{"id":1732,"date":"2018-08-01T19:46:03","date_gmt":"2018-08-01T19:46:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/summerinternships\/?p=1732"},"modified":"2018-08-01T19:46:03","modified_gmt":"2018-08-01T19:46:03","slug":"hodges-19-meets-the-people-behind-prevention","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/summerinternships\/2018\/08\/01\/hodges-19-meets-the-people-behind-prevention\/","title":{"rendered":"Hodges \u201919 Meets the People Behind Prevention"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matthew Hodges \u201919 \u2013 <\/em>As a pre-med student with a primary care focus, I tend to frame preventive care at an individual level. When I think of preventive health measures, I generally think of proper diet, adequate physical exercise, reducing high-risk behaviors, and receiving routine checkups, vaccinations, and examinations. While these factors are undoubtedly important and play a key role in public health, there are so many preventive measures beyond the scope of individual lifestyle choices that are absolutely vital to a healthy community. Working at the Montgomery County Health Department this summer, I\u2019ve had the opportunity to see a small fraction of the work that goes on behind the scenes to keep our community healthy.<\/p>\n

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Matt Hodges ’19 laughs during a day of picking up mosquitos.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Many of the health department\u2019s responsibilities are things that we don\u2019t think about; we simply take them for granted because they have been done so well for such a long time. Food inspection and sanitation specifically come to mind. When we sit down at a local restaurant and order our favorite menu item, we assume the food is clean and won\u2019t make us sick. When we look down at our plate, we generally don\u2019t ask ourselves at what temperature the meat was cooked, whether or not there was cross-contamination in the kitchen, if everyone was wearing a hairnet, or if the freezer was cold enough. Fortunately, Adrianne Northcutt has already asked all of these questions so we don\u2019t have to. Similarly, the whole appeal of indoor plumbing is that we don\u2019t have to think about what happens after we flush. That isn\u2019t magic \u2013 it\u2019s a man named Don Orr. Don personally inspects every septic system in the county to make sure they meet standards that prevent a whole host of unpleasant sewage-related problems.<\/p>\n

Without people like Adrianne and Don, it would only be a matter of time before diseases and health issues that primarily exist in history books and developing countries come back to bite us. Working at the health department, I\u2019ve learned the importance of a sound, well-regulated infrastructure. Many of the societal comforts we take for granted are in fact substantial victories for public health.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Matthew Hodges \u201919 \u2013 As a pre-med student with a primary care focus, I tend to frame preventive care at an individual level. When I think of preventive health measures, I generally […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[88],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-global-health"],"w_featured_image_url":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/summerinternships\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2018\/08\/matt-and-sam-at-health-department-e1533152737155-768x1024.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/summerinternships\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/summerinternships\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/summerinternships\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/summerinternships\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/79"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/summerinternships\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1732"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/summerinternships\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1732\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1734,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/summerinternships\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1732\/revisions\/1734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/summerinternships\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/summerinternships\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/summerinternships\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}