Miranda Willis, East Central University
This content was created by an EHS intern to describe intern experiences. It has not been revised or edited to conform to agency standards. The findings and conclusions are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
SUPEH Intern, Summer 2014
During my time at NCEH/ATSDR, I was privileged to have projects in both the Environmental Health Services Branch (EHSB) and the Office of Tribal Affairs (OTA). Although both are housed in NCEH/ATSDR, their workings are very different, and my projects reflected those differences. My project with EHSB involved reviewing Legionella outbreak reports from the past 14 years to identify and summarize the environmental investigations. This review will be used to identify any issues in the environmental investigations and to gain a greater understanding of what environmental failures are contributing to Legionella outbreaks. This project taught me many valuable lessons such as the environmental public health dangers of Legionella and how the outbreak investigation process works.
My projects with the Office of Tribal Affairs included reviewing and editing the CDC course manual on Working Effectively with Tribal Governments and writing a paper that will follow implementation of the National Environmental Public Health Tracking Network in the Great Lakes Tribal Epidemiology Center. Working Effectively with Tribal Governments is an internal CDC training course designed to educate CDC staff on the history and culture of American Indian and Alaska Native tribes and provide strategies to help foster a positive working relationship with tribes. The implementation of the tracking network in the Great Lakes Tribal Epidemiology Center will be the first system of its kind to track American Indian specific environmental public health issues. My paper documented the possible challenges, benefits, and successes of this pilot project. These two projects have taught me how to critically review sometimes culturally sensitive material and how to connect and communicate with others.
Besides these projects I was able to attend journal clubs, guest speakers, meetings, trainings, shadowing experiences, and travel opportunities. Julie Fishman, LT James Gooch, and Maria Jolly did an excellent job arranging journal clubs, guest speakers, and field trips that addressed a different environmental public health topic each week. CDR Joe Laco and LCDR Justin Gerding did an excellent job in arranging shadowing experiences, meetings, and tours for the Summer Program in Environmental Health (SUPEH) interns to provide a better idea of what possible careers we may have after completing our degrees from EHAC-accredited environmental health programs. Some of those opportunities included touring a federal penitentiary and a U.S. Department of Agriculture chicken processing plant to identify environmental health hazards present at these facilities and the importance of having an environmental health professional on staff. I was also able to experience the different environmental health professions at the local level. I shadowed an environmental health professional from the Gwinnett County Environmental Health Department for 2 days during food, hotel, pool, and land inspections. I was privileged to travel a few times this summer. One of those amazing travel opportunities I had this summer was to Galveston, Texas, to shadow a member of the Vessel Sanitation Program on a cruise ship inspection. The inspections are very comprehensive and vitally important to the health of all the passengers and crew on the ship. My other travel opportunities included traveling to the Great Lakes Tribal Epidemiology Center in Wisconsin to meet with the staff and learn about the center and their tracking network project and to Washington, DC, to attend the National Tribal Environmental Health Think Tank meeting.
I truly love the environmental health field and this internship has only strengthened my passion. As of now, my future plans are to return to East Central University in Oklahoma and finish my final semester of my undergraduate program. I will graduate with my Bachelors of Environmental Health Science in December. I plan on obtaining my MPH in epidemiology with emphasis on environmental epidemiology and continuing to work in the environmental public health field.
My experience at NCEH/ATSDR has really fostered growth in both my professional life and my personal life. I will carry the lessons learned here and the friendships that I have made this summer with me forever. This internship has made for an unforgettable summer. I will never be able to thank ORISE and all of the staff at NCEH/ATSDR enough for this amazing opportunity.