Prevention and Response with Local Public Health

This summer, I was able to work at my local health department in Polk County, Iowa, thanks to the Whitman Internship Grant. This was a meaningful experience as the work I was doing was making a positive impact on the communities in which I grew up.

At the health department, I was able to learn skills that encompassed many parts of public health, including data collection, disease modeling, grant management, and public communication. During my time at the health department, Polk County had Iowa’s first measles case of 2026, which meant that my work shifted rapidly to respond to the needs of the situation. 

Each day started with our 8:30 a.m. briefing in which each person involved in the response shared their work from the previous day and statistics on patient contacts and immunity testing were updated. After that, we were able to set our objectives for the day and divide tasks among the team. 

After this, I would make my way to the call center that we had set up to field community questions about measles as well as contact people who may have been exposed to the virus. I would speak with our phone operators about what common questions they had received in the last day. Using the list of the FAQs, I would research information from the State of Iowa and CDC resources. Then I  could run the factual information by our communications director so we could polish the wording to best fit the overall narrative for the department before returning this to our call center staff. This task allowed the public to have one cohesive message whether they got their information from our call center, social media or news coverage. 

Next, I would meet with our epidemiologist, who had various tasks for me throughout our response. Some of the things I did were designing a computer system to triage the severity of infection contacts, creating a way to autopopulate statistics into our contact tracing, and creating timelines of the clinical presentation to share with providers. This work helped consolidate our data and make fact-based decision-making easier for both our team and our community partners.

Through these tasks, along with many hours listening and contributing to discussions and decision-making, I was able to get a better understanding of what it takes to work on a team responding to an infectious disease outbreak. 

Alongside our measles response this summer, I was able to participate in training for Viral Hemorrhagic Fever patient care as well as attending continued learning seminars about Legionnaires’ disease and Mass Casualty Incidents. These opportunities helped me to better understand the work that public health professionals do on the day-to-day and helped me narrow down which area of public health I would like to work in. 

I am so grateful for the WIG for funding my experience with Polk County Health and the team that supported me while I was there. If I had one piece of advice for students seeking the WIG, it is to look for an employer that is excited to see students grow, and once there, say yes to learning anything and everything your coworkers are willing to teach you.

Finn Stukerjurgen ’29 (he/him) is a Brain, Behavior & Cognition and Politics double major from Ankeny, Iowa. While at Whitman, Finn is a member of the Blues swim team, Cycling club, and Whitman College First Responders club.