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Aman Chopra: Folks, welcome back to another episode of the "I AM GPH" podcast. We're very excited to have Matilda Melkonian and Issy Torney. Matilda and Issy are both health promotion assistants at the Student Health Center right now at NYU. The Student Health Center is a resource that all of you students at NYU have access to, but honestly, most don't know about it. They're afraid to learn more about it, but these two superstars are here to tell us all about it and the main project that they're working on called Text to Inspire, where a large chunk of their time is going when it comes to health promotion, the world of the Student Health Center, and how we can help all of you take advantage of this program that's over here at NYU. Issy and Matilda, welcome to the "I AM GPH" podcast.
Matilda Melkonian: Hi.
Issy Torney: Hi.
Matilda Melkonian: Thank you for having us.
Issy Torney: Yes, thanks for having us.
Aman Chopra: Let's start. I know both of you're public health students, but you have a job at the Student Health Center as in the World of Health Promotion. I'm curious to know what the Student Health Center is. If a new student coming to NYU asks you tomorrow, "What is a Student Health Center?" How would you talk about that?
Issy Torney: I mean, as you said, it's a campus resource for all matriculated students and it's got a number of departments. So you've got anything from medical and urgent care to counseling to gender affirming care, and then the Health Promotion Office, which is where Matilda and I sit and we work there.
Matilda Melkonian: Yeah, it's interesting because like, it has so many different services and students can look more into it online to understand like what their insurance really covers. So that very student by student, but what for certain it offers for all students, regardless of insurance coverage at no cost or reduced is counseling. Counseling, and then there's an urgent care center. And as Issy was saying, the Health Promotion Office, all of our services are entirely free.
Aman Chopra: So what makes students in your experience not know about this place? Or what have you noticed about students and their relationship with the Health Center?
Matilda Melkonian: I would say that a big barrier for students is just navigating the insurance situation. It can be really complicated, I think, and I feel like that can be like a little bit intimidating. But what I would say is that the information is online and you can always call the Student Health Center to understand like a little bit where you fall. But I think the students interact more with the Student Health Center than they think they do. So like for example, the Health Promotion Office, students interact with them every day. Because we have a really big Instagram presence. All the like free menstrual and safe sex supplies that you see on campus is actually from the Health Promotion Office.
Issy Torney: Yeah, I think also, like, if you're an international student, there's a lot going on when you first arrive and maybe understanding the Student Health Center and all its departments isn't your priority and that's totally fine. It definitely wasn't mine first arriving. And there's so many services at NYU as well, so it's kind of like one of those things that yeah, isn't a priority and maybe it's not your typical insurance setup, not your typical kind of what you're used to back in your home country as well. So it's a big thing to kind of try and understand. And I think even working there, we're still trying to understand it and we're still discovering new services every week.
Aman Chopra: This thing, health promotion, how would you describe health promotion? So for the people to understand?
Matilda Melkonian: Yeah, health promotion is a lot like health education, like the two can be very synonymous. The idea is basically to educate and give people like the knowledge and kind of like what we call like a toolkit of information to be able to make your full, like autonomous choices, like fully informed decision about your health behaviors. So like, regardless of where you are and what you're doing, you can always make like the best choice for yourself and your health. So, you know, like harm reduction, like obviously, students like can engage in like alcohol and stuff like that. You know, how can you do that safely and stay as safe as possible? So that's kind of like the basic idea of health promotion.
Issy Torney: Yeah, I think we both really like this idea of the toolkit and it really depends on your surroundings, what you have in that toolkit and kind of how you interact with health. And that toolkit helps you interact with the healthcare system and make informed decisions, not just about health, but about everything in your life. So it's a really important kind of, you know, powerful toolkit.
Aman Chopra: This toolkit, Student Health Center, Health Promotion. Most of your time is going into this project called Text to Inspire, which a lot of students are gonna learn about when they watch this episode. And it's probably gonna be all around NYU. So I don't want you to give a Shark Tank pitch, but what does it look like? How would you describe this Text to Inspire program to people?
Matilda Melkonian: Yeah, it's a free, confidential texting program for students. So basically, how you begin to engage with it is you text the word "INSPIRE" to a phone number and it starts to send you text messages two to three times a week that we're entirely formulated by students in past semesters. So the idea is that you are receiving a message, it's confidential. The person who wrote, it's confidential, it's all automatic, but the message inside of it has some sort of like, advice on going to NYU, living in New York City, studying. We send out song recommendations for like relaxation, meditation playlists. So the idea is basically to show students like maybe you're not interacting with people every day. Maybe you're lonely or whatever it is, but there is someone that relates to you and is like checking in on you.
Issy Torney: Yeah, and I'd like this idea of confidentiality because we collect across like previous semesters and we continue to collect it. We collect responses in person, so we have various prompt cards relating to whatever time of the year it is for students, whether it's finals, the start of the year. At the moment, we're collecting prompts for summer as well. And students fill these out, give them back to us, and then those are turned into the text messages. So it's very much by students for students and it's something that's ever changing and adapting because, you know, sometimes, we're tabling at tendon, sometimes we're tabling at GPH. We get the views of students from all over NYU and then put them into these text messages and we get lots of different kinds of song recommendations as well. So yeah.
Aman Chopra: How did this thing come to life?
Issy Torney: It came to life at the Health Promotion Office and I guess through, I guess a passion for wanting to connect people. You know, social media is so intense at the moment, so it's a way to connect people through their phones, but not on social media. So it's like a friend texting you, kinda checking in.
Matilda Melkonian: Yeah, and I think that what they saw, also, especially like in light of the pandemic, was a lot of students were reporting that they were feeling really lonely. Like there wasn't a sense of connection between students. Like, a lot of feelings of like, "Oh, I'm the only one. Like, no one relates." And so there was like this need to kind of show students like, "No, no, no, like we all do relate and we can all still like be there for each other." And like Issy said, without putting them into like another social media trend or being like, you have to follow this account. So you don't need social media, you don't need a smartphone, you just need a number. And that's enough.
Aman Chopra: What is the student experience for this? So you have described that you text, but how might this be a utility for a student on a daily basis at NYU? So say, a new student comes in, most commonly international students and students from all over the country also face loneliness. "I don't know what to do. It's hard to make friends. I'm at home, I have too much homework to do." So how might their relationship with this text to inspire thing formulate? How do you envision that as you see a student like that?
Issy Torney: Yeah, I mean, I think that there's no bandaid fix to loneliness, you know. As much as I think this program is really useful for feeling connection, there are also a number of resources, in particular, the Wellness Exchange, which is a 24/7 free service for students to call. But yeah, I think just kind of making sure that people know that there are services for students and Text to Inspire gives you that feeling that, okay, there is maybe something here for me and someone looking out for me, yeah.
Matilda Melkonian: Yeah. And I will say like a lot of the feedback that we get from students is also like actually very helpful in the moment. So you might get a text message one day that's like, "Are you overwhelmed? Like, have you stepped outside of your dorm room today? You know, like, go for a walk." And like actually like tangible solutions for like immediate feelings. Not solutions really, but like some sort of buffer to kind of be like, "Okay, let me get out of my head for a second and go for a walk." And it'll tell you, like, literally, the students will be like, "Do you have a planner? Like, open up your planner, time your day, listen to some music. Here's like a meditation link." So that at least in the moment, like there is something that students can do about it.
Aman Chopra: It seems like it's a challenge to bring people on from your side to hop onto this program and then continue, you know, hey, join us, contribute to this. It reminds me a lot of an entrepreneurial journey, if I'm being honest, that we've interviewed a few entrepreneurs on this program and it's like data collection in a way. Understanding your customer. Even though our students are not customers, they're people that, "Hey, we just want you to come to this community and use this space for yourself. You contribute others, contributed builds for everyone." So what has that journey been like for both of you at Health promotion departments?
Matilda Melkonian: Yeah, so I started on this project over a year ago now. So at the time, the challenge was we don't have the program yet telling students like, "Hey, I promise you we're gonna have the program. Can you fill out these prompt cards and give us your opinion? Or like, give us some feedback to then turn into text messages?" So what was really important for us was first, to make sure students knew like, we are not like another entity that's just like coming here. Like we are NYU, like we are students and we are the Health Promotion Office and like, we are doing this purely for you. Truthfully. Like there's no catch, there's no like ulterior motive really. So just trying to express to students like this will make you feel better. Like, you ever get a really nice text message from a friend? Like imagine getting those completely unprompted and not needing, you know, that friend to wanna initiate. And then, I mean, I guess maybe you can speak a little bit more to this, but this semester is when we really started to like hone in on, okay, now we need to get people to register and to stay registered in the program and like really enjoy it.
Issy Torney: Yeah, I mean, I joined this spring semester, so I joined it a phase where it was really like, okay, we need to, like, we have the program, we're committing to this. And how are we gonna, number one, let people know about it and two, get people to sign up? Because, you know, that's integral to the success of our program. And also as students, we want other students to know that there's this program out there. So yeah, it kinda was a bit of an entrepreneurial adventure. And it was a lot of adapting to the environments that we were in. So we had some places where we would, I mean, Matilda and I have been tabling three to four times a week for pretty much the whole semester. So it's very much like on the ground work where, you know, at different schools, at different residence halls where, you know, sometimes tabling out the front of cafeterias and you know, telling people straight away, "We're from NYU Health Promotion Office." As you said, "We're not some other entity and we're showing you that this is a free service. It's up to you, you can use it if you want to. You don't have to if you don't want to." And I think that's a really big point that we make is if you think it's useful to your life, then please sign on. And we do have a number of incentives as well that have helped. So when we table at gyms, we do protein bars, we've done a raffle for some of the residence halls, and this is just stuff that like we've come up with at the Health Promotion Office with some of our colleagues to adapt to the different environments that we're working into, which I think is a really big and a really important thing about health promotion is like really understanding the needs of the, I guess, community that you're working in and like what strategies you can do to promote whatever behavior change within that community. And yeah, it's been busy, yeah,
Aman Chopra: Sounds very busy. For those of you wondering, this episode's being shot in 2024, so you might be watching this in 2026 and health promotion must be a bigger thing, but notice how the contribution has started. You all are contributing to it. And if you're watching it in 2024, welcome to NYU and can't wait to see the health promotion stuff. We're not ending the podcast. I'm just putting that on as a segue. I wanna ask this question. What is something about the Student Health Center that since you're tabled everywhere, all across campus, it seems like Student Health Center is your life in a way outside of your degrees as well. What is something about the Student Health Center that you would want people to know more about that perhaps they don't know about, students don't know about? And what, what would you like to share with them about that?
Matilda Melkonian: I think a big one, and we've experienced this when we're at Tandon sometimes as well, is students should know that there is a Student Health Center in the Brooklyn campus as well. There's one of the Brooklyn campus and there's also one at the Washington Square campus. And so I think that's like the first step of being like, okay, you don't have to be like a Washington Square student or a Brooklyn student to access it. I think another one would be the wellness exchange is something that I truthfully didn't even really understand. When I first started at NYU, I was like, "This is so confusing to me, this whole Health Center insurance stuff." But the whole time, wellness exchange is something for students that is like more actually like counseling, like straight up counseling. But it's 24/7, it's confidential. You can text them, you can call them. And that could just get your foot in the door for the Health Center if you don't know much about it.
Issy Torney: Yeah, I think, you know, the number one thing I would say is just to engage. Like regardless of your insurance, there will be some services for you, whether it's at a low cost or reduced cost. Engage, message us on Instagram, hello_hpo and just understand what your options are because I think that, you know, health and wellness does come first. It's such a huge thing to come and study here at NYU and I think particularly for international students. You can put your health on their back burner a little bit, but I think just making that first step to understand what the Health Center is and what it can provide for you is really integral to your time here.
Aman Chopra: So you have mentioned the first step is that there's physical wellness and then mental health stuff and so many things across the board. What is a common question that students ask when you even bring up terms like insurance or Health Center? Do you get confused looks from all these students? What has that experience been like for all of you?
Matilda Melkonian: I'm gonna be honest, I'm a little bit grateful that being a part of the Health Promotion Office means we're not really on that side of the Student Health Center. Health Promotion is entirely free for students. Like the services are free, access to our information is free. It really has nothing to do with insurance. So truthfully, I'm pretty grateful that we don't have those conversations too much with students, but we do get a lot of good feedback that students are like, "Truthfully, I had no idea about the Health Promotion Office, but we really wanna engage with them. What can we do?" So we get more of that.
Issy Torney: Yeah. A lot of students we talk to have only heard of us in passing or have just heard of us for the first time. So we get to kind of be the ones to tell them about all of our initiatives but yeah, I agree. I'm kind of grateful that we don't have those experiences because all of our services are free.
Aman Chopra: Right.
Issy Torney: Health Promotion Office.
Aman Chopra: You're promoting it and essentially, making people aware that this thing exists and you have these resources available to you. You both are public health students, which I find very interesting and you're working at the Student Health Center. What is the overlap you see between what you're learning at public health and the role you're doing while working on campus?
Issy Torney: I mean, I did a public health undergrad as well. So health promotion has been something that's kind of been in theory a lot for me for a couple years. Like I remember I did an intro to health promotion class in like my first year as a 19-year-old. And one of our first assignments was to go and take a photo of health, like something that would be health promotion. And the results were pretty cool. It was people taking photos of stop signs, people were taking photos of all these everyday things that you wouldn't expect a health promotion. And I think that because it's been theorized in my head for so long, it's really cool to finally apply those kind of ideas into an actual program. And you know, we've had that entrepreneurial kinda Shark Tank part of it, but also like, it's really nice to remember that this is a program that does promote good health and wellbeing. and yeah, it's pretty special to be able to do that in practice and I don't think I would've had that opportunity without coming to somewhere like NYU that has such, you know, amazing Health Center.
Matilda Melkonian: Yeah, I would say that it's been really great to be able to put, like, I'm totally, I mean, I feel like a lot of people in public health, you're like, "Oh, public health just like fell into my lap." Like in undergrad I studied history, but I found that, like, I've been doing health education, health promoting forever. And I think that the most exciting thing for me was that in my classes, we were learning about like, how do you take into consideration? Like who you're trying to communicate with, what their circumstances are, stuff like that. And then being able to apply it really to Text to Inspire. Like Issy was saying earlier, tailoring our incentives to our audience and like what building we were in. Kind of understanding like what students want. And so for example, one of the things that we were able to apply was that students listen. Students have their headphones in all the time. I have my headphones in all the time. So something that we incorporated in the Text to Inspire program when we saw that was a playlist. So we created a playlist all with student song recommendations. So just little things like that that maybe in the moment you don't realize that you're applying what you're learning and then you look back and you're like, "Oh wow, that's pretty cool."
Aman Chopra: What have been some challenges in the Text to Inspire program for the two of you as you've been running it and bringing it to life these days?
Issy Torney: I mean, I feel like there's challenges that do come up pretty regularly with just engaging, just that simple step of getting someone to stop and talk to us because, you know, it's not necessarily the best thing to do. Sometimes, when you're like on your way to class, you're in a rush to just stop and sign up to something, it can be a little bit of a hassle. So I guess like, you know, we keep coming back to that idea of telling people that it's an NYU thing and that it's a service for them. But yeah, that's definitely a challenge. And especially as you said, when people have their headphones in, we feel awkward, stopping people, you know, when they're clearly busy. So, you know, just adapting to that and sort of working with the environment that we're in for sure.
Matilda Melkonian: Yeah, I also feel like we're all so in our phones already. So students do like a quick calculation of like, "Okay, do I wanna register for something else to be texting me? Like I already get like so many text messages from companies and stuff like that." So a challenge has really been to communicate with students like quickly and on the go, like, "Hey, this is why you should really sign up for this and it's worth like an extra ping on your phone like twice or three times a week'.
Issy Torney: That's why when you said Shark Tank pitch, it was like, oh.
Matilda Melkonian: We do this all the time.
Issy Torney: Three times a week.
Aman Chopra: How do students react to it now when you've been sharing it? They're like, "Oh wow, I didn't know that this existed." Y'all have been seeing that reaction, right?
Issy Torney: Yeah, that's the reaction. It's, "Oh my god brighten face because you're not trying to sell me something. You're actually telling me about a service." Or, it's, "Oh, I didn't know you existed," or, "Oh, I am already signed up. and I love the program already." You know?
Matilda Melkonian: Yeah, we definitely have had some students come up to us and be like, "I think I know you guys. I think I've seen your branding or like, I'm registered." And, "Oh, I got a text the other day and it came at the perfect time." We're registered and sometimes, we even will text each other and be like, "Did you just get that text? It was really, really cute." Like, I loved it, you know? So.
Matilda Melkonian: Yeah.
Aman Chopra: It seems like the students are simply need to find it and that's where your department comes in. And frankly, just like the Health Center, this is also a service that students are paying for. It's for them, it's created by them, it's already there for them. That seems to be the same story with the Health Center to begin with, right? It's already there, but do you know about it?
Issy Torney: Exactly, yeah, yeah.
Matilda Melkonian: Yeah. And I feel like the coolest thing about the Health Center is that I'm finding out like it's not just, again, like, it's important like coverage you have or whatever, but it's not just primary care. It's not just counseling. It's also like physical therapy, immunology, allergist. Like everything you need is in one building.
Issy Torney: Yeah, no, I agree. It's like endless kind of departments and you could go on forever there for sure.
Aman Chopra: Yeah, we haven't had a podcast with a student or anyone about the Health Center, but personally, me, myself as well, and many students I've spoken to have had incidents where, you know, that go to the ER or they need the Health Center and then they find out about it. So what you all are doing is very important because this is a resource that if you're at school, it's a safety. It's kind of a safety for everyone. And the fact that you find out about it in the hard times is where I wish people were aware about it beforehand.
Matilda Melkonian: Yeah. I would also say for students, like watching, don't wait until you get to that moment, you know? The Health Promotion Office is such an approachable office in the sense that like that's really what we're there for is like engaging with students. So a great first step for students to take. If they're like, "What do I do?" You can literally DM the Health Promotion Office on Instagram and like somebody's gonna reply to you, like whatever question you have, they'll direct you in like the right direction.
Issy Torney: Yeah, I think, yeah, as you said, get on the front foot if you can. It's a lot easier doing it before something happens. That was my biggest advice my mom gave to me before moving over here. She said, "Make sure that you know who your doctor is before something bad happens." Because especially as you know, international student, there's a lot of confusion, a lot of confusion with costs. Like it's just best to, you know, maybe instead of scrolling the next TikTok, go look up the Student Health Center at NYU and see what your options are and don't wait until it's too late essentially, yeah.
Aman Chopra: This is gonna be one of those episodes where we have a lot of links in the description and a lot of stuff on the screen. But I wanna ask, 'cause many people watching this might wanna ask you, what's your Instagram? How do I find you? Where's your office? Can you just give us all that information?
Issy Torney: Of course. So starting off with our office, it's within level four of the Student Health Center, which is 726 Broadway. So the Student Health center in Manhattan at the Washington Square campus. And if we're getting really specific, you turn right when you get out of the elevators.
Aman Chopra: It is a confusing place.
Issy Torney: Yeah, so I understand. And I think the best way would either be, as you said, to DM us on Instagram, hello_hpo. And we can also provide an email, I think.
Matilda Melkonian: Yeah, and also the web, like if you look up Health Promotion Office at NYU, on our website, there's like a link with all of our resources. So like we do naloxone training, bystander training, there's even just like advice on like how to take like a mindful second and like they have something called a calm corner. So they tell you how to like set up a part of your room to be like relaxing and stuff.
Issy Torney: We have a podcast as well called the "Good Sex" podcast.
Aman Chopra: Oh, okay. That's you, folks.
Issy Torney: Okay, well I mean that's not us, but that's within the Health Promotion.
Aman Chopra: Within the Health Promotion Department.
Issy Torney: So there's so many things to engage with, yeah.
Aman Chopra: So they're obviously gonna share it with us and we'll put everything in the description for all of you. Lots of information For anyone in the description over here. I mean first off, thanks for all the work you do for the NYU community. Believe it or not, it's helping a lot of people. I have learned a lot myself as well talking to you too about the Health Center. But what would you like to leave students with? It might be about Text to Inspire, it might be about the Health Center. What's next?
Matilda Melkonian: That's a good question. I would say that there are the resources at NYU or I can really, truthfully only speaking for the Health Promotion Office, even like, there are the resources to have full like agency over what you do with your life and how you do it and doing it in a safe manner. Like, the Health Promotion Office is a judgment-free zone. So I know I like alluded to it, but we do naloxone training, stuff like that. You know, we have the safer sex supplies. At the Student Health Center, there is gender affirming care. Like there are the resources at NYU and I feel like I want students to know that. Like they don't have to be afraid to be like, "Oh, I don't wanna talk about this stuff." Like, no, that's like what we're here for. And I feel like in public health in general, like, you know, we love talking about all the things that people don't wanna talk about. But like there are people at NYU that will do that with you.
Issy Torney: Yeah, and I think, you know, this is GPH students, we're in health. You know, build that toolkit up. Like engage with the HPO and sign up to Text to Inspire, look at what your options are and like what programs we have available and maybe sign up to one of them. That's kind of what I would leave.
Aman Chopra: NYU is an integrated community. Share it with your friends, share it with people at the other school as well.
Issy Torney: Exactly.
Aman Chopra: It's an NYU Public health matter and we have to share that with everyone.
Issy Torney: And our program, as I said, is by students for students so when you're engaging with it, you're also contributing which I think is really nice.
Aman Chopra: Well it seems like this is one of those episodes here the students are not overwhelmed with information but they seem more aware. Hopefully I have a better understanding. We'll put all that information in the description. Matilda and Issa it was awesome having you on this episode.
Issy Torney: Thank you.
Matilda Melkonian: Thanks for having us.