Sarah Michels ’20

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA

The EWB summer interns (Darin Li ’21, Sarah Michels ’20, and Omar Kawam ‘20) and Emory University Rollins School of Public Health graduate students.
The EWB summer interns (Darin Li ’21, Sarah Michels ’20, and Omar Kawam ‘20) and Emory University Rollins School of Public Health graduate students.

The events leading up to this summer internship started during the fall of my freshman year at Williams while registering for Winter Study courses. I discovered a class: “Principles of Epidemiology, Public Health, and Leadership in the Health Professions.” The course sounded interesting so I went ahead and registered; little did I know the class would have such a strong influence shaping my future studies and experiences at Williams. The instructor for the course was Dr. Nick Wright, Williams College Class of 1957, and Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) Class of 1963. Dr. Wright’s passion for public health and his willingness to share his knowledge is contagious. Upon learning about his career as an EIS officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and his later work internationally with Ministries of Health in Thailand and Sri Lanka, I found myself thinking: this is a fascinating career and field. I wondered how I could do that and I wanted to learn more. I continued to take public health courses at Williams, and sought out an applied experience. The Student Workforce Experience Program Internship at the CDC was the opportunity that I was seeking and more.

This summer I had the opportunity to work at the CDC in Atlanta, Georgia. I was working in the Epidemiology Workforce Branch (EWB), which is housed in the Division for Scientific Education and Professional Development at CDC. Much of EWB’s work focuses on education and leadership development of the current and future generations of the public health workforce. This was a unique and rich environment to have the opportunity to work in as a student.

The main focus of my summer internship was helping to prepare for the incoming cohort of new Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) officers and their inaugural month in Atlanta for their July Summer Course. EIS is a globally recognized, two-year fellowship program for scientists, physicians, veterinarians and other clinicians that provides training in applied epidemiology and prepares officers to be future leaders in public health. EIS alumni have held leadership positions that include acting U.S. Surgeon General, CDC Director, medical school deans, and state health officials. EIS officers serve on the front lines of public health to investigate outbreaks of disease, identify causes, rapidly implement control measures, and collect evidence to recommend preventive actions against future health threats. Some examples of recent outbreaks that EIS officers have assisted with include influenza, suicide clusters, Zika, Ebola, cholera, Salmonella, and other food borne illnesses.

Throughout the month-long July Summer Course, EIS officers receive training in a range of topics that include epidemiology, statistical analysis, study design, learning how to engage with media, understanding institutional relations, and reviewing case studies. My role included redesigning an ethics case study used in the July Summer Course. In addition to my internship responsibilities, I had the opportunity to attend Summer Course sessions. Through this, I learned the material presented at the seminars and I was able to envision sitting in one of those seats one day as an EIS officer. One of the most valuable components of my internship was my supervisor’s encouragement to talk to lots of different people working in various roles and divisions of CDC, as well as allowing me to attend meetings and lectures.

After the July Summer Course, EIS officers report to the host site that they are matched with. Some officers stay in Atlanta and are placed in different divisions of CDC headquarters; others are stationed in state or local health departments across the nation. About 90 percent of the two-year EIS fellowship is on-the-job training, where officers respond to real-time outbreak investigations and emerging health threats. Another of my responsibilities during my internship included compiling data used to track competency assessments and host site assessments for the class of 2016 and 2017 EIS officers. The evaluation and assessment feedback helps to support officers’ learning during their on-the-job training. In addition, there is a strong emphasis on ensuring that the host site supervisors were investing enough time in training and mentoring their officers. The emphasis on feedback resonated with me and has helped me to understand that I want to someday work in a setting where professional development is a priority.

Sarah Michels ’20 and Darin Li ’21 trying on the Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4) suits in the CDC museum.
Sarah Michels ’20 and Darin Li ’21 trying on the Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4) suits in the CDC museum.

While the majority of my internship was focused on the EIS program, I was also able to spend time with the Science Ambassador Fellowship program. This is a one-year distance-based fellowship for middle and high school teachers looking to incorporate public health sciences into their curricula. Thirty teachers representing twenty-six states came to CDC for one week in July and had the opportunity to work with CDC subject matter experts and other teachers to create lesson plans, which they then pilot in their classrooms. These lessons are ultimately published and made available to the public. The goal of this fellowship is to build health literacy in classrooms nationwide and inspire students to pursue careers in public health. I worked as a facilitator for two groups creating lesson plans focused on Global Health and HIV/AIDs. This was a learning opportunity for me to understand how teachers creatively organize information into activities that will resonate with students.

Throughout my time at CDC, I felt welcome and supported. The branch and my supervisors invested time into my learning and growth throughout the internship. CDC employees at different stages in their 
career were willing to take the time to share their experiences in public health and their path to the CDC. 
As a student, I really valued how generous people were with their time and how willing they were to speak with me as I am deciding what is next in my career. I love the collaborative and multidisciplinary nature of public health that requires us to not only look at the data and research, but also think about upstream factors of health, social determinants, identifying stakeholders and politics. The work brings together people with diverse backgrounds and skill sets to determine sustainable solutions—from scientists, to educators, to communication and public relations experts, to business administrators. To me, public health is an exciting environment that I hope I have the privilege to work in one day. I also learned how much I value a collegial atmosphere, such as that shared by the EIS class as well as by employees in EWB at CDC. This is a lesson I will think about as I am making future career decisions.

While at EWB, I was immersed in a workplace filled with professionals rallied around a shared social mission and sense of purpose. Not only was I able to appreciate the work that passionate employees at CDC and in public health devote every day, but I was able to observe firsthand the pleasure derived from a career in public service. Public health work is often “behind the scenes,” yet has incredible potential to create lasting impact on people’s lives. Looking at how to prevent illness in populations of people is a different approach to health than traditional clinical medicine, which focuses on one patient at a time and individual diagnoses. For example, I was able to sit in on a committee meeting that determines vaccine recommendations. Understanding the underlying work that factors into this decision-making that will affect millions of patients was eye opening and humbling. There is a role for both individual and population level perspectives on patient care. Understanding the large-scale impact that focusing energy toward population health can have makes the public health approach particularly compelling to me. One EIS alumni who now works in EWB said, “He saved more lives in one outbreak investigation during his time working as an EIS officer than he had in over four years of working in clinical medicine as a physician.” This comment stood out and is one of the many reasons why after this summer I hope to work in public health in the future.

This summer internship in EWB at the CDC has been an incredible opportunity and has shaped the trajectory of my future studies at Williams and my career pursuits. I am sincerely grateful to everyone I met at the CDC who welcomed me this summer and took the time to share their experiences and expertise: Dr. Nick Wright who gives his time to teach a Winter Study course each January and helps to match students with CDC internships, the Williams College ’68 Center for Career Exploration who manage the Alumni Sponsored Internship Program, and Mr. William L. Chapman ’64 for his generosity in making opportunities such as this one possible.