City of Bloomington, MN COVID-19 Messages, 19 Aug 2020

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From YouTube: Bloomington native a leader in Minnesota’s COVID-19 response

Description

Kris Ehresmann is the Director for Infectious Disease at the Minnesota Department of Health and has been a leader in the state’s COVID-19 response. She shares memories of growing up in Bloomington and how participating in a volunteer program in the city changed her life.

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There has not been a dull moment in my life since the first conference.

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Call on covid on january 17th of this year every single day is.

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Extremely full you're, both on meetings as well as.

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Answering emails, the term multitasking has taken on new meaning.

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During covid I grew up on the east side of bloomington on 10th avenue circle, so it was kind of the southest eastest.

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Part of bloomington, my father, just moved from bloomington after living there for.

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54 years, so our family house has been there my.

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Entire life, I attended indian mounds elementary school.

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And then had a chance to go to a special program at river ridge elementary, and I.

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Went to oak grove junior high, we had junior highs back.

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Then I did have a very short stint playing softball for the bloomington.

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Athletic association- I'm not particularly athletic so.

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It was a short stint, but I did do that. My brother was very engaged with baa.

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When I was in junior high, I had gotten a schwinn varsity bike and I really liked.

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Riding my bike and I got a map of bloomington.

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And I was trying to ride on every single street in bloomington.

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So I would track on my map where I had ridden my bike.

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So got a good on the ground appreciation for my city.

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I remember as a child, taking the bus to go to the public health building to.

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Get my polio sugar cube. I also remember.

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When the public health nurses came to our school to give us our vaccine, so I.

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Had some early memories of public health in bloomington, I went to st olaf college and they have a really strong international travel program and at the time that I was there.

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They had an opportunity for nursing students to travel to india for a.

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Semester and so it was called a service study.

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Program so we were both learning while we were.

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There and then we had the opportunity to work in some of the hospital wards.

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And have some experiences out in the field.

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In some of the rural areas and that experience really changed my life, I mean seeing a.

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Developing country seeing the needs it really changed. My.

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Perspective for someone who had grown up in bloomington and bloomington's a wonderful community, but I had so many.

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Opportunities- and I saw a part of the world that that didn't.

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Have those same opportunities? What got me into public health was.

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Actually, working in the bloomington heart health program.

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It was a study that was being conducted by the university of minnesota and they.

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Were using, it was at a community level and they were using two communities. One was bloomington and then our sort of control city was roseville.

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And the idea was that we were going to do education.

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And kind of intervene in bloomington to help residents be healthier.

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And then we're going to look at the community level to see if there was a.

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An impact on heart health, as it related to.

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Emergency room visits, cardiac arrest, all of those kinds of things I was.

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Volunteering with that program, because there weren't nursing jobs at.

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The time and I really loved it, and so I thought oh, this is.

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Being conducted by the university- and maybe I should be a health educator.

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And so I reached out and I actually ended up.

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Having an interview with the head of the epidemiology program, who really.

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Encouraged me to go into epidemiology so as a graduate student at the university.

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Of minnesota, I had the opportunity to work under mike osterholm, who is obviously a renowned.

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Epidemiologist and he's actually the one that hired me.

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To the health department and he's been quite influential,.

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In my career, what struck me about mike and one of.

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The attributes that I really wanted to make sure that I tried to emulate was.

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He was really good with the public and kind of explaining.

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What the issues were and being pretty clear.

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About what to expect in an infectious disease situation, and so that was.

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Something that I really wanted to to work on was to to be able to be.

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A clear communicator about the messages that were important.

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For public health, this response has been incredibly demanding, and so I had.

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Literally months where I worked seven days a week, 12 hours a day.

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So I didn't have a lot of time to do anything but work.

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So that that's definitely a way to avoid social interactions is when you don't.

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Have time to see people this year has been like no other, and even for those of us in public health who have been.

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Planning for pandemics and even responded to the pandemic in 2009-10.

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This has been like nothing we've ever experienced.

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Every case is like throwing a rock into a lake and then there's the ripples.

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That come out from that that that toss, and so you may be one.

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Case, but it's that ripple effect, it's the people that you might expose.

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It's it's the roles that you play. Maybe you know you work someplace.

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And so then now you have the potential to expose people in your workplace.

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There's nothing that's quite the same as having things the way they used to be. So I understand that people.

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Are really frustrated because I miss it too really got to stay.

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Focused this won't be eternal. I would say that my career in public health has.

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Been so interesting and I've had so many.

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Diverse opportunities, I think the best thing you can do is.

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Have as many experiences as possible, obviously.

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It's very mom sounding, but you know school is really.

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Important, so you want to make sure that you're focusing on that.

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But I would say, don't don't even limit yourself to what you can imagine.

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Right now, I guess it never even occurred to me to go somewhere else, because my.

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Family's here I have really strong ties to minnesota.

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And just wanted to do my thing in my state.

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With my people I guess minnesota is is my place, and so I'm really glad that.

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I've been able to to work here, and I I never even dreamed.

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Of going someplace else, I love minnesota had no idea that the volunteer.

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Work that I was doing for that program in bloomington would change my life.

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