The following is a transcript of an episode of From the Front Row: Student Voices in Public Health, the University of Iowa College of Public Health’s student podcast. Join host Lexi Fahrion as she talks with four current UI College of Public Health students about their summer internships and work experiences, what they’ve learned, and how these experiences will help them in the classroom and in their future plans.

Lexi Fahrion:

Hi, everyone. Welcome back to From the Front Row, brought to you by the University of Iowa College of Public Health. My name is Lexi Fahrion, and if this is your first time with us, welcome. We’re a student-run podcast that talks about major issues with public health and how they’re relevant to anyone, both in and out of the public health field. Today, I’m joined by four students in the College of Public Health here at Iowa, and we’re going to be chatting about their paths into public health and what they’ve been up to this summer. Today, our guests are Rylie Dewitt, Kavya Raju, Meghan Razimoff, and Hannah Trembath. So I’m going to start by just having everyone give us a general introduction. Hometown, if you were an undergraduate or your major and your minor, and what motivated you to come here to the College of Public Health. And if you’re a graduate student, same guidelines. Just tell us your master’s program, and what motivated you to do that program. So, Rylie, I’ll have you start off, if you don’t mind.

Rylie Dewitt:

Yeah. So my name is Rylie Dewitt, and I grew up in a small northwest Iowan town called Cherokee. I’m currently doing the undergrad to grad program in the College of Public Health, so this next year will be my last year as an undergrad as well as my first year in the Community and Behavioral Health Master’s Program. Public health was not something I’ve always thought about, but I always knew I was going to go to the University of Iowa ever since my brother came here, but I started taking some public health classes and public health soon became very important to me after learning about various social and psychological determinants of health that impact the majority of the population, really. And this sparked my passion, especially since I was never taught this before College of Public Health classes. A lot of people will never be taught this, so I think it’s really important.

Lexi Fahrion:

Definitely. I think that’s a really common theme that I’ve experienced as well, that public health is something you kind of almost stumble your way into or hear about along your path. Thank you, Rylie. Meghan, do you want to kick us off next?

Meghan Razimoff:

Yeah. Actually Rylie, that’s a great point. I remember my first public health introduction class, and public health is so holistic and wrapped around your every day. So it’s very interesting. Yeah. I felt like I stumbled onto it too, but yeah. So my name’s Meghan Razimoff. I’m currently a graduate student. I did the undergrad to grad program through the University of Iowa, so I got my BA in Public Health, and now I am within the Community and Behavioral Health Department. I come from the suburbs of Chicago, so one town specifically called Batavia. I decided to pursue my BA and then my Master’s in the Community and Behavioral Health Department because my entire family from and immigrated from Argentina. Learning to recognize health disparities and health inequities between vulnerable populations and really kind of how that compares and contrasts among different countries and different gender sexualities, ages, races… I think my family would definitely have to be a main part of why I really chose public health and chose to want to learn more and investigate about health outcomes among different groups. So, yeah. Thank you so much for having me today. I appreciate it.

Lexi Fahrion:

Yeah. Thank you, Meghan. That’s awesome to hear that your kind of life story inspired you to pursue this path because I feel like there’s so many different ways that people can get into it. Thanks again. Kavya, would you like to go next?

Kavya Raju:

Yeah. Hi, my name is Kavya. I’m originally from Ames, Iowa, and I’m currently studying public health on the BS track at the University of Iowa. I’m also getting minors in Human Physiology and Global Health. So what motivated me to pursue public health was probably how interdisciplinary and community-based the field is. It’s very broad and it covers a lot of different topics, which was great when I came into college, having no idea what I wanted to do. But I always knew that I was really passionate about topics like poverty and food security and different humanitarian issues, and I found that public health really is a central focal point that views all of these different issues through the lens of health, which was really interesting to me. And yeah. Ever since then, I’ve just really fallen in love with the field and everything that it encompasses, and I think there are a lot of amazing people in the field as well. So yeah, I really enjoyed it.

Lexi Fahrion:

Thank you, Kavya. I love hearing people’s perspectives and thoughts on public health because it just gives me new, better ways to explain it to my family and my friends when they ask what am I doing here. Hannah, last but not least.

Hannah Trembath:

Hi, my name is Hannah Trembath, and I’m a second year grad student in the biostats track for the MPH. I got my undergraduate degree in Human Physiology from the University. My original plan was to maybe go to medical school, but it was towards the end of my Bachelor’s that I became really interested in… that touched more on prevention. I became really interested in that, and it felt like it got really to the root of things. So I was also working in a microbiology lab for several years, and it focused on antibiotic stewardship, and that kind of fueled, I think, my interest in public health as well. I specifically chose Biostats because the lab I worked at did a lot of publishing and just stats. It’s all about the stats, and I’ve always liked math too. So yeah, that’s kind of how I came into this.

Lexi Fahrion:

Awesome. Thank you. I’m glad we’ve got a biostats person on board that give us some different perspectives today. That’s exciting. So thank you all for that quick introduction. Why don’t we go in that same order for my next question. What have you all been up to this summer? I know we’ve got a variety of different experiences, and I’m excited to be able to share that with all of our listeners.

Rylie Dewitt:

Yeah, so I am doing green Iowa AmeriCorps as well as interning. With Green Iowa AmeriCorps, I’m a summer member in the Energy and Community sector. The site I work at is Matthew 25 in Cedar Rapids, which is a nonprofit that does a variety of community rehabilitation projects. I have been working mostly on neighborhood rehabilitation, so I do a lot of phone calls and site visits to homeowners who need help with construction projects that were either caused by the [inaudible 00:07:01] or any circumstance really that they are unable to complete on their own, either due to physical reasons or financial reasons. So we get a bunch of volunteer groups and contractors that are able to complete these jobs at no cost to the homeowners in order to make their homes safer and their lives healthy.

Rylie Dewitt:

I’m also interning with Washington County Public Health, and there I have been working mostly on the CHNA HIP, which stands for Community Health Needs Assessment and Health Improvement Plan. I’ve been helping to put together a survey that can gauge the community’s opinions of what health topics are the most pressing in their community. I’ve also been collecting existing data on health topics, anywhere from mental health to emergency preparedness. So this data can be presented to community stakeholders that can help fund health improvement initiatives. So a lot of good experience.

Meghan Razimoff:

Yeah, that is incredible. Especially since you’re not even in almost the graduate level education. So the fact that you’re getting that so earlier on… I mean, I wish I had that. So congratulations to you. Truly awesome. Yeah, I’m kind of doing some similar work. I’m finishing up my applied practice experience for my Masters of Public Health, and I’m doing it out in Colorado. So at Weld’s County Department of Public Health. I decided to travel to another state, get outside of the boundaries of Iowa and Chicago land area. So that’s super, super cool. I’m working within the Health Education Communication and Planning division of the Health Department, and there are two separate projects that I’ve had my eyes set on. One of them being outdoor RX. So, really helping to boost outdoor engagement areas, the built environment, and helping raise awareness to these outdoor engagement opportunities for individuals across different municipalities.

Meghan Razimoff:

So we’ve created multiple community resource guides that help call out parks, trails, open spaces, disc golf areas, et cetera, and kind of draw down the barriers to awareness or accessibility or knowledge that some individuals may not have. And so that’s one… You know, they’re pairing up with different community health organizations to really advocate for outdoor engagement sense. Being outdoors has been shown to help mental health, help your physical health, whether you are doing physical activity or just being immersed in the outdoor nature area. I mean I know sometimes I go outside and I’m looking at trees and flowers and I feel already 10 times better than I would be if I hadn’t taken the time out. So yeah, that’s one of the main projects I’m looking at. And then the second one being the Wildcat Trail, which is the proposed initiative to create an 11 mile trail within two different towns, Firestone and Evans, because there are some health disparities with trail accessibility in certain areas. In Northern Colorado, there may be more trails in another area.

Meghan Razimoff:

And so really gauging that gap and ensuring that people have these trails so that they can use them and be a part of this outdoor community that Colorado sustains as an entire state. So talking to community stakeholders and ensuring that we’re advocating at that level. I’ve been refurbishing a community engagement plan to ensure that, not only do community residents know what’s out in the area, but that they can also advocate for this initiative. So that they’re also on board, which, obviously, buy-in from communities is very important for public health initiatives. But yeah, working at a health department has been a worthwhile experience. So yeah. Those are just some of the things that I’ve done this past summer.

Kavya Raju:

That sounds so cool, and I’m so jealous that you’re in Colorado. That sounds very fun. Meanwhile, I have been in Iowa City for the whole summer, and I’m working as an AmeriCorps Public Health intern at IC Compassion. So IC Compassion is a local nonprofit in Iowa City, and they do a lot of work with immigrant and refugee communities. They offer a wide variety of services like English tutoring, prep for citizenship classes and the test, and food pantry services. So they do a lot of different things. But what I’ve been working on is COVID-19 vaccine awareness, nutrition, and food safety. So that’s kind of some of the main projects that I’ve been doing. A big one that I started off with was COVID-19 vaccine awareness and gauging hesitancies within the refugee and immigrant community. It’s been really interesting to kind of create a very rough research project, if you could call it that, just kind of like by myself, doing a lot of focus groups and interviews and just talking to the refugee community to see how they feel about the COVID-19 vaccine.

Kavya Raju:

We also had the mobile clinic come and do a vaccine drive, and we’ve had different educational opportunities to learn more about COVID-19 as well, which has been really interesting to do. I’m also working with Healthy Life Stars, which is an organization through the University of Iowa College of Public Health. So with different kids who come to IC Compassion, I’ve been teaching them about leading a healthy lifestyle and physical activity and nutrition, which has also been so fun. And yeah.

Kavya Raju:

Aside from working with IC Compassion, I’ve been doing some research with Dr. Nicole Novak at the College of Public Health. That has also been regarding refugee and immigrant health, which it just kind of worked out that everything was related to each other. I’ve been doing some research on different towns in Iowa to see how the demographics of a town relates to the lived experience of people in it and how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected them.

Kavya Raju:

I also have been working as the lab manager in Dr. Christine Peterson’s lab. So that’s more like hands-on science, a lot of DNA isolating and PCR-ing, which is always fun. So yeah. That’s been the main things that I’ve been doing.

Hannah Trembath:

I have a high expectation to live up to coming last. I’m also doing my applied practice experience like Meghan, finishing that up, and I’m working with Johnson County Public Health on that. I am working with contact tracing data. It’s from test records, case investigation surveys, contact tracing surveys too. It’s focusing specifically on if masks have been effective with COVID-19. The project itself started earlier in the year, and I’m kind of just hopping on and doing some more calculations with that. The thing that has definitely been different in my case is that there’s a lot more vaccinated people now. So kind of throwing that in with, you know, how is this impacting with people who are vaccinated. And I feel like this project has, for me, been about a year in the making, because I actually worked as a contact tracer last summer with Lynn County Public Health. Doing that definitely has helped me with my practicum because I have an appreciation for and an understanding of the challenges that go into collecting the data and the boots on the ground work that goes into it.

Lexi Fahrion:

Thank you all for sharing. We have such a wide array of experiences and some really impressive folks on the podcast today. So once again, thank you all for taking the time. My next question for all of you kind of goes along with the explanations of your current activities. How have you been able to connect that back to the degree that you’re pursuing or the future work that you want to do? Or in what way has it inspired you to maybe look into new paths in your degree or your future work? And for this, whoever wants to start can start off. For the sake of time, we don’t have to go in and order anything.

Meghan Razimoff:

I can start. Yeah. So for me, obviously, I’m working within a County Health Department. That’s been very interdisciplinary, and prior to having this experience, I did not know… Well, I was aware through the education I have had among different departments and students in different departments at the graduate level that varying perspectives is very significant in the work that you do and the progress that you make within public health projects and such. But seeing it at the county level really helped me register that you consistently have partners next to you or organizations or coalitions that you can work amongst and use their networking or their resources in order to advance what you have going on at like your own organization. So although my interests do not specifically lie in built environments or maintaining or creating and building trails in Colorado, I’m actually quite further off.

Meghan Razimoff:

I have an interest in mental health and substance use. But that being said, a lot of what I did for this work, including community outreach and community organizing, helped me understand that, in the future, when I do want to make interventions or programs or start health education among and within communities, that you do need to have those strong relationships, not only with community residents, but with stakeholders and leaders and public health organizations. And then that becomes very important in the long run and sustainability of those programs. So I think that I really learned how to be a lot more confident in the projects that I was speaking about, how to orally present them also in layman’s terms so that it’s not just to people who are well-versed in public health but also people who may not be aware of these projects or these interventions and programs going on.

Meghan Razimoff:

Having that experience and getting to interact with multiple educational levels or people who have different experience backgrounds really taught me it’s important to be well-versed and understand your lack of understanding or knowledge in certain areas and expertise, but to ask for help. Because at the end of the day, when you’re working in Public Health, a lot of it, especially in the community behavioral health field, comes from being aware and recognizing and giving credit to the communities that you’re serving. And that’s how you get effective and efficient programs.

Rylie Dewitt:

Yeah. I completely agree with that. I definitely think you’re doing some amazing work, and again, jealous of Colorado. That has to be so fun. But like Meghan, I am also working in a County Public Health Department, which I would like to do in the future. I think it’s really cool to go into the office and see what it’s all about, see how many different projects and how interdisciplinary it really is to work in that kind of setting. Also like Meghan was saying, like with the survey that we were doing, it was going to be going to all of the community members. How to word that in a way that everybody’s going to understand, especially when we’re talking about different public health topics. Some people may not be aware of what, for example, environmental health is. Like what does that mean to like the normal community member, you know? So kind of steering that avenue and trying to figure out different ways of being really in the field, I think, has been a really cool experience.

Kavya Raju:

Yeah. Kind of going off of that, I think that communication piece is really something that you can only learn being in the field and doing hands-on work. In my coursework, we obviously talk about health inequities a lot, but working at IC Compassion, I think I’ve learned how difficult it is to navigate our system of healthcare. If you are not an English speaker, or if you’re not familiar with the system, or if you don’t know what certain words are, what certain medical terms are, and just that it’s really such a privilege to be able to fully trust our healthcare system.

Kavya Raju:

Which again, we talk about in class, but seeing how there are so many individuals in our community here in Iowa City that do not feel the same level of trust for the healthcare system that, personally, I would, and how that can also lead to an increased risk of poor health outcomes… Just witnessing that was really eye-opening and just brought to light a lot of like ways that we can change our system and how we can work as public health professionals to break down some of those barriers that caused the inequities that we talk about in class. So, yeah. That’s been really interesting to see.

Hannah Trembath:

So definitely for me, communication has been a theme with mine as well because in my classes, in Biostats, you get an output, and it’s interpretation. What did the coefficients mean? But for this, it’s been, “Okay, we have the numbers. Let’s translate it to in a way that everyone understands.” And that’s definitely been a mental exercise for me, but a good one.

Lexi Fahrion:

Definitely. Thank you all for sharing that. It seems like one of the key takeaways here is communication comes from practice and appreciating the communities around you and that’s how you can get effective work done. So thank you to all. That was super insightful. I know we’re getting close on time, but my last question is one that we like to ask every guest of the podcast. So I’ll just ask everyone to give their elevator pitch answer. What we’d like to ask everyone before they leave is, what is something that you thought that you knew that you later realized you were wrong about? In this case, in your field of study that maybe you realized in your internship, or just along your path here at Iowa. It can really be anything. Maybe we’ll go in that original order, and I’ll put you on the spot first, Rylie, if you don’t mind.

Rylie Dewitt:

Yeah. I think just for me, realizing that public health is truly everywhere. Before college, I had originally planned on being a nurse. So before having any exposure to public health at all, I was unaware of what it was. So I think for me, not so much… Like I knew what public health was, but just realizing a little bit about what public health is. Poverty is a huge public health issue that I don’t think as many people think of as necessarily a public health issue. Poverty can affect someone’s ability to get hired, which then affects their ability to get health insurance, which then affects their ability to receive healthcare and prescription drugs and mental health care, dental, et cetera. The list goes on and on, and it’s a vicious cycle. I wish more people knew about this or were open to learning about this and we’re more open to improving the issue because it truly is such a pressing issue. I think just like the main theme of this is that public health is everywhere, and even when you don’t think public health could apply, it really does. So. Yeah.

Meghan Razimoff:

Yeah. Again, that goes back to the first thing that you said, Rylie. Just that public health surrounds you on an everyday basis, which is truly incredible. I love being a part of this field, and every day I learn more and more from the people around me. And even each of you here. So thank you for talking about your experiences because I am wowed. If you could see me, you would see that I am.

Meghan Razimoff:

But I think for me personally, what is one thing that I thought I knew but was later wrong about would pertain to the allocation of resources and funding for certain public health problems and such. I used to think that it was equally spread about and that like priorities were placed together as a community and with public health workers and such based on like community health assessments and needs.

Meghan Razimoff:

And I’ve come to find out that, certain like county level health departments do not get as many resources or funds from the government that I used to think they did. And so that being said, they’re not able to allocate all of that money or potential resources and services to certain fields like mental health or like opioid uses and such. So I think it’s becoming more imperative to me every day that I’m looking into private funding and ways to really push forward those initiatives and raise awareness about their necessities is growing. I think that also deals with a lot of stigma, reducing stigmatization on these issues that some people don’t view as crucial or predominant. But again, public health is consistently growing and learning and as we all are as well. So, yeah. It’s very important, and I’m just glad to have the experience to continue reflecting and viewing my positionality towards that.

Kavya Raju:

Okay. Something that I thought I knew a lot about was the community and Iowa City and the types of people that lived in Iowa City. But the more that I get out and work within different organizations or groups or whatever it is outside of the University, the more I’m realizing that Iowa City has a lot more diversity than I thought it did. There are a lot of different groups of people that face different every day issues or just live lives that are completely different to mine. And I think going to the University of Iowa, I’m very much in a bubble of like-minded people, especially in the College of Public Health, and working with different researchers and people who see public health every day.

Kavya Raju:

It’s a very small bubble where people kind of have the same mindset regarding issues, but getting out of that space and going into different areas of the community in Iowa City, I’ve just realized that it is so different than what I thought it was like. And just meeting different people and hearing about their experiences has been really interesting and just fun to meet new people outside of the College of Public Health.

Hannah Trembath:

What I have learned is very similar to yours, Kavya. The town I come from in Iowa is really, really small and homogeneous in the southern part of the state. I definitely, before even coming to the University of Iowa and before starting this grad program, I didn’t really have an understanding about disparities and diversity. But definitely living in Iowa City and learning about public health and health disparities has, I guess, opened my mind a little bit more about… And it’s constant. It’s forced me to self-check and be more open-minded and seek out more information and not just accept what is being put in front of me and to always stay intellectually curious, if that makes sense.

Lexi Fahrion:

Absolutely. Thank you all for sharing that. That’s my favorite question to ask. I think it’s really amazing that you’ve all sought out these opportunities that have taught you so many new things just in the short span of a summer. I think that’s really a testament to what our students can find for themselves and what the University can help connect them to as well.

Lexi Fahrion:

So I want to thank you all again for coming. I really enjoyed talking to you all, and I hope you enjoyed being on the podcast. And thanks again.

Alexis Clark:

That’s it for our episode this week. Big thanks to Rylie, Kavya, Meghan, and Hannah for coming on with us today.

Alexis Clark:

This episode was hosted and written by Lexi Fahrion and edited and produced by Alexis Clark. You can learn more about the University of Iowa College of Public Health on Facebook. Our podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and SoundCloud. If you enjoyed this episode and would like to help support the podcast, please share it with your colleagues.

Alexis Clark:

Our team can be reached at cph-gradambassador@uiowa.edu. This episode was brought to you by the University of Iowa College of Public Health. Stay happy, stay healthy, and keep learning.