Upper School Principal Rachel Stone’s contributions to Milton Academy extend beyond her role as principal. With a master’s degree in public health from Columbia University, Stone also contributes to the community through her expertise in wellness and social challenges.
At 6:30 p.m. on October 20, Stone drew a crowd of around 50 people to her public health Straus Dessert, which was organized by the Public Issues Board (PIB) as a part of their broader series to spotlight the expertise of Milton faculty. In this session, Stone aimed to broaden students’ understanding of epidemiology and its role in political decision making.
Zifu Song ‘27 said that, while exploring real-life examples with Stone, a major focus was to demonstrate that “not all correlations are direct causations.” The attendees—with Stone’s guidance—analyzed whether a 1998 study on the debate over the MMR vaccine and autism met the standards of causality.
“[We] talked about what to look for in a research paper,” he explained. “It was sort of a classroom setting where she led people to come to their own conclusions and answer her questions.” Song believed this format “made the content more comprehendible.” At the end of the exercise, the students decided the paper did not meet the criteria, revealing the importance of scrutinizing scientific claims.
Vickie Mao ‘26, a Co-Head of PIB, commented that this skill of evaluating whether something is factually true is “important for everyone to know, but especially in high school because it’s a time when teenagers are beginning to learn how to think independently.” She continued, “we want to make sure that the kind of leaders we’re educating are actually aware of what’s actually going on in the real world and capable of making judgements.”
As Stone pointed out, “public health is infrastructure that connects people and medicine. It’s about using data to inform good decisions.” Isaac Wu ‘28 agrees, commenting that one of his main takeaways from the session was that “there’s quite a lot of technical thinking behind how public health decisions are made, rather than just some gut feeling.” He added, “public health is quite interesting.” For Wu, this event not only allowed him to discover more about public health, but also explore his interest in statistical causation.
However, for several students, the decision to attend the session was primarily to secure a few coveted extra credit points for biology class.
For example, Song, a biology student this year, admitted he attended the event “primarily because of the extra credit” his teacher had offered. When asked if he would have attended without it, Song said, “truthfully, no.” Likewise, Shira Keitner ‘27—another attendee taking biology this year—said, “to be so frank…I think I would have stayed in.”
Mao believes that this “[extra credit] definitely played a part” in increasing turnout. She said, “We got a decent number of audience [members], not a lot, but it’s okay because the smaller numbers made the event a lot more intimate.”
Wu also pointed out that “[the] students who went for bio credit knew biology, so then they asked actually some pretty thought-provoking questions.” He noted, “Extra credit is a highly effective way to incentivize students… and usually [the class] is connected to what’s being talked about, so they actually really help the learning as well.”
Keitner serves as an example of this: she said that she “loved the event” and called it “a fascinating way to unpack what seems like a pretty black-and-white question.” Keitner especially appreciated that Stone tackled misinformation head-on, such as when she “brought up the specific question of ‘does Tylenol cause autism?’”—a claim circulating widely online and among U.S. politicians despite lacking credible scientific evidence. Stone used the example to demonstrate misinformation’s easy spread when science is analyzed without context or nuance.
Looking forward, Stone plans to expand this public health conversation by addressing questions about study design, the introduction of vaccines, and the safety of public health interventions. Stone hopes that each time they hear about research, “Milton students [will be able] to ask questions like ‘how many people participated in the study?’ or ‘how strong is the data?’”
Understanding the root causes of health inequity, she emphasized, presents not only a scientific challenge but also a moral one about ensuring that everyone has the opportunity for better health.