“For he who has health has hope; and he who has hope, has everything.”

— Owen Arthur

The practice labs I have completed have challenged me to apply what I have learned. It has been empowering and even enjoyable to tackle these assignments. I chose the Applied Epidemiology and Public Health Data Analysis track because I wanted to challenge myself to work with math and writing. These are area in which I struggle the most. This program has helped build my confidence in statistical reasoning and communicating the findings.

The first practice lab dealt with performing an integrated lead poisoning prevention assessment on a mock community. Our professor gave us a description of the community and tasked us to identify potential sources of lead as well as crafting strategies to communicate these risks to the town. Once you identify public health threats the next most important part is communicting with the public. If you do not understand the makeup of the public you serve, you are going to have a difficult time. This practice lab helped strengthen my competency in selecting communication strategies for different audience and sectors.

For this assignment, I chose to focus on the different age groups of the town. For younger groups, I wanted to utilized social media to push out lead prevention education. This group is more technologically savvy than older groups. An additional strategy would tailor communication for older age groups. For example, sending information in the mail, running commercials on targeted channels, and establishing a hotline for people to call into. Typical communication strategies that older generations are more used to. For another strategy, I wanted to have lead prevention education information in all the different languages spoken by the people of the mock community. Not everyone speaks and reads in English as a first language or at all. You cannot reach sections of the public if you do not speak in languages or ways they can understand. This also speaks to another competency that is critical for all public health professionals, awareness of cultural values and practices to the design or implementation of public health policies or programs. If you are not aware of the cultural value and practices of your community, not only will you not be able to communicate with them. You will push them away from seeing you as a trusted and respected authority on public health. You must get to know the public you work for because the public is your active partner in all maters public health.

The second practice lab I included was a data analysis project for Biostatistics that challenged me from start to finish. However, I am glad I accomplished this assignment as it helped to solidify my statiscal skills. I used data from the National Health Interview Survey to investigate if there was a link between e-cigarette use and a postive COVID-19 diagnosis in young adults with asthma. The COVID-19 pandemic hampered data collection for one year of the survey so dealing with a smaller smaple size was difficult. Utilizing SAS studio to analyze the data and perform hypothesis testing helped me to become more profecient in data analysis. It was exciting to present my research and analysis at the end of the semester to my fellow students. This project helped to develop my competency in applying appropriate descriptive and inferential statistical methods to analyze pattern of disease and identify the risk for diseases/health conditions. It also helped develop my competency in presenting public health data in the outline of scientific reports and presentations including the appropriate tables and figures.

These practice labs taught me a lot, especially the mistakes I made. I can honestly say that after these assignments I am confident in my epidemiological and data analysis skills. Furthermore, it has built up my confidence in going after difficult issues. With the skills and expericence gained from this program, I am ready to contribute to improving public health outcomes wherever I am.