Shannon McClenahan, Baylor University
This content was created by an EHS intern to describe intern experiences. It has not been revised or edited to conform to agency standards. The findings and conclusions are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
SUPEH Intern, Summer 2016
During the summer of 2016, I had the privilege of completing a 10-week internship as part of the SUPEH program at CDC, hoping to develop a better idea of my interests in the field of environmental health. My fellow SUPEHs and I were assigned to the Environmental Health Services Branch of the National Center for Environmental Health. For my primary project, I worked under Max Zarate-Bermudez, a member of the branch’s Safe Drinking Water Team. I had the opportunity to work with Max in assessing the needs and challenges of seven of the nineteen state and county health department grantees participating in CDC’s Safe Water for Community Health (Safe WATCH) program. I helped to look for potential program gaps by assessing the grantees’ Year One progress reports and eventually participating in calls with the grantees themselves.
I also took part in a variety of other activities that gave me a much broader idea of the aspects of environmental health. Along with interns from two other summer programs in addition to SUPEH, I participated in weekly brown bag lunches with subject matter experts, weekly journal club discussions, and Friday field trips, all based on the topic of the week (air, food, water, built environment, etc.). The SUPEHs also had some additional programming where we got to tour a chicken processing plant with a USDA inspector, as well as spend two days shadowing with the Gwinnet County Health Department, following along on restaurant and on-site sewage system inspections.
One of the most rewarding experiences of the summer for me was when the SUPEHs gave a four-and-a-half hour presentation on Environmental Health Training for Emergency Response (EHTER). We presented to the interns in the CLEH and GEH programs as a combination of PowerPoints and group exercises. The EHTER presentation really helped to build my confidence and presentation skills, and I also discovered that I have a real interest in environmental health emergency response.
Finally, I was also able to participate in a side project under LCDR Justin Gerding that involved performing website reviews for States to evaluate what environmental and public health services each State offered, and whether environmental public health services are offered primarily at the State or local/regional level for each State. I performed a number of State reviews during my internship, and because one of my professors at Baylor is involved in the overall project, I was able to continue doing State reviews when I returned to school. Eventually I had the privilege of presenting a poster related to some of this work at the annual NEHA conference in 2017.
Overall, my summer internship was a fantastic opportunity to explore my vocational field and network with some amazing CDC professionals. Since the end of my SUPEH experience, I have completed my degree in Environmental Health Science at Baylor University and I have returned to the CDC as an ORISE Fellow for the Safe Drinking Water Team.