Field Placement: UCLA Center for Public Health and Disasters (CPHD)
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Preceptor: Kimberley Shoaf, DrPH, CPHD Associate Director
Student Name: Tamiza Teja
Year: 2002

I began a 10-week internship with the UCLA Center for Public Health and Disasters (CPHD) on June 17, 2002, which ended on August 23, 2002. CPHD is based out of the Department of Community Health Sciences (CHS) of the UCLA of Public Health. I worked on the Public Health Training Seminars on Bioterrorism/Weapons of Mass Destruction and Disaster Management project under preceptor Kimberley Shoaf, DrPH, CPHD Associate Director and Adjunct Assistant Professor in the CHS Dept.

CPHD was recently designated by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention as an Academic Center for Public Health Preparedness. This makes it the responsibility of CPHD to provide training for local public health departments (usually at the county level) on disaster awareness and emergency management systems. At this time, particular attention is being paid to biological and other types of weapons of mass disruption terrorism. For my internship, I designed and organized presentation and handout materials.

The Center had previously presented similar information in various settings (class rooms, public health departments, conferences, etc). My role was to consolidate and update this information, and create new trainings using this information to be presented in two formats: the two-day training and the half-day training. The goal was to create standardized trainings to be implemented later with different agencies without having to recreate the wheel. The first two-day training was conducted with the UCLA School of Nursing on 14-15 August 2002, and the half-day trainings will be conducted in September for the Washoe County District Health Department in Reno, NV.

The content of the trainings include information on the structure and use of the standardized emergency management system and the incident command system; and information on nuclear, biological, and chemical terrorism agents, manifestation and response. Handouts included information on these subjects as well as a collection of related journal articles as supplementary references.

I very much enjoyed this internship as a result of the type of work I did as well as the working environment. My preceptor and the other staff were very supportive and encouraging in all of my questions and endeavors.

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