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Featured Article
From MCB To Public Health
November 9, 2001
Evelyn Tu graduated in May, spent July in Europe, and
now has a challenging job working for the State. But don't be fooled.
She's been preparing for this job since she was a sophomore.
Career Center (CC): What field are you in, and what is your current position? Evelyn Tu (ET): I'm working on the CA Encephalitis Project for the State Health Department, doing a lot of infectious disease tracking and surveillance as well as epidemiology. I'm the Assistant Project Coordinator and I work closely with the Project Coordinator and the medical doctor who oversees the project. CC: What are your main job responsibilities? ET: I manage a database of specimens from hospitals, labs, physicians' offices through out California. We do data analysis for causative agents and trends. If a patient comes down with encephalitis, the lab specimen is sent to our state lab in Richmond and we get the results and inform the physician of the cause. It could be T.B., herpes, various viruses. We also collect and analyze the data. I personally manage all the data for West Niles Survey for California. West Niles is a mosquito borne virus, thought to be a cause of encephalitis. The first case in the US was seen in NY in 1999, and the Centers for Disease Control has been tracking the movement from the east to the west coast. CC: What prepared you for this position? ET: This job is a perfect blending of my public health interests and my MCB major. We deal with lab results measuring different antibodies responses. My MCB Physiology & IB Anatomy courses help me understand the medical terminology when I'm talking to clinicians. As far as public health, during my sophomore year I participated in the Health Service Internship (HIS), a 2-unit, semester long internship that places students in public health related community organizations. I gained insight into program and policy development, administration, and direct services. During the weekly group discussion sessions, we were exposed to a broad range of public health issues, including epidemiology. That initial epidemiology presentation seemed dry, it focused mainly on biostatistics, but during my junior year I took an undergraduate public health course, PH 150 A, Introduction to Epidemiology. There I learned to see beyond the data and to understand the role epidemiology could play in reducing the impact public health threats on large populations. Although there is no undergraduate major in public health, lower division and upper division public health courses are offered through the School of Public Health. The 150 series offers introductory course on Environmental Health, Health Policy & Management, Social & Behavioral Health, Microbiology. There are even courses for freshmen and sophomores. CC: What other experiences/training were important in getting you where you are in your career? ET: The summer before my senior year, I had an internship through the Society of Professionals in HealthCare. I worked with the Clinic Administrator at Glide Memorial Church Clinic in San Francisco. I got to do a little of everything - I scheduled case managers and clinicians, developed part of the budget for a grant applications, and learned ACCESS data management skills, which I now use on my job. CC: What do you like about your work? ET: It's intriguing; we get to pursue new ideas regarding trends in community health. We study our data to see if it supports our hypotheses. If it does, we investigate these ideas further by retrospectively obtaining more information on patients that fit certain profiles. It's really great to know that the work that we do impacts patients directly. The lab results will help the physician treat the patients. At the same time, we get to impact larger populations through the results of our studies. CC: What are some drawbacks? ET: Overseeing the daily paperwork that needs to be done. It's not as interesting, but I know it needs to be done. I won't be doing this forever. I plan to get a graduate degree in Public Health Administration of Public Administration in a few years and do more administrative or management work. CC: Do you have any tips regarding what Cal undergraduates can do to prepare for a career in public health? ET: HSI, public health courses, internships. There seem to be a fair number of student part-time jobs at the CA Health Department.You see them posted on CalJobs. There are also jobs like mine, which require a BA and good administrative skills. I saw my job posted on Craig's List. CC: Any final comments? ET: There will always be jobs in public health. It's a field where different disciplines and different fields come together - information, law, statistics, lab, policy. It's possible to work with lots of different people with different knowledge sets. |
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