Union County Health Department

Our spotlight for this month is on one of our Public Health Associates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Kandyce Reeves.

The Public Health Associate Program (PHAP) is a competitive, two-year, paid training program with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. PHAP associates are assigned to public health agencies and nongovernmental organizations and work alongside other professionals across a variety of public health settings.

Throughout the two-year training program, associates gain hands-on experience that will serve as a foundation for their public health careers. After completing the program, PHAP graduates are qualified to apply for jobs with public health agencies and organizations.

In October 2015, Kandyce will have been with the Union County Health Department for a year.  She comes from an undergraduate career at Georgia Southern University, where she had dreams of going to medical school and becoming a primary care physician. Towards the end of her 4 years she was introduced to the Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health at Georgia Southern and decided to pursue her Masters of Public Health degree. “It was in this program that I found a passion for serving and protecting the health of whole communities rather than treating individuals in a clinical setting,” Kandyce stated. Through the PHA Program offered by the CDC, she was provided the opportunity to gain practical, local public health experience. Her first year projects have focused on health education and communication, such as promotion of the Sexual Health Clinic and exploring social media use within the agency. She will transition into Emergency Preparedness later this fall.

In Kandyce’s words, “UCHD has been gracious enough to accept me as staff and I have been learning and growing under their care ever since.”