Boston Congress of Public Health Gala: Honoring Our 5th Anniversary and Award Recipients

Speaking Truth to Public Health

May 21, 2026 · Kendall Square, Cambridge · #BCPH5
Boston Congress of Public Health Gala animated banner
Gala Slideshow
Speaking Truth
to Public Health
View
The 2026 BCPH Presentation Slideshow
galaslideshow.netlify.app
5th Anniversary
Five Years of
Democratizing
Public Health
View
The BCPH Retrospective 2021–2026
bcphgala26.netlify.app
The BCPH Gala, Celebrating Public Health Leadership.
BCPH leadership at the gala: Attrayee Chakraborty, Dr. Kamilah Woodson, Dr. Circe Gray Le Compte, and Dr. Candice D. Carpenter.
BCPH leadership at the gala: Attrayee Chakraborty (Board Chair), Dr. Kamilah Woodson (Board Member), Dr. Circe Gray Le Compte (Co-CEO), and Dr. Candice D. Carpenter (Co-CEO).

Hosted at Ketryx in Cambridge, it was an inspiring evening celebrating the incredible achievements of leaders advancing public health and innovation.

There is a particular hum a room makes when it fills with people who have been doing the work, quietly, for years, and find themselves in the same place at the same time. That was the sound of our gala. Five years into the Boston Congress of Public Health, the evening felt less like a program and more like a gathering of kin: clinicians, scholars, community health workers, students, mentors, families, and friends, all here in Kendall Square to mark what public health can look like when it is led with imagination.

Attrayee Chakraborty (MSc, MS, CQSP), Chair of the BCPH Board of Directors, opened the night.

Our Co-CEOs followed. Dr. Candice D. Carpenter (MD, MBA, MPH, EdM), founder of BCPH and Co-Editor-in-Chief of BCPHR, spoke on where the organization is headed: a deeper bench, a broader Catalyst class, a steadier hand on health equity. Dr. Circe Gray Le Compte (ScD, MS), Chief Technology Officer and head of BCPH Studio, followed with the tools and ideas now shaping the next chapter.

Attrayee Chakraborty, Board Chair of BCPH, opening the evening from the podium.
Attrayee Chakraborty at the podium, opening the evening.

Dr. Le Compte took a moment to trace the arc of how we got here, from the organization’s origins as the Harvard Public Health Review at Harvard University in 2014, through the years of building, naming, and re-naming, to the BCPH that filled this room five years on. It is the kind of history that is easy to forget when you are inside it; remembering it out loud, in front of the people who carried it, made the anniversary feel earned.

BCPH today encompasses, five years and counting:

Dr. Circe Gray Le Compte and Dr. Candice D. Carpenter, Co-CEOs of BCPH, at the podium.
Dr. Circe Gray Le Compte and Dr. Candice D. Carpenter, Co-CEOs of the Boston Congress of Public Health, at the podium.

The Keynote

Dr. Olabiyi Olaniran headshot
Dr. Olabiyi Olaniran
MD, MPH · Clinical Research Fellow, PASSIO Laboratory
Director of Clinical Development, CardioVis · BIDMC / Harvard Medical School · 40 Under 40, 2026

Dr. Olabiyi Olaniran (MD, MPH), Clinical Research Fellow at the PASSIO Laboratory, Director of Clinical Development at CardioVis, on faculty at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, and a 2026 BCPH 40 Under 40 Public Health Catalyst, delivered the keynote: Beyond Systems: The People Public Health Needs Now.

He began in the streets of Agege, in Lagos, Nigeria, where he was raised, and spoke about losing his mother to breast cancer at the age of three, after care was delayed. He traced the line from that loss through years of medical training and global health work in India, Chile, Uganda, and the United States, and named what he believes the world most urgently needs: not better systems alone, but people of integrity, clarity, and courage, “men and women who will not be bought or sold.”

He spoke about the erosion of trust in institutions, the destabilizing force of health misinformation as we move into an era driven by artificial intelligence, and the structural inequities that determine who gets care and who is left behind. And he closed on partnership, on community, on the people who poured into him as a child and on his obligation, and ours, to pour that same investment back into the next generation.

“The greatest want of the world is the want of men, men who will not be bought or sold; men who in their inmost souls are true and honest; men who do not fear to call wrong by its right name.” Ellen G. White, quoted in Dr. Olaniran’s keynote

Dr. Olabiyi Olaniran in a black tuxedo with bowtie, standing in front of the Boston Congress of Public Health backdrop.
Dr. Olabiyi Olaniran in front of the BCPH step-and-repeat before the keynote.
Dr. Olabiyi Olaniran in a black tuxedo with bowtie, delivering the keynote at the lectern.
Dr. Olabiyi Olaniran delivering the keynote at the lectern.

In a note shared afterward, Dr. Olaniran reflected on the evening:

“Standing among leaders and changemakers from across continents, I was reminded that when the right platform exists, distance is no longer a barrier, only a possibility … I left the evening not only grateful but deeply committed to engage more intentionally, to collaborate more openly, and to remain grounded in the values that brought us all into this space.” Dr. Olabiyi Hezekiah Olaniran

Featured Speakers

The featured speakers carried the evening into the texture of the work itself.

Dr. Juliet Siena Lumati
Dr. Juliet Siena Lumati
MD, MPH, FACS, FSSO · Surgical Oncologist, Northwestern University · 40 Under 40, 2026
Dr. Kadambari Rawal
Dr. Kadambari Rawal
BDS, MSD, FASGD, FICD, FACD · Clinical Associate Professor, BU Goldman School of Dental Medicine · 40 Under 40, 2022

Dr. Juliet Siena Lumati joined us in person with a reflection on cancer care across geographies, including her work as Principal Investigator of the COST-FIN Trial, the first randomized controlled trial of financial navigation for cancer patients in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Dr. Kadambari Rawal, “Dr. Kady” to her patients, sixteen years into a career rooted in geriatric dental medicine, spoke about the public health gap she sees every day: poor access to dental care for older adults, and how that gap affects the quality of life of vulnerable older adults at the end of life. She named it for what it is, a major public health issue that is often overlooked, and made the case for filling it.

Dr. Juliet Siena Lumati in a royal blue dress, speaking at the podium with her name on the screen behind her.
Dr. Juliet Siena Lumati delivering her remarks.
Dr. Juliet Siena Lumati in a royal blue dress holding her award, seated with her mentor, both smiling.
Dr. Juliet Siena Lumati and her mentor pictured after she received her award.
Dr. Kadambari Rawal at the lectern delivering her featured-speaker remarks.
Dr. Kadambari Rawal at the lectern.
Dr. Kadambari Rawal in a black off-shoulder dress with her companion in a black suit, both holding an award on the BCPH backdrop.
Dr. Kadambari Rawal, BDS, MSD (2022 40 Under 40 cohort and featured speaker), with her companion.
Dr. Olabiyi Olaniran (keynote), Dr. Kadambari Rawal, and Dr. Juliet Siena Lumati together.
Dr. Olabiyi Olaniran, Dr. Kadambari Rawal, and Dr. Juliet Siena Lumati together.

The Health Justice Scholars Competition

The 2026 Health Justice Scholars Competition, the BCPH student call to Lead. Inform. Inspire Solutions., asked one prompt: What is today’s number one public health issue, and how would you solve it? The four finalist entries were selected from a national pool and presented their public health solutions live during the gala program.

2026 Finalists

James Arthur headshot
James Arthur
MPH Student · East Tennessee State University · Tennessee
Shriya Veluri headshot Nanditha Niranjan headshot
Shriya Veluri & Nanditha Niranjan
MD / DrPH Students · Partner Entry · UT Health Houston School of Public Health · Texas
Ekkam Bal headshot
Ekkam Bal
MD / DrPH Student · Roseman University of Health Sciences · Utah
Josephina Lin headshot
Josephina Lin
MPH Student · Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health · Massachusetts

James Arthur named mental health inequity as the number one public health issue of our time, not mental illness itself, but the unequal access to safety, dignity, treatment, and hope. He called for three shifts: bringing mental health care into the communities where people already are (schools, churches, workplaces, libraries); building a culturally responsive workforce; and moving from crisis response to prevention.

“We stop treating mental health care as a luxury service and start treating it like infrastructure, the same way we invest in roads, clean water, or emergency response.” James Arthur, MPH, first prize

Shriya Veluri and Nanditha Niranjan of UT Health Houston presented Moving from “Sick-Care” to True Health, proposing a Prevention Budget Rule: a federal mandate requiring every hospital system to reinvest a protected share of its budget upstream, into housing, food access, active infrastructure and social connection, and mobile preventive care for underserved communities, before disease ever begins. They cited a Pew Charitable Trusts analysis showing every dollar invested in prevention can return roughly fourteen dollars in medical and societal savings.

“The best hospital in the world cannot compete with a safe home, a healthy school lunch, clean air, and a strong community.” Shriya Veluri and Nanditha Niranjan, second prize

Josephina Lin, an MS/MPH candidate at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School, discussed mental health care.

Ekkam Kaur Bal, a DMD candidate at Roseman University of Health Sciences, also presented as a finalist. She spoke about her younger brother, who has Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome and is non-verbal, and the gap she has seen between the compassion of support workers and the specialized training they often lack. She proposed a Specialized Support Matching and Certification Program: targeted training tied to the conditions caregivers will actually encounter, a thoughtful matching system that pairs children with caregivers prepared for their specific needs, and ongoing accountability and growth for the workforce.

“Every child deserves care that understands them, protects them, and helps them thrive. The question is not whether we can do better. It is whether we are willing to.” Ekkam Kaur Bal, finalist

Ekkam Bal at the lectern presenting her Health Justice Scholars entry.
Ekkam Bal at the lectern presenting her Health Justice Scholars entry.
Shriya Veluri and Nanditha Niranjan presenting at the podium, partner team out of UT Health Houston.
Shriya Veluri and Nanditha Niranjan (UT Health Houston) presenting as a partner entry.
Shriya Veluri and Nanditha Niranjan at the podium together.
Shriya Veluri and Nanditha Niranjan during their presentation.

First prize ($500) went to James Arthur, a Mental Health Therapist at Ballad Health’s Woodridge Hospital and a Clinical Mental Health Counseling MA candidate at ETSU. He focuses on HIV prevention and sexual minority mental health in Appalachia.

Second prize ($250) went to Shriya Veluri and Nanditha Niranjan as a partner entry. Third place went to Josephina Lin.

Shriya Veluri, Nanditha Niranjan, and James Arthur holding the Health Justice Scholars Competition prize checks.
Health Justice Scholars Competition winners with their checks: Shriya Veluri and Nanditha Niranjan ($250) and James Arthur ($500).
Shriya Veluri and Nanditha Niranjan of UT Health Houston holding an oversized BCPH check for $250.
Shriya Veluri and Nanditha Niranjan (UT Health Houston) receiving second prize ($250).
James Arthur at the lectern presenting his Health Justice Scholars entry.
James Arthur at the lectern presenting his Health Justice Scholars entry.
James Arthur in the center, flanked by two friends, the three of them holding the oversized $500 BCPH check together in front of the backdrop.
James Arthur with friends who came to cheer him on, sharing the check between them.
James Arthur in a brown double-breasted suit, flanked by two friends in dark dresses, posing on the BCPH backdrop.
James Arthur with friends on the BCPH backdrop after the program.

The 40 Under 40

The largest stretch of the evening belonged to the honorees themselves. This year was less a single cohort and more a five-year reunion: the classes of 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, and 2026, gathered together, alongside past Health Innovators to Watch invited back for the occasion. Each honoree was called individually to the stage and given the small but real ceremony of being named. Looking out across the room, the work of half a decade stood up at once.

2022 Cohort

2023 Cohort

2024 Cohort

2025 Cohort

2026 Cohort

The recognition felt like what it is meant to be: not a verdict on a career, but a marker on a road still being traveled, and a quiet reminder that the BCPH community is now five years deep into the people it has chosen to lift up.

Acceptance Speech, Dr. Yulin Hswen

Dr. Yulin Hswen, ScD (2026 cohort, Associate Professor, University of Maryland) accepting her 40 Under 40 award.

Photographs from the Evening with Honorees

Three honorees with awards on the BCPH backdrop: a hijab-wearing honoree on the left, Miya Cain in a red poppy print in the middle, and a third honoree in royal blue on the right.
Miya Cain, MPP (center) with fellow honorees from the 2025 and 2026 cohorts.

2023 Cohort

Dr. Candice Carpenter in a BCPH-branded zip top stands beside Dr. Monica Wang in a green dress holding her award, both smiling on the BCPH backdrop.
Dr. Monica L. Wang, ScD, MS (2023 cohort) with Co-CEO Dr. Candice D. Carpenter after her recognition.

2025 Cohort

Dr. Ifeanyi Stanley Muoghalu in a black suit and BCPH lapel button, standing solo on the BCPH step-and-repeat.
Dr. Ifeanyi Stanley Muoghalu, MD, MSc, DTMPH (2025 cohort) in front of the BCPH step-and-repeat.
Sirad Hassan, MS, in front of the BCPH step-and-repeat.
Sirad Hassan, MS (2025 cohort) in front of the BCPH step-and-repeat.
Harneet K. Cheema, BSc, MD Candidate, in front of the BCPH step-and-repeat.
Harneet K. Cheema, BSc, MD Candidate (2025 cohort) in front of the BCPH step-and-repeat.

2026 Cohort

40 Under 40 honorees gathered together holding their trophies.
40 Under 40 honorees with their trophies.
All 40 Under 40 honorees gathered together in front of the projection screen.
All 40 Under 40 honorees together in front of the screen.
40 Under 40 honorees together in front of the projection screen.
40 Under 40 honorees together in front of the screen.
Dr. Oluwatosin Olateju with her trophy on the BCPH backdrop.
Dr. Oluwatosin Olateju, DrPH, MSN-CPHN, BSN, RN (2026 cohort) with her trophy.
Udochukwu Iheanyichi going to receive his trophy.
Udochukwu Iheanyichi, MBBS, MPH (2026 cohort) going to receive his trophy.
Musarrat Rahman, MPH, with family on the BCPH step-and-repeat.
Musarrat Rahman, MPH (2026 cohort) with family on the BCPH step-and-repeat.
Dr. Juliet Siena Lumati in a royal blue dress holding her award, seated with her mentor.
Dr. Juliet Siena Lumati, MD, MPH, FACS, FSSO (2026 cohort and featured speaker) with her mentor.
Dr. Oluwatosin Olateju in a white blazer over a sequined dress, smiling with her award on the BCPH backdrop.
Dr. Oluwatosin Olateju, DrPH, MSN-CPHN, BSN, RN (2026 cohort).
Three honorees on the BCPH backdrop: a man in a black suit on the left, a woman in a red dress in the middle, and a man in a tuxedo with bowtie on the right, all holding awards.
Three honorees from the 2026 cohort with their awards.
Two honorees on the BCPH backdrop, one in a black pantsuit and one in a long shimmery dress.
Honoree in front of the BCPH step-and-repeat with family.
40 Under 40 Public Health Catalyst Award winners seated and standing with Dr. Kamilah Woodson, Attrayee Chakraborty, Dr. Circe Le Compte, and Dr. Candice Carpenter.
40 Under 40 Public Health Catalyst Award Winners with Dr. Kamilah Woodson, Attrayee Chakraborty, Dr. Circe Le Compte, and Dr. Candice Carpenter.
A 40 Under 40 honoree in a red dress accepts her award alongside Dr. Candice D. Carpenter in a BCPH zip top, both smiling.
A 2026 honoree with her award alongside Dr. Candice D. Carpenter.
Sirad Hassan, MS, in a yellow blouse and black hijab, beside a colleague in a pink hijab, with her 40 Under 40 statue on the BCPH backdrop.
Sirad Hassan, MS and a colleague with her 40 Under 40 statue.
A group of 40 Under 40 honorees together with their trophies, blue and white balloons in the background.
40 Under 40 honorees together with their trophies, balloons in the background.
Three honorees on the BCPH backdrop: one in a dark blazer and dress, one in a white blouse and dark slacks, and one in a dark patterned dress.
Three honorees together on the BCPH backdrop.
Dr. Circe Gray Le Compte at the podium beside Dr. Candice D. Carpenter, who is mid-gesture with her hand raised, and Attrayee Chakraborty at right.
Dr. Circe Gray Le Compte, Dr. Candice D. Carpenter, and Attrayee Chakraborty during the program.

Thanks to Our Sponsors

The evening would not have been possible without the generosity of our sponsors. Our deepest thanks to:

The Close

Attrayee Chakraborty at the lectern delivering closing remarks.
Attrayee Chakraborty at the lectern.

Attrayee Chakraborty closed the night with thanks and a few well-earned reminders about what comes next.

In the Room

Some of the best moments of the night happened in the in-between: in the conversations that broke out the second the formal program paused, in the hugs across tables between people who had not seen each other since the last awards cycle, in the quiet exchanges that, in any other context, might have been the headline.

Rows of seated attendees, leaning into the program, daylight pouring in through the windows behind them.
The audience listens attentively during the program.
A guest in a blue blazer suit listens attentively in the audience, flanked by two other attendees mid-conversation.
Guests in the audience during the program.
Three 40 Under 40 Public Health Catalysts laughing together in conversation near the windows.
40 Under 40 Public Health Catalysts enjoying the evening.
A guest in a navy blazer wearing a Boston Congress of Public Health pin shakes hands with another attendee.
Dr. Juliet Siena Lumati and her mentor talk in the audience.
An attendee in a brown wrap, wearing a Boston Congress of Public Health button, mid-conversation with a colleague.
Dr. Ifeanyi Stanley Muoghalu, MD, MSc, DTMPH and a colleague talk before the program begins.
Two attendees embracing at the reception, one in a printed blue wrap, the other smiling over her shoulder.
A reunion hug at the reception, a familiar BCPH scene.
Dr. Kamilah Woodson talking with a colleague before the program begins.
Dr. Kamilah Woodson and her colleague talk before the program begins.

The Album

A handful more frames from the evening, laughter, side conversations, and candid moments. Click any photo to open the full slideshow.

Video by Dr. Oluwatosin Olateju.