Applied Experience, Summer 2024

Briefly describe what you did for your Applied Experience and any highlights.

For my Applied Experience this summer, I took part in the Future Public Health Leaders Program (FPHLP) at the University of Michigan. As a participant with interests in environmental health and epidemiology, I was placed at the Environmental Health and Public Health divisions at the Washtenaw County Health Department. As an intern, I worked under the Washtenaw County Health Department Medical Director Dr. Juan Luis Marquez on a personal project to 1) evaluate differences in bat rabies positivity rates between Washtenaw County and the state of Michigan and 2) compare trends in positivity rates in Washtenaw County using Michigan Department of Health and Human Services data to inform county residents about general probability for rabies exposure from bats. With the Environmental Health division, I also performed tick drags and mosquito traps at local parks to survey for vector-borne diseases like Lyme Disease and Eastern Equine Encephalitis. I also did routine checks of the pH and bacteria levels at community swimming pools and sampled outdoor faucets for the contaminant 1,4-dioxane. 

I had a lot of great experiences with FPHLP this past summer, but my highlight of the summer was presenting my research at the CDC Summer Showcase with my 2024 FPHLP cohort and the other CDC Lewis Scholars programs!

How has your experience informed your understanding of public health?

My experience informed my understanding of public health because I learned more about avenues to get involved in public health. So many career paths and fields are related to public health, and FPHLP exposed me to individuals working in public health at local, state, and federal levels. Moreover, I learned even more about how public health research is conducted within academia and the broad scope and intersection of research topics being explored right now, from environmental epidemiology to mental health. Lastly, I learned how both academic institutions and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) alike can support the development, implementation, and evaluation of public health interventions. 

How does this experience align with your future goals?

This experience aligns with my future goals because it confirmed that I want to work as an infectious disease epidemiologist. However, my eyes are opened to the breadth of possibilities where I can engage with public health. There are opportunities to do this work in local, state, federal, or international settings. Furthermore, there are even more chances to do the same in academia or with NGOs. Regardless of where I may end up, my experiences at FPHLP also confirmed that I want a multi-faceted career that directly engages with local communities in addressing their health outcomes while doing epidemiological work. Moreover, I want a career that is hands-on with developing, evaluating, and implementing both social-behavioral and biomedical public health interventions. 

How do you think your time at JHU prepared you for this work?

My time at Hopkins has prepared me because it introduced me to public health work and allowed me to gain some of the concrete skills – like epidemiology and biostatistics – that I can use in my future career. Moreover, Hopkins was the first place where I learned terms like social determinants of health, health equity, and health disparities and could use them to explain the things and occurrences that we all may see daily. Hopkins has given me a theoretical framework to go out and actively engage these topics, and I hope to improve the health outcomes of others because of it.