Samantha Kantrowitz's Page

We woke up early in the morning to meet the rest of the VSP team at the cruise ship. When we arrived, we met CAPT Jaret Ames and went through security—a lot like airport security, which makes sense, but easier when equipped with a PHS uniform and official government badge! I was absolutely stunned about how BIG these ships are. I had seen cruise ships in the distance before, but never up close, and it truly is mindblowing. Once we boarded the ship, we were assigned to various locations to assist… Continue

Back in the office, kind of. Today was technically a field trip day, but instead we spent the morning teaching a portion of the EHTER course to the CLEH interns. I think this was a really good experience for them—so far, most of the speakers we’ve had have focused on sustainability, so this gave them a chance to see a new aspect of environmental health. CAPT Mark Miller decided to cover the shelters section of the course, which was exciting for me because of my Norovirus project.

We split the s… Continue

Today was definitely the best Field Trip Day yet. We met this morning at the Georgia Aquarium in downtown Atlanta for a behind-the-scenes tour. I had been to the aquarium twice before—once on a crowded Saturday the first weekend I got here and once for a special NEHA event—but getting to go behind the scenes was truly a fantastic experience. We started off by going to the top of the exhibit called “Ocean Explorer.” This exhibit is enormous—over 55 million gallons. We got an overview of all that… Continue

We had another brown bag lunch today with a man named Stan Meiburg. He is currently a district director in the EPA and used to be the liason between the EPA and the CDC. He gave us a history of the EPA and explained some of the current issues facing the EPA. For a while, the discussion centered on the benefits of being regulation-based (unlike the CDC) but that this is a drawback in that they have a hard time developing incentive-based programs. These could potentially be more effective, but the… Continue

Today was the first day of NEHA! My uniform is finally complete, so I started off my morning by driving to LTJG Cory Moore’s (a relatively new USPHS officer who runs the CLEH and SUPEH programs) house to make sure I had everything good to go. I was so lucky that she was willing to help me out because pretty much everything I had on was askew in some way or another. Cory has been a huge help to me with getting my uniform together and pretty much everything.
NEHA started with the keynote speaker w… Continue