2018 Public Health Leadership Scholars

Public Health Leadership Scholars: Day Five- July 13th, 2018 The Scholars started off their day at the O’Neill House Building, where they were greeted by LDCR Christina Kirby along with the first speaker of the day, LDCR Cody Thornton. After listening to LCDR Thornton, the Scholars traveled over to the Humphrey Building to meet with Mr. Edward Gabriel, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response. Mr. Gabriel talked about his role in HHS—serving as the principal advisor to ASPR on emergency preparedness and response and recovery activities, programs, and policies. Prior to ASPR, Mr. Gabriel worked for Walt Disney as the Global Crisis Management director, where he provided leadership to medical and emergency operations. In addition, Mr. Gabriel talked to the Scholars about his experiences working as a paramedic in New York City’s EMS where he first developed and saw the need for public health. He then talked to the Scholars in depth about the Biomedical Adva...

Public Health Leadership Scholars: Day Four- July 12th, 2018 On the fourth day of PHLS we became Washingtonians. We did as the locals do and took the Metro up to Bethesda, Maryland for a tour of the National Institute of Health’s (NIH) National Library of Medicine (NLM). A guide toured us and a few new NIH interns around the world’s largest biomedical library, explaining how health professionals and students like us are able to utilize NLM’s vast print collection and electronic information resources from anywhere across the globe. In addition, since we were already feeling like locals, we took the time to get NLM library cards, just in case we needed to check something out to read on the Metro. According to its website, NLM also “supports and conducts research, development, and training in biomedical informatics and health information technology.” Resources like MedlinePlus, PubMed, and the Digital Collections are available to the public at https://www.nlm.nih.gov/portals/public....

Public Health Leadership Scholars: Day Three - July 11th, 2018 Day three started with an enlightening visit from Dr. Alexis Bakos, who currently holds the title of Senior Advisor to the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Minority Health. Dr. Bakos explained that she began her professional career rather unconventionally as a home health nurse in Ward 8, one of Washington D.C.’s most impoverished communities. Those experiences became the basis for all of Dr. Bakos’ work and launched her into continuing higher education ranging from participation on the Congressional Black Caucus to a doctoral fellowship program with the National Cancer Institute. Her message focused on minority health issues, specifically  how many minorities are often mistakenly grouped with other racial groups during national health surveys. Such practices enable collection of inaccurate information and must be deterred through the respect of individual cultures from all health professionals. The Scholars had th...

Public Health Leadership Scholars: Day Two - July 10th, 2018 The second day of PHLS provided the Scholars with the opportunity to hear from several different speakers. A few of the topics covered were disaster communications, transformative leadership, and emergency preparedness. These presentations provided the Scholars with important facts and statistics on the United States/territories and the citizens within them. This was a great time to learn about how the public can use the resources provided by the government and its affiliated organizations to better prepare themselves in the event of an emergency. Scholars learned how multifaceted emergency preparedness truly is and how it involves media, policy, access to electricity, and national communication.   One of the speakers who joined the Scholars was HOSA alumnus, Dr. Rick Garcia. He was a member of HOSA in the mid 1980's and used his experiences to begin his journey in the health profession. In 2016, Dr. Garcia at...

Public Health Leadership Scholars: Day One - July 9th, 2018 To begin the 2018 HOSA Public Health Leadership Scholars program, the Scholars had the pleasure of listening to Commander (CDR) Skip Payne of the United States Public Health Service (USPHS). He introduced the five Executive Core Qualifications (ECQ), which impact every person and action within the USPHS. The first ECQ is leading change. He explained how strategy plays an important role in change and how there must be a well thought out plan. The second ECQ is leading people. For this ECQ, CDR Payne described the difference between management and leadership. Management, he said, only benefits the manager in the short term because often they rely on the manipulation of their staff. Leadership, on the other hand, occurs when someone motivates other people and, as a result, both the leader and the staff receive benefits in the long term. The third ECQ is being results driven. There is a limited amount of time to make an impac...