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For my senior summit I have decided to work in and volunteer for Boulder County Public Health Vector Control Program. The purpose of the vector control program is to prevent people from becoming ill from diseases passed on by animals and insects. The main diseases in Boulder County are Rabies, Plague, Tularemia, Hantavirus, and West Nile Virus.

The reason for my interest in vector control comes from my interest in public health. The vector control program works with all types of animals and bugs that all play a part in our ecosystem. With the vector control program I hope to raise awareness for certain diseases that outbreak in Boulder County in order to keep pets alive and well while also protecting the public health from vector control incidents.

The Vector Control Program will help benefit me in furthering my education on public health while also working with animals which I love to do. The Vector Control Program helps people that have come in contact with animals that have been exposed to rabies by their pets and other animals.

I have worked in public health before with groundwater and system pipes that help regulate the water in areas such as Louisville, the Netherlands, Boulder and other surrounding cities. Working in the vector control program is a stretch of my knowledge because I have never worked with rabies and other diseases that affect our ecosystem.

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So far in my senior summit, I have touched base with my mentor Carol McInnes. We have reviewed thoughts for what to do for the upcoming days when I work in the Vector Control Program.
The ideas we have taken into consideration include:
- Contacting Animal Control Programs to ask how they follow up on pet quarantines.
-Contact humane societies to see what protocols they have to minimize the risk of people becoming infected with rabies from dogs, cats, and ferrets that are surrendered to help better understand the rabies prevention efforts by these partners

The next steps for me is to go in before Spring since rabies is a very popular around the beginning of Spring. I plan to come in contact with pet owners and rabies agencies to see what new preventions are being made and awareness spread of knowledge.

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February 29th, 2020, I went in to Boulder County Health office and met with Carol and we discussed the Animal Control Contact list of the agencies that we will be contacting through-out the course of my senior summit. We also decided to work on questions and scenarios of different cases where an animal or humans may need rabies care. On this date I learned that around the time of February coyotes are more violent because it is mating season for them and they are more likely to become hostile with house pets and smaller children. I also learned that if bitten by what appears to the a rabid animal, house pets have about 40 days to show signs of rabies if infected and can be likely saved since rabies takes time to infect the victim of the bite. If a house pet bites a human, they are placed into 10 day quarantine to determine if that pet has rabies and so productive measures can be taken to prevent the disease to spread to other animals and humans.

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This is the list of all the contacts I have contacted to further my investigation into the rabies world. They have helped a lot with providing information about rabies.

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Rabies Prevention and Control Policy (Artifact 2)

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Rabies Prevention and Control Policy (Artifact 2)

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This is the rabies prevention and control chart. Each specialist that works in Boulder County working on Rabies uses this flow chart while on the phone with someone who fears they have been in contact with a rabid animal or a beloved pet that has been in contact with rabies.

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This artifact is an incident report, this is filled out when a rabies specialist at BCPH is on the phone with someone who has contact with a rabid animal, whatever the victim relays to the rabies specialist, it is filled out on this form and sent into files where it can later be investigated.

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These are the questions and scenarios that I have come up with throughout my course of the project, so when I contact Humane Societies, Wildlife parks, Animal Control and more, these are the questions I ask to further my research.

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Many rabies stories happen daily, especially in areas prone to rabid animals, in one crazy case, one night in January 1982 Ozzy Osbourne was on stage when a fan threw a bat onto stage, Osbourne continued to bite the bats head off thinking it was a toy bat, Osbourne realized his mistake when the bats wings started flapping. Osbourne was taken to a hospital where he went under multiple tests and was vaccinated for rabies.

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The other day I contacted Robin Breffle with City of Longmont and asked her a few questions about what animal control officers do when a call is made about a rabid animal. I gave her the scenario: A Person wakes up to find a bat in their bedroom.
Breffle informed me that what Animal Control officers do is to capture the bat and euthanize the animal for further testing. She informed me that bats have tiny teeth so that an animal or person would not know if they were bitten in the night so they would be taken in for testing. If the pet inside the home is positive, they undergo a quarantine at the Health Department. Breffle also informed me that Animal Control officers do not deal with the health of the pet or the human, Animal Control only captures and euthanizes the animal in the immediate contact.

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After all my time dealing with COVID-19 and doing my project, I still managed to learn more about rabies in my environment and impacts around the world while also speaking to outside sources. I am genuinely proud of all the work I have accomplished and this project I have worked on gave me interest on other potential jobs I want to have in the future.

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How Covid-19 is impacting the Rabies community (Artifact 6)

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How Covid-19 is impacting the Rabies community (Artifact 6)

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I have been talking to Carol McInnes, who is an environmental health specialist who is mentoring me in the Rabies field. I have been interviewing her about how the COVID-19 has been impacting the amount of rabies calls she has received since the outbreak of the pandemic.
According to Carol McInnes, she found that rabies reports are coming in less often, she believes it is because of everyone sheltering inside due to COVID-19. Carol has been working on Epidemiology Team and is interviewing people with the disease to collect data to analyze to further understand the disease. Carol is taking procedures to protect herself and her family in healthy ways by taking walks to keep a good mental and physical health during the pandemic. The quarantine is to try to quickly limit hospital admissions and maintain a small degree of infections in the country for a longer period of time so hospitals can keep up while a "herd immunity" level is created and vaccine medicines are developed, manufactured and distributed.
"When Rabies incidents increase I will probably stop doing Epi Calls and just focus on preventing rabies and other zoonotic diseases this summer and early fall" - Carol McInnes.