Last Week at CCBH

During our time at the Cuyahoga County Board of Health, I feel my group and I have really impacted the "My Life, My Body" Family Health Clinic for the better. We visited over 150 businesses in the Parma area where we talked to people about the clinic and hung up fliers. We held two booths at Case Western, where we received over 40 students who took candy & condom packets and educational pamphlets. We spent about a month at Tri-C West where we also manned booths with condoms and informational resources on emergency birth control, contraception, and healthy relationships twice a week. We hope that all of this outreach brought more clients into the clinic; we will be receiving the final numbers on Wednesday!

I can honestly say that my time at CCBH has changed my perception of public health dramatically. It is a completely different type of nursing than hospital nursing. Though the nurses i shadowed worked with clients on a individual case by case basis, the purpose of their programs are geared toward prevention of problems for the community as a whole. When interviewing Cuyahoga County's health commissioner, Terry Allan, he described the purpose of the board of health as constantly analyzing where prevention is needed most in the community and how to best achieve it. Nothing in public health is instantaneous; most programs take years to change the overall statistics of the county. However, he was very optimistic for the future.

Being under the supervision of Sandi Hoch was probably the best part of our capstone. She was constantly looking for ways to involve us in public health in the community. We went to two community forums, where members of different associations in Cuyahoga met and discussed their new and continuing programs. It was very interesting to see these important members interact and work with one another to best serve the community. It also amazed me to see how many assistive programs we have in Cuyahoga County, and how i didn't know about any of them. It opened my eyes to the divide that exists between the hospitals and community health. It is my hope in the future that more hospital staff is educated in community programs, so that they can pass important and helpful information onto their patients.