants where staff predominantly spoke a language other than English.

Farhiya begins to tear up as she remembers. “And the thing that inspired him is watching me work for almost a week, sitting at the computer from early morning to night, writing a federal grant.”

The letter said: “I watched you — I would wake up and you’re still working, I would go to bed and you’re still working. Eventually you receive a rejection. I’ve never been more inspired than the way that you handled that rejection considering how much effort you put into it.”

“When you’re out in the world, you don’t see a lot of people who look like you. So your parents are your role models, and in your mind they create a spectrum of what’s possible and what’s acceptable,” Farhiya says. “I’ve been very intentional about demonstrating the possibilities of our times.”

Some of the possibilities that Farhiya has pursued arose suddenly and sometimes tragically.

In 2010, her father was in a car accident that left him paraplegic. With his recovery regimen, Farhiya and her sisters searched for adult care that would also meet culturally-specific needs. Although they found no such service, they learned that Hennepin County had released a solicitation of interest (SOI) requesting consulting support to establish a care center for Somali elders.

“We put in a proposal, the proposal was accepted, and we created it to solve this problem,” says Farhiya. The care center, called All Welcoming Adult Care (AWAC) also provided an opportunity for Farhiya to partner with the Minnesota Department of Human Services in developing a statewide cultural consulting model.

“It’s something that is near and dear to me — this work and the aging community,” she says.

Through her work in the community and throughout her consulting career, Farhiya has been exposed to cultural, educational, and other barriers to health equity. With wide socioeconomic disparities, many populations in the United States do not live in healthy environmental conditions — and therefore lack equal opportunity to achieve healthy lives.

“I’ve worked in the real world and seen where the gaps are,” says Farhiya. “We haven’t developed the threshold of competence in public health to do this emerging equity work, so workforce development has been the idea to me for a long time.”

The opportunity to contribute to workforce development in the field of public health is what drew Farhiya to St. Mary’s. “It’s a school oriented around social justice,” she explains. “The health equity piece, I think, is such a great match.”