Hi HOSA!
Day four was a bit hectic as we began our morning with a long metro ride to USUHS (Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences). USUHS is a graduate school in Maryland which aims to educate and train health professionals for the armed forces. USUHS features graduate programs in public health, biomedical sciences and even an allopathic medical school. Attached to the school is the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. We first met with admissions staff to learn about the school, their programs and specifically, some of the details regarding their MD program. The most interesting aspect of their MD program was that the program is tuition-free! The only catch is that after your education, you are committed to serving the school for seven years. All prospective MD students are allowed to apply; you do not have to have military experience. We then were taken on a thorough tour through the school and obtained a better understanding of student life by visiting the classrooms, gym, cafeteria and anatomy labs. To learn more about the school, click here!
After taking the metro back to D.C., we walked over to the Humphrey Building where we met with Deputy Surgeon General-RADM Boris Lushniak. RADM Lushniak explained that the Office of the Surgeon General (OSG) runs the Commissioned Corps which is one of the seven uniformed services in the United States. The Surgeon General position is a 4-year term position and after their appointment, they have two nicknames: Commander of the Commissioned Corps or Nation's Doctor. After Regina Benjamin resigned in 2013, RADM Lushniak stepped in as the Surgeon General for 18 months until the 19th and current Surgeon General, Vice Admiral Vivek Murthy, was sworn in. The purpose of the Surgeon General is to communicate the best science available to the public in an effort to protect their health. The Surgeon General accomplishes this by reminding the public of recurring health issues from the past, such as tobacco, and addressing new, late-breaking public health problems, such as Ebola. After our discussion, we even got to take a picture with RADM Lushniak! For more information about RADM Lushniak, click here.
It was finally lunchtime so we stopped at the cafeteria in the Humphrey Building and grabbed a bite to eat. Afterwards, we walked across the street to the O'Neill Building to hear from our next speaker, Nancy Nurthen from the Office of Emergency Management (OEM) Fusion Division. The purpose of the Fusion Division is to provide decision support for OEM and ASPR leadership through the use of visual data. This visual data is typically in the form of graphs, maps, charts, and social media posts. The goal of the Fusion Division is to stay ahead of emergencies by predicting support needs based on emerging events in the U.S. Some examples of the programs they use include GeoHEALTH and HAvBED. GeoHEALTH is used to load/view local data such as weather maps, healthcare info, population demographics, and CDC information. The HAvBED software is utilized in order to analyze bed availability in health facilities nationwide and address weaknesses in advance. Twitter is also used extensively for disaster awareness and disease tracking. Check out nowtrending.hhs.gov for an example of how they use Twitter to prepare for and react to emergencies!
Our next presentation was from Deborah Knickerbocker who is part of the OEM Recovery Division. The purpose of this division is to empower the people in disaster-stricken communities and meet their long-term needs. Resilience is the key to recovering after a disaster and recovery entails not just building back, but building back better. After the emergency responders leave, there is still work to be done and needs to be met. The Recovery Division provides emergency support functions, such as health and social services.
Next on the agenda were two professionals from the Communications Office at ASPR. They stressed that communication is the key to resilience. To stimulate action, three things are needed: information, resources to use the information, and the care to act. ASPR uses many partners to communicate their messages, especially when utilizing social media outlets, such as Facebook and Twitter. As future health professionals, we should know the risk communication principles as well as psychological first aid. More information about risk communication can be found here and a free online course on psychological first aid can be found through The National Child Traumatic Stress Network.
To wrap up the day, we heard from Captain Denis regarding public health and leadership. Capt. Denis explained that the four P's of health are primary care, population health, personal responsibility and preventive medicine. Healthcare is just a small piece of health though. There are many other factors that determine one's health including environment, socioeconomic status, etc. The only vulnerable/at-risk populations are those which are presented with barriers to obtaining information, understanding information and acting upon this information. A great self-awareness tool to increase your leadership potential is the SWOC tool. SWOC stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges. By being brutally honest with yourself, you can find areas for improvement within yourself, identify the specific opportunities to make these improvements and pinpoint the challenges that you will have to overcome to accomplish these improvements.
See you tomorrow!
Justin Zeien (AZ)
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