__

__

__

__

__

From January 2023 to June 2024, I was enrolled in a master's program in epidemiology and biostatistics. A core frustration I had with the program, and with public health education and institutions in general, was the focus on the "behavioral intervention"—essentially, "evidence-based" programs that purport to convince individuals to alter their behavior—rather than reckoning with the systemic ways in which capitalism negatively impacts population health. (Of course, as public health is a function of the capitalist state, this emphasis on individual responsibility is by design.) These poems are an assemblage of this critique of public health with the language of epidemiology and my vantage point as a chronically ill person within both the healthcare and public health systems.