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Public Health professionals play a critical role in keeping Airmen mission ready. They do this through deployment medicine, medical readiness tracking, food protection, medical entomology, disease education and intervention.
“Our main job is prevention, and we do that through education,” said MSgt. Chandra Stoll, a public health technician. “When you think about the medical field, there are two avenues: prevention and treatment. We place so much importance on education because if people follow it, then it is less likely they will have to be treated. Life happens, but we still try to give people all the education we can.”
With deployment and medical readiness tracking, Public Health ensures Airmen have up-to-date immunizations and any medicine they might need to take with them to a specific location. For medical personnel heading to Guatemala in October, this could include medicine like anti-malaria pills.
Stoll is also concerned with food safety and sanitation. She inspects dining facilities, looks for food expiration dates, ensures food is stored, handled, prepped, cooked properly, and that people are wearing proper food-handling protection.
“During our trip to Guatemala, part of my job will be to make sure no one gets sick from improper sanitation and/or food borne illnesses,” said Stoll. “We want to ensure that we are stay healthy, so that we can put all of our focus on helping the people of Guatemala.” Public Health also works closely with bioenvironmental engineers.
“Public health and bioenvironmental are considered brother and sister flights, especially when it comes to occupational health,” said Stoll. “They monitor industrial work areas and base our medical surveillance examinations of Bioenvironmental’ s recommendations.”
Stoll is one of the 188th Medical Group personnel headed to Guatemala for a joint, Medical Ready Training Exercise (MEDRETE) mission with the Navy. At the 188th Wing’s site, there will be 20 Air National Guard medics, 20 host-nation medics, and 20 Naval corpsmen providing care.
“I have never been to Guatemala, and I’m really looking forward to it,” said Stoll. “I’d love to meet with some of public health personnel in Guatemala to learn and share some best practices.”
| Date Taken: | 10.18.2022 |
| Date Posted: | 10.19.2022 09:06 |
| Story ID: | 431578 |
| Location: | FORT SMITH, AR, US |
| Web Views: | 41 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Public Health ensures Airman Readiness, by Maj. Jennifer Gerhardt, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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