Pitt Public Health epidemiology students gathered at the O'Hara Student Center Ballroom on Sept. 24 to showcase their work at the Department of Epidemiology’s annual Epidemiology in Action poster symposium.
This year, 31 master’s students presented projects about infectious disease, health communication, environmental health, aging, emergency preparedness and other areas of public health. Twenty-eight students presented work from internships or practicums, while three presented master’s thesis research or works in progress.
For MPH students, completing an internship or practicum is required as part of the degree and includes at least 200 hours of applied experience, said Sharon Welburn (PhD/MPH, EPI ’19, ’13), director of the epidemiology master’s programs.
“We’ve got a great group of students doing really cool, independent work,” Welburn said.
Those experiences took students from hospitals, health departments and community organizations in Pittsburgh to those across the country.
For Janhavi Kulkarni (EPI ‘27), the experience offered an opportunity to return home to Colorado.
Kulkarni—who grew up in Centennial, Colo. —interned with Denver Health’s HITeam (High-Risk Infection Team), where she worked with the Regional Emerging Special Pathogen Treatment Center serving six states in U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Region 8: Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming.
Her poster focused on a landscape analysis of Category A hazardous waste management capacity across the region, examining how prepared states are to manage waste contaminated with pathogens that can cause serious or life-threatening disease.
Kulkarni said the experience strengthened her interest in infection prevention while introducing her to the administrative and coordination side of public health. After graduating, she hopes that path may eventually take her back to Colorado.
“I absolutely would love to go back home,” she said. “I’d absolutely love to be with the HITeam at Denver Health.”
Other students found opportunities to apply their epidemiology training closer to Pitt.
Riley Harris (EPI ‘26) completed her internship with Infection Prevention and Control at UPMC Passavant, where she audited practices surrounding indwelling urinary catheters to identify opportunities to prevent catheter-associated urinary tract infections, one of the most common hospital-acquired infections.
“This was really such a good application of everything I’ve learned so far,” Harris said. “It was nice to get my hands in the water, especially since infection prevention is a field that I’m pretty passionate about.”
For Harris—who graduates in December—the experience also helped solidify what she hopes to do next.
“This internship has definitely showed me that I’d like to work in the hospital setting,” she said.
Krystal Tran (EPI ‘27) took her skills into the community through her internship with Healthy Start, Inc., a maternal and child health organization. Her project focused on developing a research toolkit centered on involving community members in the research process.
“I feel like EPI can always be a lot of data, so I was able to really get out there and talk to Black moms and see what they’re experiencing,” Tran said.
For Alana Karras (EPI ‘27), her internship gave her a chance to combine epidemiology with health communication.
Karras completed her practicum with Pittsburgh Healthcare, Scientists, and Scholars, a local group of health care workers, public health professionals, clinicians and scientists. She developed evidence-based educational materials for community outreach and created an online home for the organization.
“I’m very proud of our students and all of the work they put into their projects,” said Welburn. “It truly shows the strength of the Department of Epidemiology at Pitt Public Health.”
Photos from the event are available on Flickr.
--Ava Dzurenda