First off I would like to thank Jill Rogers and the entire team at the Warren County Health Department for the position and experience I was able to be a part of this summer. I felt that this was a very meaningful experience for me to be able to work at the Warren County Health Department and it helped me discover the important services that can be provided by it within a rural community much like the one I grew up in as well as the community surrounding Wabash College. During my time there I learned about an aspect of health care that I was not very well versed in, that is public health. My experiences at the health department taught me a lot about the overarching field which is public health and how a local health department can be a hub of information and services that help to keep a community healthy. This experience showed me how much goes into public health other than the vaccinations and testing that I as well as every crying toddler was well accustomed to prior to my time at the WCHD. Other essential services that are offered such as septic and food permits/inspections make sure that businesses and homes
stay up to code and lower the chances of causing sickness in a community. Making sure that environmental issues and the status of the area are also very important as water testing for pools as well as for consumption is offered as well as general complaints involving burning and trash mismanagement are handled. Another overlooked role is that many small communities rely on the information that the health department has to refer to other services that might not be contained or provided by the health department itself. All of this helped to discover a new path of affecting and bettering people’s health rather than the traditional role of health experts to diagnose and treat a patient’s illness itself. So I felt that my time at the Warren County Health Department was very useful and informative.
