多方位抗击疫情
Besides leading the infection control advisors, the part of the Balti更多的 City Health Department’s Covid outbreak team focused on controlling infections in congregate settings, 比如养老院, she signed on to an emergency staffing pool with the University of Maryland.
大多数周末, that second gig means she’s the charge nurse at the TRI Center, 一个独特的, collaborative public health project that offers triage, 喘息的机会, 对新冠肺炎患者进行隔离.
她就是在那里遇到的 博比·哈里斯，08年他是该中心的现场主管.
“I decided I had to do some clinical Covid work because I felt like I could treat people who had been diagnosed the way I would want to be treated if I was sick,戴尔说。.
She takes inspiration from the many nurses she’s come to know who were working with HIV patients long before the disease’s transmission was understood.
“有很多故事, but the common factor is they wanted to help treat people who weren’t being treated in a respectful and humane way,戴尔说。. “This is the nursing reality and mindset I have been mentored in and still live in. 尽管艾滋病毒知识取得了巨大进步, 治疗, 和预防, people with HIV still experience high levels of stigma in both the non-medical and medical world.”
通过合作关系, Dell is paid through the Johns Hopkins infectious disease department, then contracted out to the city health department. 之前Covid, her regular health department job focused on developing and shaping nurse-centered HIV pre-exposure prevention programs, which have nurses providing most of the preventive care. She helped start a similar program in the HIV clinic at Johns Hopkins University where she completed nursing school, followed by a master’s degree in public health.
这些天, she spends her weekdays running a program that helps nursing homes interpret and implement national and local guidelines for Covid infection control.
“A lot of the HIV leadership here transitioned into Covid leadership, and I think that speaks to the fact that HIV providers are used to doing what needs to be done and then turning it into policies, 而不是反过来,她说。.
At 贝洛伊特, Dell found her way to public health through Professor Emerita of 生物学 马里恩法斯, 谁把她介绍到这个领域的, connected her with internships and other opportunities, and sent her friendly reminders about nursing school application deadlines, post-贝洛伊特.
Fass encouraged her to shoot for top graduate programs and gave her good advice. 例如, 她建议先学习护理, 然后是公共卫生, a kind of practice-before-policy approach. 在戴尔完成她的护理课程之后, she worked as a nurse while finishing her public health degree.
“I always say I didn’t discover public health until I met 马里恩法斯,戴尔说。. “Once I talked to her and took some classes, I was like: This is exactly what I’m meant to be doing with my life.”
Dell grew up in Madison, where she was active politically and socially. She initially thought she’d go to medical school, but public health drew her in and spoke to her social consciousness.
“我是 贝洛伊特大学生物化学专业的学生, and HIV interested me on the biochemical level,她说。, but it also pulls in all the social determinants of health, 社会公正, 所有这些组成部分.”
While Covid has temporarily sidelined Dell’s social life and most of her weekend downtime, she recognizes the insights she’s gaining from being in the thick of this work right now.
“人们真的在站出来, 这是一段艰难的时期, but I’ve been talking to people in areas of the health department that I wouldn’t have been talking to before, 未来还有合作的空间,她说。. “Plus, we’re making 更多的 relationships with external partners. So it’ll be interesting to see where this takes us in the future.”
阅读更多关于校友工作的故事 “在疫情时期的战壕里”.
