Kendra Hanlon '12

Anthropology Major | Human Services
Kendra Hanlon

In the first chapter of her career, Kendra Hanlon worked for the benefit of individuals experiencing homelessness in Massachusetts, first in outreach and communications, then in fundraising and development. “It turns out that homelessness is an umbrella term for the failure of multiple social safety nets,” says Kendra. After five years she decided that she wanted to shift into in systems development and implementation to address such problems.

Now a student in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Kendra loves how each of her classes is targeted at a different aspect of public health, and she can see the overlap and multidimensionality of issues, for example, between health policy and social and behavioral sciences. For her summer internship, she is working with the Connecticut Association for Human Services, a statewide nonprofit agency working to reduce poverty and promote equity for children and families through policies and programs, and the State of Connecticut’s Office of Early Childhood. There, she is evaluating the Care 4 Kids program which subsidizes child care for low-income families. Over 16,000 children in Connecticut are currently in the program, receiving care either from licensed facilities or approved relatives. Delving into all the regulations and eligibility requirements between funding streams, Kendra’s goal is to identify barriers that parents face when enrolling their children.

In addition to her studies, Kendra works as a research assistant in Assistant Professor Danya Keene’s lab which focuses on housing and health inequalities.