During the Summer Edge program, each student was paired with a faculty mentor based on their interests within the field of public health. I was paired with Dr. Martha Terry, Associate Professor of Behavioral and Community Health Sciences and together we explored hands-on internship and volunteer opportunities in the neighborhood of Friendship. Dr. Terry is an active member of the Friendship neighborhood and has been integral in its revitalization in recent years. She has aimed to promote social inclusion in her intervention, lifting up and involving all community members and discouraging the gentrification that is effecting many areas of Pittsburgh. For this course I volunteered to revitalize an abandoned and decrepit community space into an area to hold social programs. During my time there the space, called Latham St. Commons, was used to promote self-discovery in disadvantaged high school students from the surrounding area. I was involved in the planning and implementation of different creative projects that taught the students about opportunities for change in their community. It was inspiring to play a role in their growth and learn from the coordinators about organizing programs that uplift community members.
I took on an additional internship experience with Dr. Elizabeth Van Nostrand, Director of MPH and JD?MPH programs and Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management. Through this mentor ship, was surprised to discover that public health law had so many ties to clinical practice. I learned about several bioinformatics tools and helped with their presentation and development. These tools included the Emergency Law Inventory (ELI) and a modeling system for epidemics of Measles, Mumps, and Rubella in American (FRED). I had the opportunity to present these tools and learn about other real-word opportunities in public health by attending the National Association of City and County Health Officials (NACCHO) conference.
Mid-Atlantic Regional Public Health Training Center Tools Poster Draft