I began my internship by meeting the data evaluation specialist at the Health Department and later, the Communicable Disease and Bioterrorism Coordinator (who doubles as a public health nurse and epidemiologist). Throughout the first week, I learned a software package called EpiInfo and more about potential projects. The next week I went to a meeting, Health Partners, and met some of the individuals in the community who are interested in public health issues. For the rest of May, I gained more insight into the inner workings of a county health department and assisted others in different projects, such as data gathering and simple computer applications.
In the beginning of June, I took on my first large project, which consisted of historical communicable disease in the county. First, it started as notifiable disease (all reportable infectious disease with the exception of STDs) data from 1983 to 1992 and other disc of data from 1993-2000, which was sent from the Ohio Department of Health (ODH). My job was to take this data, which was in spreadsheet form, decipher it and establish yearly, monthly, weekly, and daily levelsof disease. The main goal was to be able to recognize at any time period if there is potential for outbreak and if the outbreak is within certain parameters. In other words, if the was X amount cases of Salmonella during a time period, then is it within the historical context of disease in the county. The epidemiologist would be responsible to determine if the outbreak should be investigated or not. Finally, I had to do the same things to the STD data from 1995 to 2002.
The next project I worked on was began under my own initiative. The Health Department uses a software package called Map Viewer 5 for GIS applications. Mostly, it is used to map chronic disease in the state. I decided that it would be rewarding to learn how to map with this software, so I gathered some communicable disease data from ODH covering 1997 to 2002 and compiled it onto a spreadsheet. Next, I calculated mean annual incidence rates for the counties and began to plot some interesting maps. The Health Commissioner took a look at them and was amazed. Then, he called one of his collegues at the Fulton County Health Department, who was just as interested in the maps. Eventually, a sample of the maps were e-mailed and I began working diligently on some more. In the end, I had almost 30 different maps of various infectious disease, such as tuberculosis, giardiasis, shigellosis, and even pertussis and mumps.
PAGE TWO