Samantha (Kayleigh) Hall, University of Georgia
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 2016
The summer program in Environmental Health (SUPEH) is a 10-week internship for Environmental Health students attending an EHAC-accredited university. Interns participate in activities with the Environmental Health Services Branch of the Center for Disease Control’s National Center for Environmental Health. A few of the activities that I took part in included a tour of a poultry-processing plant, shadowing the Gwinnett County Health Department for two days, volunteering at an urban farm, attending public health trainings, and visiting the air monitoring stations in DeKalb County and the West Atlanta Watershed Alliance. We attended weekly journal clubs on a specific theme presented by our peers in other internship programs. We also attended weekly informational sessions held by subject matter experts on the weekly theme that gave us a more in depth look at the topic. All of these activities were done in addition to my main project.
For my main project, I worked with one of the CLEH interns, Alex Northrop, on the beginning stages of a systematic review of reported waterborne disease outbreaks associated with decaying infrastructure in the US. We were able to utilize the resources at the CDC in order to conduct this research; including consulting with a librarian to develop our search terms and conduct our literature search. Our project supervisors, Rob Blake and Helen Schurz Rogers, gave us guidance and helped us learn new skills.
Another project I worked on with the other SUPEH interns was to determine the delivery system for different Environmental Health services in different states by evaluating their state websites. I also had the opportunity to co-conduct a training in Environmental Health in Emergency Response (EHTER) with the other SUPEH interns to present to the intern in the other programs.
This internship helped me put to use my knowledge that I had gained from the University of Georgia about the role of Environmental Health in protecting public health. Because of this program, I was also able to develop personal and leadership skills that I may not have gained from another internship program. This internship gave me the opportunity to meet 23 other interns from across the country that possessed a variety of interests and passions related to the field of environmental health. We were given the opportunity to meet and learn from subject matter experts on different topics within the CDC. Every Friday, we had a field trip related to that week’s topic (e.g. water, environmental justice, food safety and security). After shadowing the environmental health division of the Gwinnett County Health Department, I could really see the importance of gaining local public health experience. This experience instilled me with confidence to pursue my goals as I returned to the University of Georgia to finish my coursework.