Kaity Deaner

 

This short week was fairly eventful! On Tuesday, April and I made our way back to the University of Maryland for their One Health Careers Summit. This summit focused on career pathways, specifically environmental, animal, and human health. I had the opportunity to speak on a panel with a fellow UMD student about our majors and provide advice regarding college academics. I also learned a bit more about career opportunities in agriculture that I didn’t know about, such as a public health veterinarian who links human and animal health. 

Here's a photo of me on the panel discussing UMD at the One Health Careers Summit. Photo was taken by April Barczewski.

On Wednesday, I was able to help with lesson plans with our SNAP-Ed educator, Amelia Gerres. We utilized some of the base lesson plans about gardening and interconnected them to teach local camps about reusing plastic containers, gloves, and produce for gardening. Furthermore, we decided to try out one of the lessons on our own to ensure the plant seeds we were using would grow. Next week, I'll be attending one of her sessions to see what it's like to be a SNAP-ED educator!

A photo of the glove experiment Amelia and I are doing. We will be doing this in local elementary schools next week. 

On Monday, our weekly connection we discussed soil health and climate change. As someone who has primarily focused on more of the public health aspect, I never thought that soil health was something I would look into. However, this discussion taught me that soil health and climate change are extremely connected to our health, especially diet. Food security is dependent on ensuring that the soil can withstand years of agriculture. This begins with our farmers. Ensuring that they have access to different types of assistance for keeping the soil healthy is a must. Having a plan for the future, especially for distributing the food is also essential. 

With that being said, I would love to find out more about how these concerns impact our diets directly and look into ways we can address them. While I'm not currently sure what ways I can help, being able to inform my peers in the nutrition and dietetics field with agriculture would be a good start.