Almost two years ago, early in my time at the Journal-Tribune, I took photos and wrote a story about the Union County Health Department’s drive-thru flu shot clinic.
At the time, a drive-thru clinic of any kind was a completely new concept to me.
When I spoke with health officials about the clinic, I learned that it had another benefit aside from helping protect the community from the flu. It was essentially a practice drill in the case that they would ever need to conduct mass vaccinations during an outbreak of some sort.
Actively preparing for a pandemic was so forward thinking that it was a little difficult for me to fully grasp.
I mean, they’re really looking way, way into the future, I foolishly thought at the time.
Now, less than a couple years later, I’ve driven through the Union County Fairgrounds multiple times for my family members and I to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
It got me to thinking about just how much has been going on behind the scenes, before a pandemic taught all of us about public health.
This year, National Public Health Week (April 5-11) will be recognized perhaps more than it ever has been before.
But way before I could even conceive of a public health crisis like COVID-19, there were plenty of people serving out of sight and working to keeping us healthy.
I recently talked about this with one of my college roommates, Elli, who graduated with a degree in public health.
Throughout the pandemic, she’s been working as a contract tracer all while she studies to apply for graduate programs.
Before that, she worked on projects that addressed food insecurity and the opioid epidemic. She even lived in Malawi for a while to study HIV.
I’m sure much of her work and dedication to others has gone unnoticed, but she’s perfectly O.K. with that.
She told me there’s a commonly shared phrase that “when public health is working, you don’t know it’s there.”
Elli said she likes to think her job is all about “upstream prevention” – that if she keeps doing what she’s doing, it will reduce the burden on the healthcare system before illness even happens.
She said she especially loves that public health allows her to consider the social, political, economic and environmental aspects that play into people’s wellbeing.
It’s something that has become abundantly clear to many of us throughout the current pandemic.
Prior to it, though, I’m sure there were many others like me that really had no idea how crucial public health is to our society.
It took a brutal virus that has left us all begging for a return to some normalcy, in order to recognize the public health workers serving us.
Even when we don’t see it, they’re the ones that are getting us back to the parts of life we’ve been missing.
I’m just hoping we don’t forget the people who paved the path back to normal once we reach our destination.
-Kayleen Petrovia is a reporter for the Journal-Tribune.
Tuesday, April 13
