Externship Spotlight

Even though international travel is currently limited, we can still reflect on and learn from our past endeavors.  Thank you to Leanne Jankelunas for sharing her externship experiences from her time in the U.S. Virgin Islands!

Oh the Place’s You’ll Go: Externship Opportunities in One Health

By Leanne Jankelunas

“Oh the places you’ll go.” This Dr. Seuss statement could not better describe the possibilities that you can partake of in the field of veterinary medicine. In 2019, I applied for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Epidemiology Elective Program. This is a highly competitive program dedicated to recruiting 3^rd and 4^th year medical and veterinary students for 6- or 8-week externships at a variety of places including the CDC’s headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, CDC regional locations, and state, local and territorial health departments. The program’s goal is to provide medical and veterinary students both hand-on experience and training in applied epidemiology, public health, and global health. When I applied in March 2019 to this opportunity, I stated I was open to be placed anywhere in the country. I wanted to gain the experience in public health that I knew this program could uniquely provide me; so, I had few reservations concerning where I might be placed. In my application, I expressed an interest in One Health and fieldwork; and, in June, was pleasantly surprised to learn that I had been selected for a field opportunity in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

 The U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI) is a community unlike any other part of the United States. It is divided into 4 major islands made by both tectonic plates and volcanos. The community thrives on tourism but also has unique veterinary concerns as it has both a large agricultural history and contains a national park which closely borders its residential community. Additionally, recent hurricanes in 2017 have created a breaking point for zoonotic agents to more easily be transmitted to the public. Today, the community is still recovering from the significant devastation left in the aftermath of these storms. As such, the USVI Department of Health serves in an important role of monitoring, addressing, and teaching the public about serious zoonoses that can both impact both the population’s health and livelihood.

While in the USVI, I had a chance to see how veterinarians can fulfill truly interdisciplinary roles. My externship started in January 2020 and lasted until March 2020. My mentor, a veterinarian at CDC, utilized his skill set to breakdown boundaries between different animal care leaders and healthcare professionals. In doing this, we were able to monitor diseases endemic to the area, such as leptospirosis and collect valuable data that allowed us to ascertain the risk of transmission of specific diseases from the animal population to the human population. We worked with a variety of groups including national park officers, animal shelter leaders, member of the agricultural community, veterinary teams, and healthcare workers. My primary work involved assisting with a variety of studies centered around leptospirosis surveillance and rabies monitoring. However, I also had the opportunity to augment visiting field researchers with their respective disease investigations and animal monitoring programs. Moreover, I was able to translate my medical knowledge and communications skills to assist in COVID-19 surveillance, community-wide post-hurricane health monitoring, and community health education. I analyzed statistical data based on human medical records and assisted in building health databases. The Epidemiology Elective Program showcased, for me, the wide range skills that a veterinarian could utilize to promote public health. It also aided me in better grasping the role I wanted to play in promoting One Health globally.

CDC’s Epidemiology Elective Program has provided over 1,400 future physicians and over 550 future veterinarians with one of, if not their first, public health experience. Some graduates of the program go on to become a disease detective for CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service.

If you have any interest in One Health or Public Health, I highly recommend you apply for this opportunity. Applications open annually from February-March. Learn more about the program at https://www.cdc.gov/epielective/index.html or contact them at epielective@cdc.gov.  If you have any additional questions about the program, please do not hesitate to contact me directly at LNJ4@cornell.edu.