The mission of the Environmental Health Science Department is to conduct innovative research to improve human health, well being, and quality of natural and working environments, and to provide exemplary education and training for future Environmental Health professionals.
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Tamara Misewicz, an MPH student in Environmental Health Science from Archbald, Pennsylvania, is scheduled to graduate in August 2012. She was recently able to complete her internship at the Wuxi CDC in China. Below, she describes some of her experiences and shares some photos from her trip.
What was your internship project?
During my two months interning at the Wuxi CDC, I worked and gained experience with an array of environmental health aspects as well as many other concentrations of public health. The first two weeks consisted of introductions and shadowing of each department within the CDC facility to gain a strong understanding of how each runs and their specific responsibilities. From the second week on I worked within the public health department with a focus on environmental health. My main project during the internship was to train on water hygiene and drinking-water pollution protection, exercise on water sampling and lab testing, comprehend work flow routine monitoring and emergency response, and complete a survey report. Besides water monitoring and testing I also did work with indoor air testing at hotels and factories for different exposures, performed algae counts, mosquito insecticide resistance testing, species identification of different insects, as well as laboratory work and chemical analysis.
What internship achievement or projects are you most proud of?
I am most proud of the air quality presentation I had worked on and presented at the end of my internship. It was a sample presentation of my capstone paper, which I was working on during my time in China, and the CDC had asked if I would like to give a presentation for them. It was a proud moment to have CDC professionals listen to one of my presentations and ask questions.
In terms of learning about health, what was your favorite part of your internship?
Embarking on a journey by myself to the other side of the earth with no international cell phone, a computer whose Wi-Fi decided to fail, in a city of over six million people to whom I could barely communicate with; my experience in Wuxi was more than an internship. This was an experience where I learned about public health issues of China, how an organization just like one we may see in the United States decides to tackle these issues and how being surrounded by the unknown in a completely different country is surprisingly not so different. It was this enlightenment or global perspective that I’ve gained which made this internship different than any experience I’ve had thus far. It was undoubtedly my favorite part of the internship to simply discuss and exchange thoughts, ideas and solutions on different public health matters with my co-workers and friends in Wuxi, China.
