Public Health Scholars Kick-Off Program at CDC Orientation
The CDC Undergraduate Public Health Scholars Program (CUPS) for students interested in public health careers kicked off its second year with a three-day orientation at the CDC. The enthusiastic group of 192 interns and fellows included a group of 50 students studying this summer at the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, College of Dental Medicine, and School of Nursing. The scholars listened to and posed challenging questions for CDC scientists from across the agency.
The program provides the students who come from four-year colleges, community colleges, and post-baccalaureate programs with meaningful and valuable experience in public health. The goal of the program is to increase the knowledge and interest of minority undergraduates in public health and biomedical science as well as build a diverse public health workforce prepared to reduce health disparities. This is in line with a larger HHS agenda to increase the diversity of the public health workforce to better address the needs of the nation’s increasingly diverse population.
CDC Director Tom Frieden, MD, MPH, welcomed students and congratulated them on their selection from more than 2,400 applicants. “When you get a summer internship opportunity you can take it in different ways. But you will find with this, as you will find with just about everything in your life: The more you put into it, the more you get out of it. You can always find people you can learn from, you can always find information you can absorb, and you can always find life experiences that become part of you and make you more able to do what you want to do. I hope this is a successful summer for you.”
The intensive 10-week Columbia Summer Public Health Scholars Program, is coordinated by the Office of Minority Health and Health Equity (OMHHE) and exposes students interested in minority health to the field of public health research and practice by providing hands-on, project-oriented assignments. The program at Columbia is led by Hilda Hutcherson, MD, associate dean of the Office of Diversity and clinical professor in the College of Physicians and Surgeons and Robert Fullilove, EdD, Mailman School professor of Sociomedical Sciences and associate dean for Community and Minority Affairs.
"I have been involved in higher education opportunity programs since 1968. Teaching in this program over the past two years has been an important reminder of how far we've come since then and of how efforts such as ours can advance the diversity agenda of schools of public health nationwide," said Dr. Fullilove.
In his welcoming remarks at the orientation in Atlanta, Commissioner Frieden noted that the internship at CDC is a “win-win situation,” and that some of the students might eventually work at CDC. He discussed the role of public health in closing the implementation gap between what we know and what we do. “While we do research here at CDC, our focus is closing that implementation gap, not just for society in general but especially for the groups that suffer disproportionately from preventable conditions.”
During the three-day orientation, students heard directly from presenters from diverse public health disciplines (i.e., HIV/STD, public health informatics, chronic diseases, blood disorders, tribal support, public health preparedness) to examine program and policy efforts that address health disparities. Presenters also provided information on student internships, the public health workforce, and their own professional paths in public health fields.