Getting Ready for San Antonio
Moriah Ma
4th Year Undergraduate Public Health Student
As I approach graduation, I’ve been thinking about what I want to do post-grad. Do I travel? Do I get a public health internship? What are the next steps? When I saw an email pop up in my feed about the opportunity for an in-the-field public health experience in Texas, I jumped to complete the application. I thought about all the different class topics that would culminate in public health in action. I have worked in a research assistant position for a public health project in Southeast Michigan, aiming to figure out the reasons behind COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. I felt grateful for the experience, but I hadn’t seen parts of it, like carrying out qualitative research and doing focus groups.
Although this class is half a semester, I feel that it has been an enriching experience of all the public health knowledge that I’ve learned over the past two years. I’m excited to do the public health work in a community context, rather than just learning the theory. I’m putting my work into practice. In my community service experiences in the past, I’ve had real-world experience that has enriched what I’ve learned in the classroom, and I’m more than excited to be able to go on this rewarding trip.
My group is going to be working on doing interviews with our community partners in San Antonio and creating training materials for community health workers serving community members and their families who have asthma. Although I don’t know what to expect, I’m grateful for the opportunities to work within the community and see the public health process in action. I can’t imagine a more fulfilling post-grad trip.