Public policy can seem distant and antiseptic, but when you are on the phone with a desperate mother who is sick and stuck in the nation's most toxic superfund site, the choices become all too real.

In the summer of 2004, Jon Kyden Creekpaum was working as press secretary for a U.S. Congressional campaign in his home state of Oklahoma. While drafting the candidate's policy on a toxic waste site called Tar Creek Environmental Disaster Area, Creekpaum took a call from a woman living there. Her family suffered from cancer, asthma, learning disabilities and other ills. She could not sell her home and move—no one buys trailers in toxic wastelands. And the state government provided re-location funds only to families with very young children. She was trapped. Creekpaum worked with now-Congressman Dan Boren to advocate for federal assistance for all families in the area.

"After working with Tar Creek—and senior citizens' and veterans' health, Medicare and Medicaid issues—I now realize that for any competent policy-maker, there is no substitute for solid expertise in public health issues," says Creekpaum, a student in the Bloomberg School's MPH/JD program with Georgetown University.