Preventive Measures

In the past year, Kelley Chester (’93) has logged almost 100,000 frequent flyer miles traveling across four continents, all in the name of public health.

She experienced the contaminated roads of Senegal, in western Africa, where goats wandered around eating trash, because there is no organized sanitation system. In Vietnam, she witnessed the country’s monthly vaccination day where routine childhood vaccinations are free to citizens.
She spent time in village health clinics tracking routine vaccines like measles, mumps, and rubella intended for the children of the village, which were administered by volunteer health workers. The vaccines are often delivered in coolers by the health workers on foot or by bicycle. Due to primitive logistics and lack of systems, sometimes vaccines that are not stored properly or delivered in a timely manner can become ineffective or dangerous.

“Sometimes when people arrive for vaccines, there aren’t any,” said Chester. She was co-author on the final report for the global vaccine logistics project which was published by the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH). “The project was vital to developing logistics systems for resource-poor countries,” she related.

She is also one of those rare individuals who has earned not just one, but three degrees from Georgia Southern. Last fall, Chester was the third recipient of a doctorate in public health from the Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health (JPHCOPH).

Her global travels are just one aspect of her job as the senior public health informatics analyst for the Public Health Informatics Institute, a program of the Task Force for Global Health, a nonprofit organization affiliated with Emory University. Chester is tasked with assisting public health organizations in designing informatics-based solutions to promote health in populations. She has partnered with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), World Health Organization, and PATH.

“In my current role, I work collaboratively with those who work on the front lines in the field to document their processes and help them define functional requirements that can then be developed into information system solutions,” she said.

Chester’s latest projects include working with the Strategic National Stockpile program and the Influenza Division, both at the CDC in Atlanta to aid in the creation of requirements for systems to track domestic vaccines and antivirals, and help to improve influenza surveillance. “There was a lot of attention and funding directed at public health because of the H1N1 pandemic last year. Everyone in the public health community was worried that it would be more serious than it was,” she revealed.

Chester’s desire to improve the quality of the public’s health stems from the birth of her son Taylor, seven years ago. “My son was low birth weight, and he was sick with many respiratory illnesses. He led me to want to contribute to the health of children and mothers. Health care is centered on treating people once they are sick; public health is centered on keeping people healthy, and preventing them from getting sick,” she said.

Chester credits public health professor James Stephens and JPHCOPH founding dean Charles Hardy as two inspiring mentors. “They shaped the future of my career in public health and taught me how to be successful in this field,” said Chester.

With the expansion and change in the future of public health, Chester’s career prospects are unlimited, and she isn’t going to rule out a chance to re-enter the classroom, this time as a professor. “Eventually, I would love to teach, but I believe that the best professors have real work experience in their field,” she said. “My goal is to have rich experiences in the field of public health informatics, and I want to continue improving the health of communities here and around the globe.”

–Mary Beth Spence