Graduation!

I can't believe this week is final's week and this Friday is the College of Public Health graduation ceremony. The past two years have flown by. It still hasn't sunk in completely that I will be done with graduate school at the end of this week. These past few weeks have been especially exciting, with one of the highlights being that I accepted a job offer! I am going to be a Health Education Specialist. I think the job is a great fit for me and I'm looking forward to beginning in June!

Leaving the College of Public Health is certainly very bittersweet. I am excited to begin my post-graduate professional career and put what I've learned in the MPH program to use, but at the same time, I will miss being around my classmates (as well as the faculty and staff) and taking interesting classes. Although I certainly plan to continue to stay connected to the College of Public Health community, as an alum who is close by, it will be quite different from being a current student.

It's been a pleasure blogging for the College these past few months as well! If you're considering going to the University of Iowa College of Public Health and would like to ask me some questions, please don't hesitate to contact me. You can get my email address from Lexie Just by emailing lexie-just@uiowa.edu.

Breast Health Summit

I'm sorry it's been so long since my last post! Between spending time on my practicum event, keeping up with school, working my two jobs, and job hunting, my blogging has gone by the way-side. Things have calmed down a little though now that my practicum event is basically complete! My practicum has been organizing, implementing, and evaluating a Breast Health Summit. The Summit itself happened on March 10th in Cedar Rapids. The event was a day-long and focused on African American women, although health care providers and public health professionals were welcome to attend as well. 78 people ended up attending and it went really well.

Here's the save the date I made for the event

One of the biggest take-home lessons I got from the whole experience was a reminder on the importance of working with members of the targeted community in all stages of planning, implementing, and evaluating the event. Women who are leaders in the Cedar Rapids African American faith community were involved right from day one in planning this event. Without their involvement and all the time they dedicated to this project, the event would have been a lot less well attended and not nearly as effective.

The Gazette wrote a great piece about breast cancer in African American women and the Summit before it happened. Some members of the planning committee and two speakers at the Summit are interviewed in it. That article is available here.


In other news, I am planning on following the Affordable Care Act supreme court case closely these next few days! NPR has had some great articles about the case recently, including this one.