While an undergrad at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, Sara Malone spent every summer as a camp counselor working at a camp for children with terminal and chronic illnesses.
The camp was designed to allow sick children to have an experience outside of the health-care system that was normalizing — sleep-away camps like those that other kids would attend.
“We spent a lot of time together,” recalled Malone, now an assistant professor at WashU Public Health. “I got to hear from kids about their experiences — what it was like to be a kid with illness.”
Malone’s years as a camp counselor had a significant impact on her. She went on to become a licensed clinical social worker in pediatric hospital settings, where it became deeply important to her that all children have access to the highest quality of care. Today, she leads a research team that designs and evaluates interventions to enhance health care and improve outcomes for children admitted to the hospital, particularly in acute and emergency situations.
“I’ve become increasingly aware that at all points in our lives, someone we know — ourselves, someone we love — will be sick and will have to receive health care,” said Malone, who earned a master’s in social work and a PhD in public health sciences at the Brown School. “We want to trust that when their health care needs show up, it will go well and be of high quality. Knowing that we as researchers and practitioners can do things both big and small to improve the experience of how we deliver health care and how we work as teams, that’s what drives me.
“We don’t show up as just researchers or patients or clinicians — we all have a story, and we bring that into the work we do,” she added. “Everyone shows up to work to do their best. Sometimes we need help to do our work better. That’s true for health-care teams, too. We need to be thinking about this as a real team sport where everyone has the same goal: the best care experience possible. How can we help health-care teams and clinicians who show up every day to do better work?”
Among her roles at WashU Public Health, Malone co-leads the Health Design and Impact Lab with Maura Kepper, MPH, PhD, also an assistant professor of public health. The lab aims to incorporate design methods in health to help identify root causes of health challenges, as well as to integrate ideas into public health research and practice.
Malone is also a researcher with the school’s Center for Public Health Systems Science, which works to change systems to create healthier communities through research, evaluation, and translation.
Here, Malone discusses her work to implement evidence-based care in health systems; the School of Public Health’s opportunities for synergy; and future public health professionals.
Q: What was it about working as a camp counselor with sick children that sparked your belief that health care for children could be — and should be — better and less complicated to obtain?
“It wasn’t one moment, it was a lot of little moments: learning about kids who had difficulty obtaining health care due to transportation or other logistical issues; hearing parents talk about how hard it is to get the series of appointments they need and to line up subspecialists; hearing conversations around what the ideal treatment for a kid might be, understanding that there are different opinions, and wondering how to decide what to do: ‘Is it true that when you get medical team A, you might get one treatment, but if you get medical team B, you get another treatment, and one of those might be better?’
“I also had a lot of teens I worked with at camp who were much more willing to be open about what it felt like to be a kid who was sick or what it meant to miss school all the time for medical appointments. And bright spots, too — like, ‘Because I had this one doctor who was willing to sit down and do X, Y, and Z, I understood my disease way better.’”
Q: How does implementation science apply to your work?
“Implementation science is rooted in a simple but powerful idea: Even when we know what should be done in health care, it often doesn’t happen. Knowing the right intervention isn’t enough; patients need to receive it. That’s the heart of implementation science: bridging the gap between knowing and doing. It can help us tailor strategies to specific settings and populations, ensuring that interventions are not only known but effectively delivered.
“A key strength of this field is its deep connection to real-world practice. It’s about solving practical problems in health-care delivery. For example, in the pediatric ICU, we have strong evidence that a specific bundle of care — covering sedation, pain management, and early rehabilitation — improves outcomes for critically ill children. But not every child receives this bundle. Why? Because implementation is hard.
“That’s where my work comes in: studying the barriers, collaborating with care teams, and identifying strategies to make sure every child gets the care they need. Implementation science helps us move from evidence to action, improving health outcomes in meaningful, measurable ways.”
Q: What are the challenges in getting evidence-based interventions adopted?
“To get evidence into practice, we have to make it something people actually can do. If someone is asked to hammer a nail but doesn’t have a hammer, we need to help them figure out what tools they do have and how to make it work in their setting. Implementation science is about tailoring solutions to fit real-world contexts — matching interventions to available resources and ensuring they’re sustainable over time.
“Everyone is busy, and good intentions alone don’t lead to lasting change. If we believe an intervention truly improves patient health, we have to design it to endure the test of time and change. There’s no easy solution, but that’s the challenge and the promise of implementation science.”
Q: In what ways does WashU’s new School of Public Health provide opportunities for those interested in this field of work?
“The new School of Public Health provides an opportunity for synergy. We are building on a tradition of public health at WashU, and that is important to recognize. We wouldn’t be where we are without that. And the School of Public Health is a place where, in a time when we can’t shy away from difficult conversations, we have an opportunity to come together to ask hard questions, to think very thoughtfully about how we answer them, and to prioritize work that results in impact. There’s a really special thing about having a School of Public Health and what it can offer everyone on our campus, in this community, nationally, in this era, around what we can do to make it better.”
Q: How would you describe our students in public health?
“Everyone in public health recognizes that there are elements today that make it difficult to maintain morale in public health. But these students come here with complex questions and a deep desire to really think creatively about how to improve health. They’re really motivated to ask and answer these questions, to engage with faculty, communities, science. I love teaching. We have students who care a lot about what they do and care about doing it well. I feel like there are so many shining stars.”
Writer
Hayley Abshear is the School of Public Health’s digital content strategist and social media coordinator. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Webster University and was previously a freelance writer for national publications and a content creator at a PR firm. She brings almost a decade of experience in writing, content strategy and social media marketing to the team.