Rockies and High Plains Vector-borne Diseases Center Summer Internship

Last week, Rebecca and I wrapped up our fourth week of mosquito trapping for West Nile Virus surveillance here in Jefferson County, CO. We’ve expanded our trapping to six sites, with Kestrel Pond newly added to the mix, and it definitely made an impression. That site brought in the most mosquitoes we've seen so far, with 875 total across different species. Out of those, 530 were Culex , so it’s safe to say the ID process took quite a while! Most of our sites had higher mosquito activity than usual last week, and it coincided with Jefferson County confirming its first human case of West Nile Virus for the season, definitely a reminder of the importance of this work. We’re also getting ready to begin uploading our surveillance data into VectorSurv, which will help contribute to broader regional monitoring efforts. Looking forward to diving into that side of the project. And of course, not every trap was full of mosquitoes, one was almost entirely moths (photo below). A good remind...

 Week two was all about getting into the rhythm of fieldwork and continuing to explore different areas within Environmental Health. I helped set mosquito traps at four different locations and then returned to collect them and identify the specimens. Sorting through the trap contents was definitely more challenging than expected, there were so many insects that looked like mosquitoes at first glance, and it took time and patience to carefully sort and ID the right species. It's a process that really tests your attention to detail, but also makes you appreciate how much goes into quality surveillance work. I also had the opportunity to shadow the Onsite Wastewater Treatment System (OWTS) team during a ride-along. We visited about ten sites with open permits and conducted inspections to make sure everything was progressing according to plan. It was really eye-opening to see how these inspections are done, and I learned a lot about the systems themselves, from how they’re designed to...

Hello Everyone! My name is Jackson DeCook and I am a current RaHP VEC graduate fellow and MPH student concentrating in Epidemiology at the Colorado School of Public Health, from which I graduate next spring!  I have worked in disease control and surveillance for multiple years now, beginning as a field technician and then a surveillance technician in the Vector Disease Control International Loveland office in Colorado. This experience was during my Undergraduate degree at CSU where I studied Microbiology. When I started graduate school, I joined the Foy lab at the Center for Vector-borne Infectious Diseases at CSU where I have been working on WNV endectocide research with Brian Foy's ivermectin trial and evaluating WNV transmission risk/entomological risk indices. I have also been participating in a WNV KAP surveying and messaging study with Dr. Nicole Kelp and data management on Vectorsurv. I am in the process of writing a manuscript for publication for the first time, so I am exc...

My first week with the Zoonosis Team at Jefferson County Public Health was a great introduction to both the people and the work ahead this summer. I started with orientation, meeting staff, and learning more about the structure of the department and the intern roles. Everyone was incredibly welcoming and made the transition feel smooth. I also had the chance to sit in on a meeting with the entire Environmental Health department. It was really interesting to see how different programs come together, each person brought something unique to the table, and it gave me a better understanding of how broad and interdisciplinary this work is. The Zoonosis team hosted a lunch where we went over trapping locations and field guides, and later in the day we jumped into mosquito ID training. We learned to identify key species including Culex tarsalis , Culex pipiens , Psorophora , Anopheles , and Aedes , and even got to look at a few ticks! We also had conversations about our interests and goals for...

Hi everyone! My name is Sabrina Nogula, and I’m currently pursuing my MPH in Environmental and Occupational Health at the Colorado School of Public Health on the CU Anschutz campus. This summer, I’ll be working with Jefferson County Public Health on mosquito surveillance and vector-borne disease control as part of the RaHP VEC program. Before grad school, I earned my B.S. in Biology with a minor in Marine Studies from Southern Connecticut State University, where I also played soccer. During my undergrad, I interned at the Werth Center for Coastal and Marine Studies, where I collected biodiversity and water quality data from Long Island Sound. That experience introduced me to the world of environmental monitoring and sparked my interest in protecting public and ecological health. Since moving to Colorado, I’ve become especially interested in how environmental factors, like climate change and pollution, interact with disease transmission. I’m really looking forward to gaining more hand...

Hello there! My name is Tim Burton ( the one and only ), and I'm the program manager for the RaHP VEC training and evaluation center. I'll be participating in these blog posts  from time to time through the summer, mostly about happenings at the center and describing my work mostly related to data management with our regional partners.  For now, though, a bit about me. I grew up here in Fort Collins, Colorado before attending Colorado State University, where I studied for a B.S. in Microbiology. After graduating, I spent three months thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail. My intention was to finish it (and still is, one day...), but while I was somewhere in the Blue Ridge Mountains I was offered a position as a post-bac researcher at the National Institutes of Health. There, I had the opportunity to culture malaria parasites and infect mosquitoes while working with some great scientists and people. Following two years at the NIH, I enrolled in the PhD program at the University of ...