As our last stop of the day on Thursday, May 29, half of the class headed to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. After going through security we were greeted and escorted to their press room. Divya Nair, Press Assistant for CDC, informed the class that this room was used for all of their press conferences; most information was communicated over satellite or telephone.
The first to speak to our class was Dr. Eileen Farron who was in the Special Pathogens Branch Division of Viral and Rickettsial Diseases. Dr. Farron told the class about some of the research CDC does in other countries, focusing on Ebola. Dr. Glen Nowak, Chief, Division of Media Relations, was a former public relations and advertising professor at UGA, and he earned his doctorate at
The last stop at our visit to the CDC was a tour of DEOC. We were escorted up and down elevators and through security until we arrived at the start of our tour. Our tour included stopping at the JIC (joint information center) and ending in a large room filled with chairs, computers and televisions. The televisions in this room were all on a giant screen and called the standard information display. These screens give the people of the CDC a “snapshot of significance.” A few of the screens were used to monitor public health events like earthquakes and forest fires. The other screens were used to monitor other situations like global disease outbreaks.
Our time spent at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was very well spent and extremely informative. The opportunity to actually sit in CDC’s press room and tour their campus is once in a lifetime. After returning from our visit to CDC, everyone realized this trip would be one we would never forget.
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