Olivia Reeves (left) and Dr. Amir Alakaam pose in a UTC exercise lab, where Reeves is pursuing her Master of Public Health degree with a focus on chronic disease prevention and control. Photo by Angela Foster.
Olivia Reeves could have chosen a field tied directly to her sport.
Instead, the 2024 Olympic gold medalist in weightlifting chose public health.
“I want to think bigger picture in terms of who has access to certain things and how that translates into health,” Reeves said.
Reeves, a native of Hixson, Tennessee, is a graduate student in the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga’s Master of Public Health (MPH) program, studying chronic disease prevention and control.
Photo by USA Weightlifting
During her undergraduate years, after transferring to UTC from the University of Alabama, she initially pursued exercise science but quickly realized it wasn’t the right fit.
She later changed her major to sociology and earned a bachelor’s degree in December 2024.
“I wanted sociology as a background to help give context to public health in terms of when you’re looking at social determinants of health,” Reeves explained.
Now nearly a year into the MPH program, Reeves said she finds a special interest in how communities shape health.
“You can work out a certain muscle, and you as an individual can be healthy and live a healthy lifestyle,” she said. “But if the whole community isn’t healthy enough to support you, it won’t work out.
“A healthy individual doesn’t mean a whole lot versus having a healthy community.”
That idea is the core of UTC’s MPH program, according to Dr. Amir Alakaam, associate professor and program director.
“Public health is never related to the individual,” Alakaam said. “It is all about community.”
The program offers two concentrations—chronic disease prevention and control, and nutrition and dietetics—and is designed to be flexible for students with different needs and schedules. A new graduate certificate in public health leadership and practice will launch in the fall, which is fully online and can be completed asynchronously in one year.
Courses in the master’s program follow a hybrid format, with limited in-person meetings each semester.
This works out well for Reeves, who is often traveling the world for weightlifting competitions. She plans to complete the program over a three-year span so that she has time to prepare for the 2028 Olympics.
Alakaam said Reeves’ experience has pushed the program to rethink how it supports students.
“We try to adapt,” he said. “Not just me as a program director, but throughout the instructors in the MPH program. We think of how we can modify the program in order to make it more flexible for students like her.”
Reeves said she hopes to eventually connect her work in public health with her experience in weightlifting.
“How can we address barriers within different sports to make that more accessible for people?” she said. “What is it about weightlifting that is so special versus swimming and soccer? You can do that anywhere.”
She also sees a connection between strength training and long-term health, especially at a community level.
“What things are affecting our health and health outcomes?” she asked. “I want to look at people’s lifestyles and how you can integrate weight training and strength-based movements—as well as how communities function and the context in which we live our lives, which does not always promote a healthy lifestyle.”
In the MPH program, Reeves has also researched topics such as firearm policy, incarceration rates and health care bias.
Alakaam said the program is designed to teach these topics and to show how policies, environments and access influence long-term health.
“If we created an intervention that reduces the impact or reduces the obesity rate in that community, that is what public health is,” he said.
Alakaam said Reeves’ presence in the program exemplifies something much larger than her athletic accomplishments.
“It’s not just about winning a gold medal,” he said, “but about how knowledge in public health can extend the impact to improve lives at the community and population level.”
Her accomplishments, however, do bring a new kind of visibility to the program.
“Olivia is very unique. She brings value to the MPH program,” Alakaam said. “She’s a global champion doing her MPH degree in a local program and small university.
“After she graduates, she will have a stamp in the program … the program after Olivia is different; It’s bigger and stronger.”
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