The Integrated Lead Poisoning Prevention Practice Lab allowed me to utilize skills I have gained throughout the public health program to create an inclusive community education and prevention program for a target audience. A key aspect of this practice lab was taking into consideration cultural values and practices, while recognizing how to address barriers in different communities. This was a relevant and useful practice lab for me to become a public health professional due to the dangers of lead poisoning, but also learning risk communication and awareness for a community. This practice lab positively impacted my learning by allowing me to independently create a real world scenario about a danger to a community and create a strategy on how to address the problem and come up with a solution for the community by using effective communication. This practice lab covered three foundational competencies:

1. MPH 8: Apply awareness of cultural values and practices to the design or implementation of public health policies or programs. This was done by identifying cultural values and practices in a community that could have relevance to the design and implementation of an environmental public health program.
2. MPH 18: Select communication strategies for different audiences and sectors. This was completed by identifying the communication needs and preferences of different audiences and sectors in a community.
3. MPH 20: Describe the importance of cultural competence in communicating public health content. This was achieved by describing cultural factors in a community that could have relevance for how public heath content is communicated.

The Social Marketing Practice Lab gave me the ability to collaborate as a team with a group of my classmates to work on a public health problem and look at the behaviors associated with it. Our focus was youth tobacco use prevention and this practice lab gave us an opportunity to understand how factors such as barriers, benefits, motivators, competition, and socioeconomic factors can play a role on public health behaviors. We adopted the ecological model to understand the behavior on each level of the model to get a better idea of how to create a prevention strategy for our target audience. This practice lab positively impacted my learning because I will be able to use these methods as a public health professional if I ever need to create a social marketing campaign for a public health problem. This practice lab covered two track competencies:

1. HBHP 1: Plan a health communication project that address the needs of the priority population.
2. HBHP 4: Recommend an approach to disseminate health promotion content to relevant audiences.

Both of these practice labs gave me skills to be creative and adopt the knowledge I have learned in the courses throughout my time as a public health student to design effective tools for the target audience. I will be able to adopt these skills into my public health career to use for other communities in need to improve their health.