PHX Perspectives | August 27th, 2019
Summer at PHX
As the summer ends and fall semester at Boston University School of Public Health begins, I have the opportunity to reflect on and celebrate my experiences at the Population Health Exchange (PHX). For most students, summer is a time to take a break from classes and get real-world experience at internships, practicums, and jobs. At PHX, summer is also the perfect time for updating skills, deepening knowledge, and thoughtfully advancing our education programs and courses.
Through my internship at PHX, I got the opportunity to gain hands on experience as well as learn new skills. I started interning in fall 2018 and had very limited knowledge of the courses and programs offered at PHX. Additionally, I did not know how much work went into brainstorming, planning, and organizing these programs. The youth program I worked on this summer started as a vision from the Assistant Dean for Lifelong Learning, Leslie Tellalian. From there, all of the logistics, outreach, and marketing were new to PHX and had to be figured out along the way.
Like PHX course participants, this summer during my internship I learned new skills that I will be able apply to my future public health career. While developing and implementing the youth summer enrichment program, I was able to develop program management and problem solving skills. Additionally, I got to build my communications portfolio by creating content, writing blogs, and marketing the PopHealthExperience. The skills I learned this summer at PHX will not only help me in my course work this fall, but also in my future public health career.
Evolving Population Health Education
At PHX, we had a busy summer executing and brainstorming fresh ideas for our continuing education resources. Among other things, we successfully completed the 2019 Summer Institute and worked with a variety of public health professionals to enhance their skills. For the first time, PHX offered students a credential and Boston University online badges to award their hard work and skills learned in our Essentials of Biostatistics with SAS JMP® course. We welcomed 7th-10th grade students to campus for the PopHealthExperience, a youth enrichment program, with the goal to spark interest in public health within young people. And lastly, we spent time reviewing our hectic summer and thinking about new ways to advance lifelong learning at BUSPH and beyond.
With reflection also comes excitement for the upcoming school year, and here at PHX this could not be truer. PHX is committed to continuous learning. In order to sustain this commitment, PHX has exciting new ideas to improve current courses and programs and to expand our audience of lifelong learners. We hope to grow our youth education resources by expanding our programs to older high school students before they make decisions about college majors.
Stay Connected
With all that said, stay connected by signing up for our newsletter. Explore our website to learn about various resources and opportunities to join us on campus or virtually this winter and next summer!
Students and faculty—Good luck with fall semester 2019!
The PHX Perspectives blog is a platform that creates an opportunity to share public health stories and viewpoints. Anyone interested in submitting a piece, which should be 600-800 words long, should contact phx@bu.edu. Population Health Exchange reserves the right to reject or edit submissions. The views expressed are solely those of the author and are not intended to represent the views of Population Health Exchange or Boston University School of Public Health.
