Student Spotlight | Working during the COVID-19 Pandemic | USC MPH

Phil Soloria:

Hello, everyone. We will begin shortly. We’re just waiting for others to get on, but we will start right at the top of the hour. (silence)

Phil Soloria:

Hello again, we just had a few people just join, so we will be starting soon right at the top of the hour, so just sit tight and we’ll be starting soon. Thanks. (silence)

Phil Soloria:

A few more people just joined. We will be starting in about two minutes, just letting other, more people just kind of trickle in.

Phil Soloria:

Hello and welcome to the Online Master of Public Health Programs Student Spotlight Webinar presented by the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. My name is Phil Soloria. I’m a graduate admissions advisor for the Master of Public Health Program, and I will be your host for today’s webinar.

Phil Soloria:

I would like to thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to join us today. To begin, I’d like to review what you can expect during this presentation. To cut down on background noise, everyone is on listen only mode, and if you’re experiencing any technical difficulties, please be sure to refresh your browser. If you have any questions for any of our speakers, please type them in the Q and A box in the lower right-hand corner of your screen and hit send. Feel free to enter any questions as you think of them, and we’ll be sure to answer as many questions as time allows at the end of the presentation. Also, a copy of the presentation and recording will be available soon. I am going to pass this over to Dr. Shubha Kumar, PhD, MPH, to touch on her experience and work within the program. How are you doing, Dr. Kumar?

Dr. Shubha Kumar:

Hi Phil. Thank you, doing well. I hope everyone here is doing well. I appreciate you all joining us. As Phil mentioned, I’m Dr. Kumar and I’m the director of the Online Master of Public Health Program here at USC. I’m also an associate professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine, and my expertise and research really focuses on global health monitoring and evaluation, specifically kind of really looking at programs and how effective they are and how they could be made more effective. This interest really stems from my professional background prior to academia, where I was working with several nonprofits and NGOs in the international health and humanitarian space and continues with my research today, so that’s a little bit about me.

Dr. Shubha Kumar:

Now, I’ll share with you a little bit more about the program and USC. Our online MPH program is housed within the Keck School of Medicine, and Keck School of Medicine is actually the oldest medical school in Southern California. It was established in 1885 and we are affiliated with several hospitals, institutes, and cutting edge research centers. Within the School of Medicine, our program is within the Department of Preventive Medicine. We are essentially kind of known as a leader in public health and population health sciences. As a department, we’re organized into six divisions, including disease prevention and global health, by informatics, statistics, epidemiology, environmental health, and health behavior research. We have over 100 faculty within the department, so we’re very large, and our faculty specialize in these key areas.

Dr. Shubha Kumar:

The program itself offers six different concentrations, including biostatistics and epidemiology, community health promotion, geo health. Let me say a word about geo health. It’s a unique offering that we have, which looks at the application of spatial analysis and GIS, geographic information systems and skills as related to public health. It’s a pretty unique field and kind of a growing field in demand as are many of these for that matter. In addition to those three, we have a concentration of global health, health services and policy, which is really focused on the domestic side of healthcare. Then we have a generalist concentration for those of you who have advanced degrees, doctoral degrees who maybe want to pick and choose courses from these specific concentrations.

Dr. Shubha Kumar:

In addition to the coursework that students complete in the program, students also complete a practicum, which is essentially like an internship of about 300 hours at an agency of the student’s choosing, as long as the agency is working on something public health-related. Many students choose to do the practicum at their place of work. As long as it’s something unique compared to their day-to-day job. It’s not something they’re working on every day, but it’s something different that allows them new exposure, new networks, new learning, or students may choose to do something at an agency that they’ve never worked with or in a location they’ve never worked with. We have students who work in their own city and students who go anywhere in the world for that matter. We are actually affiliated with over 400 organizations worldwide where students can complete their practicum ranging from small, local community-based NGOs, to the World Health Organization and United Nations and to LA County and federal government.

Dr. Shubha Kumar:

We have lots of opportunities for students to engage in their practicum. A lot of our students actually use the practicum opportunity to land their next job after graduation. I think you’ll be hearing from two of our students today who may have actually done that. Without further ado, I’m going to introduce our two student speakers for today. Actually, I should say alumni. I was very proud of him. First one, Jonathan Robinson, he’s currently a testing operations manager at Reel Health, and he graduated from the USC MPH program in global health with his track. I believe he’s an experienced EMS professional and previously served as a public health emergency COVID-19 specialist for Children’s Hospital of Orange County. During the COVID-19 pandemic, as international borders closed, Jonathan adopted his background and he EMHS service delivery, international project management and public health study to better safeguard the health and safety of the entertainment and film industry.

Dr. Shubha Kumar:

We’re looking forward to hearing more about his work and after Jonathan, we’re going to be hearing from Lubna Kabir, who’s also a recent graduate of our MPH online program, and currently an intern at the Community Response System of South LA. She graduated from the Community Health Promotion Track and for her practicum, she worked as an intern for the Community Response System of South LA that assists individuals, families, and businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Recently, she’s helped conduct assessment of CRSSLA’s initial impact on the community, and she will be attending medical school in the upcoming year.

Dr. Shubha Kumar:

We’re really thrilled to have both of these alum speakers tonight. I will say that this series in itself has been inspired by the amazing work that our students do both while in the program and after they graduate. They continue to inspire me and our other faculty, and we really thought, “We’ve got to highlight our students and hear what they’re up to.” This is that opportunity for us all to hear about that. Without further ado, I’m going to turn it over to Jonathan.

Jonathan Robinson:

Thank you very much, Dr. Kumar, and it’s really such an honor to be able to speak in this platform as a representative, one of the alumni from USC. For those that have done some of these before, I had a previous chance to do this and unfortunately, with everything in the pandemic and all these changes, I was actually pulled away at the last second for some job items. It’s nice to have a second opportunity here.

Jonathan Robinson:

A little about myself, my name’s Jonathan Robinson. I graduated from USC Keck school of Medicine in the MPH online program in December of 2018. As they said, I have about 11 to 12 years of EMS experience. I work as a EMTB or at EMP Basic at a children’s hospital called Chuck Children’s Hospital. When I went through the public health program, it was really to expand my career goals, and really just kind of explore new fields. That’s really taken new horizons and what we’ll kind of go through during my presentation here is what that kind of translated through with the COVID pandemic and how many as unfortunate it was to see all the changes, what kind of pivotal environment came for public health specialists to kind of stand up and start voicing their experience and their education.

Jonathan Robinson:

A little about myself, I grew up in San Clemente, which is the southern most coastal town in Orange County in California. I grew up living along the beach there that’s actually one of the city photos and my house is up on the cliff. Grew up along, running along the beach, working out there, going to school. I really grew a passion for the ocean environment, as well as Coastal College and everything else. At the age of 17-18, I became a lifeguard for the city of Laguna beach. I loved working as a public servant and serving that community, both for making ocean rescues, but really just being out in the community, talking to people, giving advice, just being a symbol of the city. It was really great.

Jonathan Robinson:

From there. I went to Vanguard University of Southern California. I earned my Bachelor’s of Science and Biology and intended to go to medical school. From there, I started kind of involving in my EMS career. Life guarding took me to working as an EMT on an ambulance, got some experience there. It really opened up new horizons of working internationally with different non-profits and in faith-based institutions that I started volunteering with, took me to places like Kenya. In that time, I really grew an interest for public health. I started looking around for opportunities and what that looked like and stumbled upon the Keck School of Medicine’s program and went through the process and really just grew a passion for it, grew a love for it. The different advisers and everyone through the process made it so easy. It was hard not to join the program. I looked around and really USC’s …

PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:20:04]

Jonathan Robinson:

… join the program. I looked around and really USC’s exactly what I was looking for. It was a network just from the get-go and invited me right in and helped me along with all the classes and all the coursework and what it looks like over the next two year period.

Jonathan Robinson:

I joined in January, the spring semester of 2017, the online program. I attended for a two year program and my concentration was global health leadership. I chose this to really expand upon my global health experience. I was just budding. Getting back from Kenya and seeing what community health workers were and taking some audited classes from Johns Hopkins and others. I wanted to see what that was like on a more specific scale.

Jonathan Robinson:

During that period I had an opportunity to really grow in the online program. The online program, one of my biggest draws to it was the flexible schedule. It was the ability to travel and work full time. It was the ability to still with USC, meet with my professors. I still had the same academic advisement as any other student have. I still had the same resources and contact with the USC library and everything else that any other on-campus student has. What that allowed me to do is allow me to travel and allowed me to really embody as I drew growing up with my family, Oh, the places you’ll go with Dr. Seuss.

Jonathan Robinson:

As you can see some from the photos, these were all taken during my time at USC. I took a full-time course schedule of two classes a semester. During that time some classes that really helped me out were PM508 and healthcare system delivery, cultural and health PM525. Global health governance, that one, if there’s any current students here, I highly recommend. It may be a little different right now with COVID, but for those in the coming years, it gave me the opportunity to go to Geneva and work with WHO. During that time period I was able to work in Uganda, which is that middle photo, teaching CPR and a home stay. I had the opportunity to go to Ghana and work with the Military Naval Academy, the army, branches of coast guard and everything else to teach lifeguards. I worked with the Red Cross, down in the bottom left, in Nicaragua and then my practicum, which was all made possible by my wonderful academic advisor, Dr. Mellissa Withers, who really helped give me the confidence to go through this process, especially as a researcher. I was awarded the the Bremen Scholarship for global health immersion fellowship and that funded all of my traveling for a research project I connected in Vietnam. It’s called trauma patients in Vietnam. I spent two months there conducting research on EMS patients and their transport to the hospital.

Jonathan Robinson:

After graduation I started looking for things to do. That looks like I really took off my global health career. I became a marine safety lieutenant with my lifeguard division that I work with called ISLA. I’ve been on, I believe 14 projects now, in eight different countries. We lead different international groups of professionals all around the world to go work with different grassroots organizations, government systems, community groups, private sector, whoever needs the assistance we’ll go and partner with them and raise up a lifeguard service and then give them resources after that. I worked as an intern for Orange County EMS, getting a background and what it looks like for emergency management. I did some training and background for GIS work, geographic information systems, where I designed a lot of the epidemiologic research for trauma patients across the County and then utilize that a lot for emergency manage of designing the pods and the pointing dispensing system.

Jonathan Robinson:

In my off time, I took a lot of time to use surfing and hanging out with my dog for coping. Things I love to do outside of my work where I just get to decompress and relax, but then everything changed. The pandemic hit and we experienced all those shutdowns. During that time, I was working as an EMT at CHOC Children’s Hospital and immediately we had to change our setup. We immediately instituted mask wearing with surgical masks across the hospital in the emergency department. We had to start wearing eye protection in every environment. We setup external triage areas and symptom checks, which is now the new normal in every environment, but in the hospitals at the beginning, this was all new to us. During that pandemic, it took away my coping mechanisms. It took away my beach in Laguna. The bottom left photo is of Huntington Beach and the protests for the mask order that was issued by the County. That’s in my backyard. I live in Newport beach and that was just a couple blocks away from me and that went on for months with different protests and what that looks like in my area and being a public health expert and speaking out to my friends and colleagues and family. It really gave me an opportunity to budding my already work environment and gain some trust.

Jonathan Robinson:

The opportunity really led to, with a public health background and everything else. It gave me a unique opportunity to work as an expert and not only a subject matter expert, but an expert to my colleagues. I approached the hospital that I worked at and gained a promotion as the public health emergency specialist for COVID, where we instituted PPE training for all of the emergency and trauma department. We issued new guidelines for patient intake of triaging. We worked on supply ordering and instituted our emergency command center at the hospital. Working in the hospital in the beginning phases was, it was daunting. There was a lot of information coming in and out and early on in pediatrics, it was actually the opposite. Where adult hospitals were starting to show signs of lots of patients or minimal would be considered to what we see now, but in pediatrics we went the opposite direction.

Jonathan Robinson:

Everyone fled the medical system and we had a patient shortage. We had to start shutting down services in the hospital. We had to start furloughing staff and doing forced days off for staff because we didn’t have enough patients. It was a counterintuitive environment for those that don’t work in normal pandemic or disaster medicine, but it was something that we worked together as a team. As the pandemic progressed, we really started seeing an uptick in patients.

Jonathan Robinson:

I’m going to go to my second slide. We’ll start with this one. Currently our test positivity rate in Orange County is about 17%. What that looks like is it’s about one in six, one seven of every people who test for COVID come up positive. That does have a bias to it because it’s those that are testing also have a statistical more likelihood to be positive for themselves as they’re seeking out a test, but within the County that I work in, it’s a free service. Anyone can get COVID testing. They’ll send test to their homes. They’ll give remote testing. They give onsite public testing. They give walk-in clinics, physician testing, free testing at the emergency departments. We really upped our testing to try and bring down that number. Currently it’s skyrocketing and in the hospital systems, it’s starting to become more of a concern.

Jonathan Robinson:

We’ll go to the next number here. It kind of cut off the side a little bit, but this is our current hospital patients. As I worked at Orange County EMS and unfortunately my favorite part of the slide’s a little cutoff. That first bump you see in the blue is what we call the second wave back in July. On the far right, which is not quite visible, we’re at about three to four times that number and locally in Orange County and LA, that that’s causing a lot of concern. We’re working on spinning up a lot of our surge capacities and what that looks like. We’ve had shutdowns. We’ve had all of these new growths to help combat as the virus spreads. The current ICU patients at 544 patients. Our ICU bed capacity used to be around 600. We’re now sitting around probably 750 to a thousand due to the surge capacity growth. It’s a time for us to really take this serious.

Jonathan Robinson:

As I transitioned through I was looking at different opportunities and different doors started opening up. As a public health expert and with a very good education in the field from USC, I started getting a lot of calls. I got calls from the County. I got calls from different non-profits. The private sector even started opening up for public health, in which case I was looking for new environments and places to grow in and expand my horizon, so I started looking to film and entertainment. During that time film and entertainment in many states has been deemed as an essential service as a coping mechanism for people. They’re producing content for people to consume at home. They’re being able to go through services to help coping items that have otherwise been shut down for the outdoor environment. What I was able to embark on was a health and safety manager for film sets.

Jonathan Robinson:

I worked on a production, which I can’t get too much into, which is why a lot of the photos are a little generic here. I worked on set where we have different mechanisms that we set up to help for infection control. It really gave me an opportunity to apply a lot of the education I learned with using the public health leadership and management courses, where I was thrown into a leadership role, had a team of about three to five employees and oversaw a cast and crew of about 150 to 200 employees. That really started to adapt what I knew in public health and the mechanisms and translating research for information that’s pushed out from the CDC, county and state. It was adapting what I knew from the hospital and what I learned in EMS from infection control, donning and doffing PPE, correct equipment handling, whether it be biohazard or not, handing off camera equipment now has to be done at a very specific process for cleaning.

Jonathan Robinson:

Part of that came testing. In the film and entertainment industry there’s a very strict and a very thorough guideline that’s run through. Part of this is because they have a lot of very well-established leadership across the different unions and guilds and a lot of it comes from their relationship with different county environments and medical directors. They have a PPE adherence that they have to meet. They have different zones. Zone A is everyone that’s on set. Zone B is everyone that’s off set. A cast member is considered zone A and since they can’t wear PPE on set, everyone around them has to upgrade their PPE and wear a mask, a simple mask and a shield. If they get within close proximity at an extended duration to decrease the amount of infection risk, they up their PPE. What that looks like is hair and makeup, which spends a considered amount of time with cast members, they do have to wear gowns, gloves, face masks, which is a KN95, the non-medical version and a face shield. We have very specific hand cleaning, very specific protocols that they all follow. Part of that became testing.

Jonathan Robinson:

Testing became an animal that in the film industry was never expected and zone A, as I was describing, those onset, get tested three times a week and that looks like Monday, Wednesday, Friday, they receive a PCR COVID test. Zone B’s, off set, receive once a week. This is not a way to clear them for work, it’s really a way of if they are in working environment, it’s their way of showing that there’s surveillance and that the right public health recommendations and the best guidelines are being followed. That there’s no outbreaks within work environments. In that environment, any infection more than three cases across a seven day period is considered an outbreak, in which case we have a contact tracing unit and a fully backed public health and epidemiologic team that performs a follow-up basis and studies what happened, notifies the county and shuts down the work environment until it’s safe to do so.

Jonathan Robinson:

Where that took me is where I’ve been evolving over the last couple months, which I was elevated to a testing operations manager. It was kind of fruition of my career and what all these doors open to and I couldn’t be more ecstatic and just excited about all the opportunities that brought. Having a public health education and a graduate degree from USC opened up those discussions with some of the larger roles. I was working on training protocol and being a infection control experts with my background in biological sciences, from Vanguard. My background in EMS and EMT gave rise to infection control with other EMTs and medics and building out testing centers. As a testing operations manager, I oversee four divisions of our company, which is our onset cast and crew testing, which is conducted across a number of different studios and productions, both onset, offset, commercials, series, full feature films. We have 140 employees that all conduct different levels of that testing. We do a remote testing division, which we ship COVID testing kits to the homes of individuals and clients, which you can see on the top left and middle. The middle one’s an example of our early test kit that we built together, which we helped as a team develop and it’s kind of evolved from there.

Jonathan Robinson:

We have on the top left the first couple of weeks of us opening up our remote testing division and what that looks like. What you can see there is one day ordering, I think that day was 45 to 50 kits that we made across a couple of hours. In those days that seemed like a lot. Other days we were sending 200 kits a day. We now have a third-party logistics service that send kits on our behalf and the growth in this realm has really taken off as we’re helping secure people for clearance to go to work, to have a piece of mind for clearance after work or really get them to have surveillance, to show that they were taking the right precautions. Of course, testing is only a surveillance tool and it shows up different pathways during the life cycle of the virus, but this is one of the tools that we have, so it’s at our disposal.

Jonathan Robinson:

Nationwide we oversee 10,000 COVID tests performance each month across the country, with a thousand tests run in our remote division. We also do satellite testing, which is different drive up centers we offer throughout the county of Los Angeles. We’re opening up other drive in and collection sites across the country. In New York, we have offices in Atlanta, New York, New Orleans, New Mexico and Los Angeles. We also offer concierge white glove testing, which is a medical professional is dispatched to the home of a client to perform a test. A lot of these is adapting my old skills of being an EMT and dispatching fellow EMT and medics. It’s conducting training and field supervising.

Jonathan Robinson:

As a testing operations manager, my public health classes and coursework really started to strengthen what I was doing. The biostatistics course started giving me the confidence to run our own internal analysis of what our testing platform showed. We started doing epidemiologic research on some of the sets that did have unfortunate outbreaks and what that looks like and really strengthening our contact tracing unit, which I worked very closely with. The public health leadership and management course, which is one of my favorite courses at USC, really gave me the backbone to start building different strategic goals for my department. Start leading the staff members that I oversee of about 12 of them. Setting project goals, setting different pillars for us. We have weekly meetings across our departments. We have our budget meeting. All of that is something I learned within the USC program and couldn’t be more thankful that I have all of that to backup this current period.

Jonathan Robinson:

What I’ve learned across the pandemic and a lot of things since graduating is just these four principles. It’s be flexible. Everything moves, everything changes in public health. There’s so many pathways that it opens up and really being flexible, especially during this time of COVID, is what gave me the ability to transfer across different careers. Working at the county before as an intern. Working at a hospital system and just being a field expert. Going to a private industry, which I had not worked in previously and over the next couple of weeks, it looks like a lot of state services are opening up and a lot of items are going to be switching around as the new vaccine service comes about. Part of that is asking questions. Constantly asking questions. Reading research articles, diving into different books and items, seeking out advice from colleagues and networking. USC had all of those pathways to go through my career, but after graduation I really kept taking that, kept pursuing all of that. Asking questions really leads you to adapt. It’s not just being flexible, but it’s adapting to changes. It’s adapting and growing in that process. It’s growing through it all and as things change and as everything opens up or closes, just adapting to what that means and applying your background in whatever your niche is. Part of that is it all has to come with confidence.

Jonathan Robinson:

Early on. I dealt a lot with imposter syndrome. Being a young public health professional in a new realm, especially in the private industry, it took me a couple of weeks to really come into my own. I sought different leadership and advice from different colleagues I have and advisers and it helped me grow the confidence to become a proficient manager and really help strengthen my team and really rely upon their skills as well. In which case, I’ll close out here. I want to give a special thanks to many people and advisers that I have in my life. First from USC is Dr. Mellissa Withers. She was my academic advisor during school and really helped out, really through my entire program she was my primary investigator for the practicum I did in Vietnam.

PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [00:40:04]

Jonathan Robinson:

My primary investigator for the practicum, I did Vietnam. She helped recommend me for different positions and career goals. Dr. Shubha Kumar really being a resource during the program. And also after across different conferences that I ran into her at. And a lot of opportunities opened up after graduation as an alumni. And that goes as well to Janet, Janet Schmidt, as we’ve kind of built a rapport and had a lot of these opportunities arise from our being around each other and friendship that’s grown through this.

Jonathan Robinson:

From CHOC, the manager that I work with, Sheryl Riccardi. Lisa Chambers, who’s our education manager and the two of them just giving you the flexibility as a per diem employee to travel and do a lot of these opportunities. At OCEMS, my internship through Laurent [inaudible 00:40:49] and Jason Azuma, who helped me grow as a GIS specialist and really learned emergency management. At ISLA, Henry Reyes, which is our president, as well as a lot of my colleagues around the world and international different environments and programs that they run.

Jonathan Robinson:

At Real Health, Dr. Gary Richwald, who is a professor at USC. Within the MPH program, he’s the medical director at Real Health, and really been a resource and advisor and a great supervisor. As well as Rick Gribbs, our operations director, who I confide in with and seek a lot of advice with. And of course, to my operations team, who gives me a lot of backing. And my family and friends. Next, I’d like to introduce Lubna Kabir, and she’ll be talking to you about her experiences.

Lubna S. Kabir:

Thank you, Jonathan, and thank you for your wonderful presentation. My name is Lubna Kabir MPH, and I will be talking about my internship with the Community Response System of South Los Angeles during the COVID-19 pandemic, which was my practicum for the MPH program, which I just graduated from. So first, I’m going to start by talking about why I chose to study public health. So my main goal was to go to medical school and become a physician. I actually graduated from Columbia University with a bachelor of arts degree in psychology and biology as a double major and as a pre-med student in May 2018. And I was introduced to public health through the Columbia Public Health Club during my senior year of college. And that was what really motivated me to kind of seek education in public health before going to medical school, because I saw how interesting it was and how public health has so many applications, not only to medicine, but to the world in general. And I really wanted to have that experience because I thought it would enrich my future career in medicine.

Lubna S. Kabir:

So I started the online MPH program in May 2018, immediately after graduating from Columbia. And I chose to take the online program because I thought it offered me a lot of flexibility and I was still living in New York at the time. So it was perfect for me since I could work and work and live in New York City while still getting my MPH from USC. And I chose to concentrate in community health promotion, because I was interested in learning how to design, implement, and evaluate health promotion programs. And as I said, I recently graduated in December 2020 after completing my practicum project with the community response system of South Los Angeles.

Lubna S. Kabir:

Just a little bit more about my practicum. As I said, I did an internship with CRSSLA and this lasted from April, 2022 to December, 2020. And I just recently finished that. And so I’m actually planning to start a new job next week, but right now I’m in the middle. Anyway, my supervisor was Brenda Weibel, who is the director of the USC Initiative to Eliminate Homelessness. My main responsibilities and tasks for the internship were to conduct outreach to churches and nonprofit organizations throughout South Los Angeles. And I also assisted with an outcome survey for CRSSLA. And lastly, I helped to write a six month impact report to summarize and present the data of the first six months of CRSSLA’s impact on the community to present that to the leadership partners and funders of CRSSLA.

Lubna S. Kabir:

A little bit more about the agency, Fresh Network. So it’s actually not a singular agency or organization, but rather it’s a collaborative effort of key community-based organizations, churches, educational institutions, and others stakeholders in South Los Angeles. So yeah, it’s a network and it was launched in March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. So it’s a very recent endeavor and it’s really nice for me to be able to be part of something that’s so like new and help it to grow. And I thought it was really cool to be a part of this because it has so many implications for the community, especially like in the current situation with COVID-19.

Lubna S. Kabir:

So the main goal of the network is to identify resources for emergency operation centers, medical triage, distribution centers, and command centers that coordinate with various government agencies responsible for deploying information and resources in the area, in the case of a pandemic or other crises. So this network will actually go beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. It was created for the pandemic, but they plan on continuing its efforts in the case of future emergencies.

Lubna S. Kabir:

And the lead agency, which founded and started the network was Community Build, which is a separate, like a singular organization within South Los Angeles that works to help the community More about the project. As I said, it’s a relatively new project and it actually started as a network of 30 organizations and six individuals, but now… Not now, but as of the end of my internship, it was represented by a total of 68 organizations and individuals.

Lubna S. Kabir:

The person who founded it, or the two people who founded it were Robert Salsedo, who is the CEO of Community Build and the founder, the main founder, and then also Cheryl Branch, who is the executive director of Los Angeles Metropolitan Churches. My supervisor, as I said, was Brenda Weibel DSW. And she is the director of the USC Initiative to Eliminate Homelessness. And she helped assemble the interns and assign tasks to each intern team. And I thought it was really cool to be working with her because she is in the social work department while I’m studying public health. So it was really cool to see how those two fields really intersect through this project. And my roles and responsibilities throughout my practicum were to help with research and assist with outreach to organizations within CRSSLA. I also helped to conduct surveys to assess the impact of CRSSLA in the community. And I helped to assess the outcomes. And as I said, I wrote a summative report about that.

Lubna S. Kabir:

So on this slide, we have some of the agencies and organizations that are partnered with CRSSLA as part of the network. There are a lot more, but these are just some of the initial ones that took part in the network. And each of them like played a really a major role in helping the network to get started. And I was responsible for contacting representatives from each of these organizations to help organize the resources that they had available for the community and help them to connect with each other as well.

Lubna S. Kabir:

Here’s a map of the distribution of the various partners within CRSSLA. This map, we included it in the report that I helped to write. So, as you can see, a lot of the organizations are located within South Los Angeles service planning area six, and also the neighboring service planning areas generally represented as supervisorial districts too.

Lubna S. Kabir:

For the outcome survey that I helped to conduct between July and September of last year, I helped to gather preliminary data on all of the goods and the services that were distributed through the efforts of the various organizations from April 1st to June 30th, as part of their initial impact of this whole network. And I helped to present and summarize the data in the report using this a table, which shows the amounts of food, PPE, COVID-19 tests, mental health and wellness services, general information about COVID-19, financial aid, and other provisions that were distributed through the networks efforts to the individuals and families and organizations in South Los Angeles. So it was really cool to see how much of an impact like all of these organizations were able to have as a whole on the community.

Lubna S. Kabir:

My main goals and objectives that I achieved through this internship was first, I was able to conduct a community analysis on the effectiveness of community mobilization efforts in South LA by the end of my internship, by conducting outreach calls, email, and gathering survey data. And I also helped to develop, expand, and assist with an ongoing volunteer network that was created through the CRSSLA network for COVID-19. Third, I helped to identify various assets and resources that the community of South LA already had in order to make them available to community residents during and after COVID-19. And on the right, like for example, there’s a chart that has information about COVID-19 that is on the CRSSLA website. And it helped to kind of organize that and direct people to that when they needed more information.

Lubna S. Kabir:

Overall, I’m really happy with my practicum experience because of the various skills I learned. And I really think a lot of these skills would be very useful for a future career in medicine and public health. For example, interprofessional teamwork. As I said, I had to work with a supervisor who was in the social work department. I also learned how to effectively use technology and work remotely and still make a really great impact on my community. I also, lastly, which was the most important thing related to my community health promotion track, is learning how to conduct an outcome evaluation of the efforts of the agency or the network I was working for. I’m also really happy that I got to make new connections in the fields of public health and social work through my efforts. I got to talk to representatives from various agencies and organizations through the surveys I was conducting on Zoom.

Lubna S. Kabir:

And it was really cool to get to know each of them and more about what they were doing. My favorite aspects of the experience were, first of all, as I said, the networking opportunities and conducting surveys with the representatives from the organizations, but also data analysis and writing a report, which I know is going to be very useful for me in any future research endeavors I have, whether it’s in medicine, public health, or anything else. It’s really crucial to know how to summarize and report the findings of some efforts you’re involved in. And I think the main challenge or difficulty that I faced, which I learned from, was working remotely, which has of course technology issues and communication. But we just have to learn how to work with those. And especially during COVID-19, that’s a really useful skill to have, like learning how to work remotely.

Lubna S. Kabir:

My MPH coursework was very helpful throughout my practicum. And here are a few of the courses that I thought were especially useful. First of all, like the core courses, PM 501, which is Foundations in Health Education and Promotion, I thought was very helpful in knowing about the various public health theories. And also PM 508, which is Health Service Delivery in the US. PM 564, Public Health Leadership and Management. PM 526, Communications in Public Health. PM 563, Organizing and Mobilizing Communities for Public Health was especially helpful because that’s exactly what I was doing with CRSSLA, which was helping to mobilize the community and bring people and organizations together to help the rest of the community’s residents during a time of need.

Lubna S. Kabir:

And lastly, even though I was not in the global health concentration track, I took Ethical Issues in Global Health as my elective, but I learned a lot from that course, especially when it comes to the global impact of COVID-19 pandemic, which was very, very interesting to me.

Lubna S. Kabir:

I have some advice for future and current students based on my experience. First of all, I encourage you to be proactive and reach out and follow up with those you interact with, through your practicum and your classes, because there are very good networking opportunities. Second, I encourage you to ask for help when you need it and also help others because that’s how you make the program meaningful and more meaningful for you. And that’s also how you make connections. And I found it very useful to form friendships and communicate with classmates, especially since this is an online program and we are in a pandemic, having that social support is very, very helpful. I also encourage anyone who’s taking the program to be proactive in reaching out to professors regarding any questions, concerns, or advice you may need.

Lubna S. Kabir:

And I was able to like learn a lot from my professors by talking to them, so I really encourage that. Lastly, something I found that was very, very crucial to my experience with having hobbies outside of academic and professional interests, because it really can enrich your experience and whatever you do can be applied to public health. For example, my passion outside of academics and professional interests is photography. And I’m really interested in how arts and culture interact with public health. So I’m a landscape photographer, and these are just a few of the images that I’ve taken recently. It was really helpful, like for my mental health also, just to go outside, get some fresh air, and walk around and take beautiful pictures, especially after being inside for so long during the quarantine period. Yeah.

Lubna S. Kabir:

So the next step after graduation for me. First of all, I’m planning to get a temporary job as a COVID-19 contact tracer and interviewer for the Public Health Institute in California. And this is a remote position similar to my practicum. So it’ll be nice to be able to work from home still and still make an impact. And I expect to be working at this position from January to August of this year.

Lubna S. Kabir:

After that, I’m going to start medical school in fall 2021. I’m not sure exactly where I’ll go yet since I’m still hearing back from schools, but hopefully… I’m very excited to start medical school this year. And my ultimate goal is to become a physician and to use the public health degree, the skills and knowledge that I’ve gained, to help create and administer effective health promotion programs in medical settings. I have many different areas of interests and these are just some of them. For example, chronic illnesses. Since I know that’s a really big issue in America, as well as the aging crisis in America. And last week, since I’m very involved in the arts and I love photography and creativity, I would love to help create healthier communities through arts and culture somehow when I become a physician one day, hopefully. And yeah, with that, I conclude my presentation. Thank you so much for listening and I look forward to answering your questions.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, Dr. Kumar, Jonathan, and Lubna for sharing all that great information on the program and your experiences. Next, I really wanted to just take some time to go over any questions that anyone might have. We did receive quite a few already. So if you have any questions, please be sure to share them in our Q&A box. So I can make sure that we are able to address those and we’ll get to as many as we can. So I’m just going to dive right in. There’s a first question for Jonathan. When picking your concentration, Jonathan, were you concerned about job opportunities in global health?

Jonathan Robinson:

Yeah, it’s a great question. And when going through the different concentrations, it wasn’t for me just deciding what job that looked like after. It was something that I was pursuing for my passion. I loved and really pursued public health in general because of the global health aspects of it. And getting to apply bits of my background in EMS and kind of different community health items that I worked in previously-

PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [01:00:04]

Jonathan Robinson:

That’s a different community health items that I worked in previously. And I looked at what that looked like in global health leadership and what pathways that looked like, whether it be humanitarian work, global health program managements, special projects management, grant ridership, it was within all of that same field. So each of the concentrations had their own specialties that it opened up the doors to.

Speaker 1:

Perfect. Thank you. I have a question for Lumna. Lumna, It sounds like you had exposure to the leaders of your project. Do you feel you can reach out to them for future opportunities and contacts?

Lubna S. Kabir:

Yes, actually for the current job that I interviewed for which I’m starting next week, I reached out to my supervisor from my practicum internship and I got a letter of recommendation from her. So she really helped me. And she actually helped me to look for similar opportunities related to COVID-19 through the various organizations within the network. So I thought it was really good, as I said, to have access to the network as an intern. So I knew about all of these opportunities.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, Lumna. I do have a question for both. I like this one. If you could give your younger self advice before you started the program, what would it be now? Either Jonathan or Lumna, whoever wants to go first.

Jonathan Robinson:

You want to take a first shot at this one?

Lubna S. Kabir:

Yeah. So I guess if… Wait, can you repeat the question one more time? Sorry.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. If you could give your younger self some advice before you started the program, what would it be?

Lubna S. Kabir:

Okay, actually I wish I had known more about public health before I started the program because during college I was not really exposed to public health until my senior year of college. And when I started the program, I didn’t know as much about the different things I could be involved in, in public health. So I would suggest that if you are interested in public health at all, you should get to know more about it and get to know more about the different ways you can be involved in it. Even start volunteering before you start your MPH degree or doing an internship or something related to public health before you start, because I went into it right after finishing college.

Lubna S. Kabir:

That’s at least in my case, I think it would be even better for me if I had known more about it, but nonetheless, I’m very happy with where I am and all of the experiences that I’ve had through this program.

Jonathan Robinson:

And this is Jonathan again. I’d like to compound and some of the things that she said there. It’s really nice looking back in a middle early career of mine of seeing what the public health doors open to. And I embarked on that a little later that I wish I did. I looked at public health for a number of years. I looked at different master’s programs and it was daunting at the early phases of the extra workload and everything and what programs. And then as soon as I stumbled upon USC, it really opened up so many doors as soon as I was in the program, but also the different support network and advisers and everything. And it really tied together my career, especially when I was looking at different pathways moving forward. So exploring exactly how she said, volunteering in different fields, interning in those fields. And then in the public health track, if you’re looking into it, just start asking questions, start reaching out to advisors and other items.

Speaker 1:

Perfect. Thank you. There is another question also and this could be for the both of you. I mean, both of you throughout your presentations, just talked about all the networking, the resources that were available to you, take advantage of that, and I’m sure you had the hesitation before doing the online program, but this is the question that a lot of the students here have is if you could maybe explain that. How ready? How is it available to you? How are you able to take advantage? If you can just explain that a little bit more.

Lubna S. Kabir:

I guess.

Jonathan Robinson:

Oh, go ahead.

Lubna S. Kabir:

Oh, sorry. Actually, you can go ahead, Chris. It’s fine. Go ahead.

Jonathan Robinson:

Okay. That’s something that when I first joined the online program, I was very worried about myself. Being a remote student, I was very hesitant to not be in class and having that face to face time with both the professors and other students and the resources that you gained from being an on campus student. What I learned very quickly is that the resources are all there and the advisors are all reaching out back for you. Early on in the first process, there was my admissions advisor and that went incredibly well compared to other programs I was in the process with. That connected me with Dr. Kumar and to my academic advisor, which was Dr. Withers. And during that time, she was amazing. She connected me to all different colleagues in her field in global health. By the end of my two year program with her, she helped coauthor research with me to gain an opportunity and a research grant from the university to travel to Vietnam. Even after, as an alumni, I have different resources that are all available. And so it’s just going out and finding them and then going from there.

Lubna S. Kabir:

Yeah, I wanted to add to that also. I think, it was great that we had access. All of the professors are very accessible and a lot of them can become your mentors, even though you’re in an online program, it doesn’t feel like an online program. For me, I was able to email my professors if I had any questions or even wanted advice for anything. And I got letters of recommendation from them also for medical school and I felt like I got to be very close with them, even though I’m in an online program and not in an in-person program. And I think the practicum experience was also a important part of my experience in online program, because I got to work with directly with the supervisor and build a relationship with her and also get a reference letter from her for my future opportunities. So in general, I think you have a lot of support and a lot of people who are willing to help you in every step of the way.

Speaker 1:

Perfect. That’s great to hear. Thanks for sharing that. There is a question for Dr. Kumar. Dr. Kumar, what do you think are going to be some of the biggest challenges for upcoming MPH students as they enter the public health space, especially given the current climate?

Dr. Shubha Kumar:

That’s a great question. Honestly, I think picking what you want to do there is so…

Speaker 1:

Hello.

Lubna S. Kabir:

Hello. I’m here. [inaudible 01:10:10] now, but I think Dr. Kumar lost connection.

Speaker 1:

Okay. There is some time for one final question. Can you guys all hear me? I think the one common question that’s been asked today is how are you guys balancing the full-time work? And what does the workload, how many hours per day, per week, how were you guys able to balance that out? So can you guys just share what the workload looks like?

Lubna S. Kabir:

Yeah. I can talk about that. The courses, I took about two or three courses per semester during the program. And there were live sessions once every week or once every two weeks for each of those courses for the most part. And I found that it was easy for me to balance, I was able to do the coursework on my own time, it was very flexible and there’s certain parts of the semester that are busier than others because we have, I don’t know, papers due or big assignments due, especially as the semester ends, towards the end of the semester but overall I thought it was really good. For me, actually this past year, I was applying to medical schools and I was doing my practicum and I just had to make a schedule and be very organized about everything. And I tried to get things done ahead of time so that I wouldn’t be as bombarded with everything all at once towards the end of each semester. So I guess that was my experience, at least. And from my practicum, by the way, it was a part time thing. So I wasn’t working full time. So it was easier for me to do everything, which is medical school applications, my practicum and my coursework. And I think Jonathan would be able to speak more about maybe working during the MPH program.

Jonathan Robinson:

Yeah. Thank you. The MPH program, what’s nice about it is graduate study is a lot more flexible. It does come with more expectations of individualized coursework and doing it on your own terms, but it is built exactly for that, the working professional. So when I was a student, I was working full time in the hospital three days a week for 12 hour shifts. I was volunteering in the community, traveling a bit, doing a lot of things on the side as well. And it’s exactly all based on scheduling. The more organized you are, the more scheduled you are, the more things you can take on. One thing that I’m very honest with, that something I’ve realized is I often take on too much and it can be quite challenging. And it’s knowing when to take a step back and prioritize what that looks like both for yourself or your health, your mental health, and what’s important to you.

Jonathan Robinson:

Is school the most important? In which case I dedicated most of my time back to my studies and my work environment and had to step away from some of my volunteering. And going into, now, a workspace and being in a career it’s all in the same. It’s having that life, education, work balance and finding a schedule that works right for me, works right for my family and works right for my career. So it’s a good balance.

Speaker 1:

Perfect. Thank you, Lumna. Thank you, Jonathan. We are going to go back to the question for Dr. Kumar. What do you think are going to be some of the biggest challenges for upcoming MPH students as they enter the public health space, especially given the current climate?

Dr. Shubha Kumar:

Thanks and sorry, guys. I lost connection for a minute. I think it’s a great question. I honestly think picking what you want to work on would, to me, be the biggest challenge because there’s so much work to do in public health and so many different spaces to work in whether it’s policy, whether it’s epidemiology, in stats or at a global level or community health level, geo health. I mean, there’s so many different of public health.

Dr. Shubha Kumar:

And that’s what I love about the field because it’s so vast and constantly changing, and there’s so many different opportunities to work. And just hearing about Jonathan’s journey, both during and after the program is a great example of that. The different spaces to work in public health. And for me personally, I find myself constantly interested in different areas of public health. So I think it’s really just going to be about taking what you want to work on. Yeah. And I suppose it’s a good problem to have.

Speaker 1:

Perfect. Thank you, Dr. Kumar. Well, it looks like we’re about out of time. We ran a little bit longer. So if we didn’t get to your specific question, we’ll be sure to reach out to you on a one-on-one situation. And we’ll be sure to answer any questions that you might have.

Speaker 1:

So at this time I would really like to thank Dr. Kumar. Thank you, Lumna and Jonathan for sharing your experiences. It really does mean a lot to us. Lastly, we’d like to thank you all again for taking time out of your day to hear more about USC and our students’ experiences. As a reminder for next steps, here is my contact information with my email address included if you have any other questions or if there were any that we did not get to today, we’ll be sure to send you a quick follow-up email to get those answered. Thank you all so much. And again, just a reminder, a copy of this recording and slide presentation will be available in the next following days. Again, thank you for joining us. We hope everyone has a good evening. Be safe and have a great rest of the week.