Creating Our Own Public Health Community

Happy National Public Health Week! Thousands of public health workers and volunteers (that's us!) are coming together to celebrate accomplishments in public health and highlight issues that are important to improving our country's health. This year, the public health community is rallying around the goal of'making the United States the Healthiest Nation in One Generation." There's no doubt that National Health Corps (NHC) Chicago members have worked to reduce many health disparities in our generation.

This service term, NHC Chicago members have worked endlessly to teach sexual education to hundreds of Chicago Public School students, give thousands of eye examinations, and sign up hundreds of Cook County Hospital patients for the patient portal. We've also conducted numerous city-wide health screenings, taught healthy cooking classes to diabetic patients, and hosted asthma management workshops for asthma caregivers. Yes, we are beaming with excitement because it is awesome to hear about our efforts. However, we can't forget about the many challenges and frustration we have faced as we work to break down health barriers in the Chicago community.

This past weekend, NHC Chicago members attended our overnight retreat at Camp Duncan with the intention of using the time to reflect on our service term and examine our growth. As we discussed the time we've spent at each of our host sites, we realized that while we have learned a great deal from our own service, we had a lot to learn from each other's service. I spend my day-to-day activities educating patients about the Cook County patient portal, while my fellow Corps member Taylor Cox spends his time teaching sexual education classes. I am able to teach him about technological advancements in the healthcare field, and he is able to educate me about the barriers to teaching comprehensive sexual health education in Chicago.

This weekend made me realize that through NHC Chicago, we have created our own public health community, as well as expanded on the pre-existing one. We have learned to overcome public health challenges in our own sites and share these tribulations with our colleagues. In our group, we continually try to foster our'esprit de corps," which is the idea that we have pride in our shared sense of purpose. After our service term is over, I know that we will carry our'esprit de corps" into the next stage of our careers. We will take the knowledge and skills we acquired from our sites and from one another to promote and protect the health of people and the communities they live in.

This blog post was written by NHC Chicago member Michelle Vu.

Michelle serves as a Health Navigator at Smart Chicago Collaborative.