TCNJ

25 SPRING 2021 generate and parse data used by the New Jersey Department of Health for the state's immunization database, expanding public health officials' abil- ity to monitor and investigate disease behavior. Jeffery Grosser, health officer at the Princeton Health Department, says his team is small, but they cover a lot of ground. "Much of what we do is very dependent on the environment around us," he says. "Sometimes we have to drop everything to respond to something else that's happening." This year has been full of "drop everything " moments. But along with TCNJ faculty, including Borges, who has worked with his department as an advising epidemiologist, TCNJ students have taken the initiative, proving a major advantage in the town's pandemic response. Alongside Moss, Jessica Fleischman '20, MPH '21 also plays an integral role on the Princeton Health Department team. She says her responsibilities evolve on a daily basis, responding to the department's most immediate needs: working as a contact tracer; helping to develop clinical documents, consent forms, and screening tools; and providing operational support to the clinics, all on top of the department's ongoing non-COVID-related projects. The work has been tireless, she says, for staff and interns alike. The team has kept a core focus on ensuring that the distribution of the department's allotment of COVID-19 vaccines is not only efficient but equi- table. "Working at Princeton Health Department has taught me that when themselves in instrumental roles on the front lines against COVID-19, assisting with testing, contact tracing, quarantine and isolation support, and health-related communication campaigns. Leading up to this moment, the college's public health department had already been growing fast. Established in 2014, it was expanded to include a master's program in 2018. Public Health Chair Brenda Seals found her way into the field through her work with survivors of sexual assault during another American epidemic, HIV. That led to a post at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and later, to teaching. Students who may have considered studying medicine are drawn to public health for the same reasons she first was. "Instead of working one on one with clients," she says, "we're working more at a population level, and that's a really powerful feeling." Ethan Moss '24 is one of the department's students who became enamored with making "changes at a systemic level," he says. "My ultimate career goal is to be a medical director of a city hospital system." As an intern at the Princeton Health Department over the past year, Moss supported the launch of COVID-19 testing clinics, determining optimal clinic locations, writing best practices for safety, and building appointment scheduling systems and a sign-up workflow for clinic volunteers. Moss also built the online vaccine appoint- ment scheduling system the city of Princeton uses, which he designed to be not only user friendly but also to This year has been full of "drop everything" moments. Facing page: Marc Trotochaud '16

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