This summer, Riley Browne ’27, a public health major and women’s and gender studies minor from Newtown, Connecticut, has an internship with the Connecticut Department of Public Health.
Why did you decide to pursue this experience?
Aside from the time I’ve spent at Muhlenberg, I’ve called Connecticut home for my entire life. My academic journey with public health started right in my hometown when I took a public health course my senior year of high school. It felt important for me to give back to my home state and community through the work I’m doing with public health. Additionally, the overarching structure of the program is meant to build up the skills of public health professionals and help interns explore different areas of the field. Public health is a vast topic area with many different avenues to pursue, and as someone who is still searching for my niche in the field, I really appreciate the exposure to different areas and skills. Just working in the marketing and communications division of the department, I’ve been able to hear the vastly different experiences of my preceptors’ journeys to working in public health communications.
I’ve already been exposed to many different areas of public health as an undergrad and learned important skills in epidemiology, program proposals, and policy — and my extracurricular experiences have further added to my skills.
What does a typical day look like for you?
My summer project will be focused on creating content strategies for three different topics: childhood cancer, health literacy awareness, and World AIDS Day. These topics were selected by myself and another intern from a list generated by my preceptors and approved by the commissioner of public health, who is really involved in the work of my division and believes in its importance. Most of my research so far has been focused on health literacy because it is such an integral part of public health communication strategy. Health topics can be daunting to understand, and it’s always been important to me that people understand their health and issues impacting their health. It’s why I’m pursuing public health. Health literacy awareness and skills impact both health professionals and patients, so it’s important to make the materials we put out accessible and help people learn how to become health advocates.
How have your Muhlenberg experiences helped you in this work?
In fall 2024, I took the course AIDS/HIV in the Lehigh Valley with [Teaching and Learning Librarian] Rachel Hamelers, starting me on my journey in public health communications and as an HIV/AIDS advocate. I pursued an independent project last fall with Hamelers that examined how the AIDS epidemic impacted American women and in the spring, my final project for Introduction to Global Health focused on a program proposal to integrate HIV care into general healthcare systems in Pakistan. As a member of the LGBTQ+ community, HIV/AIDS has always been an important issue for me, but within my academic journey, it’s become an integral part of my college experience. Before my primary preceptor worked for the Connecticut Department of Public Health, she worked for USAID, so HIV/AIDS was a topic we connected on and both have a passion for.
Aside from the specialized knowledge I’ve learned at Muhlenberg about HIV/AIDS, there are many other parts of my experience at Muhlenberg that have prepared me for my time at the Connecticut Department of Public Health. I’ve already been exposed to many different areas of public health as an undergrad and learned important skills in epidemiology, program proposals, and policy — and my extracurricular experiences have further added to my skills. I worked as an intern in the Office of Communications and Marketing last year, so as I’m building the content strategies, I’ve been drawing on that experience working with Ash Miller and other members of the OCM team.
