During the week of August 28, new students at HSPH attended Orientation exercises to acclimate them to the school year. Dozens of sessions were offered.
As part of the activities, HSPH introduced two sessions on August 31 intended to encourage students to share their thoughts on the definition and scope of public health and to lead them through a disaster preparedness thought exercise.
Students broke into threesomes to discuss a pandemic flu scenario. From left to right, Nouar El Said of Sudan, Tomoko Onoda of Japan, and Maureen Foley of Seattle, WA, attended HSPH Orientation.
In the morning, HSPH Professor Howard Koh guided the students through a presentation called "Public Health: Your Personal and Professional Journey." Koh, head of the Divisision of Public Health Practice, provided a brief overview of the history, purpose, dimensions, and goals of the broad arena of public health.
In the afternoon, Paul Biddinger, associate director of the HSPH Center for Public Health Preparedness, led an excersise called "Public Health in Action." The exercise guided students through a discussion of a pandemic influenza scenario. The scenario was broken into modules corresponding to key areas of public health, including: epidemiology, immunology and infectious disease, environmental health, health policy and management, and biostatistics.
Copyright, 2007, President and Fellows of Harvard College
