As 750,000 visitors gather in the Seattle area for World Cup matches, disease detectives are working behind the scenes to keep us all safe. They monitor for the spread of foodborne illnesses or infectious diseases like Influenza and measles. Public health students at the University of Washington are helping with this work, in partnership with Public Health – Seattle & King County. They’re part of the Department of Epidemiology’s SEAL team, a program for graduate students to receive real-world epidemiology experience by supporting public health agencies.
Two of those students joined us on the UW School of Public Health podcast, Health Cascades, to share their experiences working on the World Cup assignment for the SEAL team: Maddie Ediger, master’s student in the Department of Epidemiology and Rahma Iqbal, master’s student in the Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences.