Category: Nitya N – NC Dept of Health & Human Services

Today, I attended a meeting with the White House! The Office of Science, Technology, and Policy from the White House came to North Carolina to hear how the NC Department of Health and Human Services addressed equity issues during the COVID-19 pandemic. By mandating the collection of data on race and ethnicity for vaccination, the NC DHHS was able to identify populations that were falling behind on their vaccination rates. They highlighted the vaccination rate disparities between white communities and black and Latino communities and with this information, they were able to reach out to community groups like churches that these black and Latino populations were already acquainted with. By asking pastors and other trusted adults to disseminate COVID-19 information and vaccines and PPE, the NC DHHS brought healthcare to the community. The above picture is from ABC11’s interview of Dr. Matthew Hepburn, the leader of the White House’s Office of Science, Technology, and Policy.

Today, I went to Wilmington with Dr. Moore. We attended an event hosted by the Cape Fear River Watch, a community group primarily concerned with the Cape Fear River and its environmental contaminants. The day-long forum included presentations and talks from different experts and community activists about two main pollutants: hog waste and chemical leakage. Hog farms store pig waste in large lagoons and when it rains or the reservoirs overflow, the waste runs off into the river. This waste contains high levels of nutrients that feed algae growth which, in turn, depletes the oxygen necessary for fish and other animals to live. In addition, Chemours, a spinoff company of DuPont, the manufacturer of Teflon and other “forever chemicals”, has been allowing a type of chemicals called PFAS to leak into the river, causing numerous health issues to residents, including thyroid cancer and birth defects.

Today I met with Ariel Christensen, a PhD student who has been working on North Carolina’s COVID-19 wastewater surveillance system. The system monitors water from sewage systems across the state and measures the COVID-19 viral gene copies to determine the prevalence of the virus in certain areas. This tool has become increasingly more helpful in recent times with the increase in at-home test availability and decrease in willingness to test at all. With less testing occurring, a decline in the case count has been observed, shown in the first graph above, but according to the viral load in the wastewater in the same region of Cary, the second graph, COVID-19 is still very much present. Because of this large disparity, wastewater has become a useful tool in more accurately measuring virus prevalence.

Today, I was traveling to DC for a Speech and Debate tournament so I did my work Experience from the car. I was part of a meeting discussing how refugees are factored into North Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services’ activities. The guest speaker addressed the mismatch of current resources to current needs, highlighting how the system currently assumes most people who require translators and other resources to overcome a language barrier speak Spanish, simply because there is a large Spanish-speaking population in North Carolina. However, the guest speaker showed us numerous statistics about the disparity between the number of primary Spanish-speakers and the amount of people assigned to them. This overallocation of resources has left other minority populations, specifically refugees from Asian and European countries, lacking the necessary funds to access health resources. The recent influx of these refugees has been on the forefront of the guest speaker’s work and it was very interesting to see her present her research!

Today I heard from the Secretary of North Carolina Health and Human Services, Kody Kinsley. He, along with a few others, spoke at Dorothea Dix Park and announced new leadership for the NC Department of Health and Human Services. His speech laid out his goals for the next few months and gave everyone insight into how the restructured NC DHHS with the addition of new departments would help facilitate better access to resources for North Carolinians. At the end of his speech, he encouraged everyone to mingle with others, challenging us to meet 5 new people we’ve never met before. Dr. Moore took me around to meet Secretary Kinsley and other leadership within the DHHS as well as his current and former colleagues. This social hour gave me the opportunity to talk to other people within the DHHS that don’t operate under the Public Health Division. This allowed me to hear other people’s perspectives on current policy and operations as well as their journey’s to the position they are in now. Hearing all these leaders speak was inspirational and helped me gain a better understanding of what they do on a daily basis as well as in the long run!

Today, I was in and out of a few meetings but my most interesting one was with Dr. Barbarin, an entomologist in the Division of Public Health. She focuses on tick-borne diseases like Lyme while her colleague specializes in mosquito-transmitted viruses like Zika. She taught me about the importance of education about tick-borne diseases, specifically how to prevent them with appropriate bug sprays as well as where they occur most. The Asian longhorned tick, pictured above, has been of specific interest lately due to its ability to transmit diseases. In addition, Dr. Barbarin taught me more about the migration of ticks and how diseases like Lyme disease are slowly making their way from Lyme, Connecticut to more southern states and are increasing in prevalence in western North Carolina. Dr. Barbarin even let me view a Lone Star tick under her microscope!

I sat in on more Monkeypox and COVID-19 briefing calls. I also learned about the different diseases that the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, specifically the Public Health Division, interact with on a daily basis. Although COVID-19, and now Monkeypox, are all the news talks about, there are numerous other problems and diseases facing the NC DHHS and the larger community every day. I also talked with a few people who explained the different career paths one can pursue to join the Division of Public Health.

I sat in on a briefing about a recent outbreak of Monkeypox in the United States where novel human-to-human transmission of the virus is being observed. I also joined calls going over COVID-19 updates and policies. I met a few people who gave me some projects to work on as well as some helpful college advice! I talked with Dr. Moore, State Epidemiologist and Epidemiology Section Chief in North Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services. I joined him on a call about COVID-19 animal transmission, which highlighted the shockingly high human-to-pet transmission rates as well as the effects of symptoms like loss of smell on narcotics and bomb detection dogs.