Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - January/February 2016 - (Page 38)

exploring career options Christine Scott-Waldron, M.S.P.H. Public Health Epidemiologist Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals Christine Scott-Waldron's career has been shaped by disaster: She was a freshman at Rutgers University in New Jersey on 9/11, and her first semester of graduate school at Tulane University in New Orleans was postponed by Hurricane Katrina. The aftermath of these disasters showed Scott-Waldron different dimensions of public health and the range of expertise necessary in responding to public health emergencies. A specialist in vector-borne and zoonotic infectious diseases, Scott-Waldron explains how learning outside the classroom led to a career that is equal parts careful surveillance and rapid response. Did you go to college intending to study public health? I intended to major in biology, but at that time, biology majors at Rutgers had to either double major or pursue a biology major and a minor. I decided to minor in public health and became very involved in activities beyond my coursework. I volunteered as a grant writer with the New Jersey Tobacco Cessation Program and later worked as an assistant to the dean for research in the graduate school of public health. Eventually I became president of our chapter of the Public Health Undergraduate Association and attended the national meeting of the American Public Health Association. After 9/11, Rutgers was involved not only with investigations and research in New York, but also with the anthrax attacks in the New Jersey post offices. The university had a lot of grant funding for bioterrorism and preparedness, so as an undergraduate I was able to go to meetings and trainings that otherwise might not have been accessible to me. Did you go straight to grad school after college? Yes. I knew I wanted to work on a more specialized graduate degree, and I was interested in vector-borne diseases-those transmitted between humans or from animals to humans by other organisms, such as insects. I grew up in New Jersey, which has a large burden of 38 imagine Interview by Melissa Hartman Lyme disease, and had a lot of friends and family members who had struggled with tick-borne diseases. I decided on Tulane, which offered a Master of Public Health degree in parasitology and tropical medicine. Louisiana is among the top five states in incidence of mosquito-borne diseases, and Tulane has a long history of studying these diseases. My first semester at Tulane was postponed by Hurricane Katrina, which struck Louisiana in late August 2005. When I returned to campus in January 2006, there were a lot of opportunities for research, many involving mosquito species and the standing water after Katrina. I worked with Professor Dawn Wesson in the field collecting mosquitoes, and, strangely, I liked it. While I was working in Dr. Wesson's lab, a student position opened up at the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH) in New Orleans, just down the street from Tulane. They needed students to assist with surveillance of West Nile virus. It was great because I was doing fieldwork with Tulane, and then at DHH I could see how fieldwork translated to numbers and surveillance. When I finished my degree, I was hired by DHH to coordinate their surveillance of arboviral-or arthropod-borne-diseases. What does your work entail now? From about July through the end of October, my primary duties still entail surveillance of arboviruses. In Louisiana we have four endemic arboviral diseases: West Nile, Saint Louis encephalitis, La Crosse encephalitis, and Eastern equine encephalitis. We also track some vector-borne diseases brought to Louisiana by residents who travel abroad, such as malaria, dengue, and chikungunya. Those diseases follow the same seasonal pattern of transmission. Throughout the year I also do quality control on the reporting of other diseases. Louisiana is divided into nine public health regions, each with an epidemiologist who does surveillance by jurisdiction. These epidemiologists are the first line of reporting; schools might contact them, for example, if they suspect a local outbreak of some kind of gastrointestinal illness. They receive reports of infectious diseases directly from hospitals or providers. If the disease turns out to be tick- or mosquito-borne, Jan/Feb 2016 ISTOCK.COM/MARCHIA Epidemiologist

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - January/February 2016

Big Picture
In My Own Words CDC Director Tom Frieden, M.D., M.P.H.
My Summer of Medicine Three ways of exploring healthcare
Teens Target: Public Health How high school students are solving real-world public health problems
Slowing the Race Addressing antibiotic resistance
For the Greater Good Majoring in public health
Epic Epidemics Studying History of Disease at CTY
Teen Health is Public Health Interview with Beth Marshall, Associate Director, Center for Adolescent Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Building Bridges Addressing health disparities through service
Becoming a Disease Detective Behind the scenes at the CDC
Finding Light in the Darkness Astrophysics at UCSC SIP
Girls Who Code Paving the way to careers in tech
Selected Opportunities and Resources
Off the Shelf Review of Iris Chang’s The Chinese in America
Word Wise
Exploring Career Options Interview with epidemiologist Christine Scott-Waldron, M.S.P.H.
One Step Ahead Summer in limbo
Planning Ahead for College Is medical school in your future?
Students Review: Tufts University
Creative Minds Imagine Essay contest winners
Mark Your Calendar
Knossos Games

Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - January/February 2016

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