The poster below, “Identifying Best Practices to Improve Community Reach of Public Health Notifications,” was created after Megan Peek, Hailey Brenneman, and Elizabeth Mann – all undergraduate students at Purdue Fort Wayne – reached out to similar communities in Indiana as well as free news stations for television and radio. They asked questions regarding basic health notifications and public alert practices within these communities. Then they asked the television and radio stations about possible ways they could notify community members. Based on these responses and various articles concerning the topic, they identified specific recommendations that seemed to work best for the strengths and limitations of Blackford County. This poster was presented by Megan Peek at Purdue West Lafayette’s Engagement and Service-Learning Summit on March 2nd, 2023.

The poster below, “Composing a Public Health Plan for Hartford City,” was created by Victoria Hoffman, Hannah Richendollar, and Kira Creech, all of whom are undergraduate students at Purdue University Fort Wayne. This poster discusses how they wrote the first draft of the public health plan that we will present in the upcoming meetings. It highlights some of the recommendations that were made and will be discussed at the May 6th meeting, including littering, sweeping the parks for discarded needles, and the local emergency notification system. These recommendations are based on comments from the online survey. While most of the comments come from Hartford City residents, the survey was also open to anyone who had lived in the county for at least five years. Some of the other recommendations listed will be discussed in the fall meeting, once all of the air, water, and soil results have been analyzed. This poster was presented by Victoria Hoffman at Purdue West Lafayette’s Engagement and Service-Learning Summit on March 2nd, 2023.

The following poster, “Working Together for Change: A Hybrid Learning and Community-Based Approach to Drafting a Hartford City Public Health Plan,” describes how undergraduate students at Purdue Fort Wayne in a senior seminar class taught by Dr. Steiner worked together through the challenges of hybrid-learning to draft this public health plan. It discusses how the students split into two groups to divide and conquer the task of drafting this document. Each group had a face-to-face student leading 3 online-students who did their part remotely. The group led by Megan Peek worked towards researching and identifying best practices for public health notifications in Blackford County. While Peek’s group was researching this, the group led by Victoria Hoffman researched other approaches to public health plans and then wrote the first draft of this plan. This poster was presented at the 26th Annual Student Research and Creative Endeavor Symposium on March 24th, 2023.

By Megan Peek and Victoria Hoffman