Thanks to the Public Health Corps

Jun 18, 2025 | Health Equity

Public Health Corps

By Carl Droessler, Americorps Public Health Corps

 

Hi there, Region V readers! My name is Carl Droessler, and my life’s been a bit of a whirlwind since 2020. That was the year I graduated high school with a series of slideshows and a couple gift bags (nice!), wandered through an apocalyptically barren first year of undergrad; empty hallways and zoom classes full of muted black boxes where my classmates should have been, and got my bachelor’s degree in a political and social landscape wrought with conflict and high emotion. I left undergrad unsure of what to do with my degree in psychology and neuroscience. Having been underwhelmed by the sluggishness and status game of research work, I learned of and applied to participate in the Public Health Corps. I knew I wanted a career helping my community, and this was my perfect segue! They even placed me at the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH), so I could breathe a sigh of relief knowing that whenever someone asked me what I was doing with my life, I’d have an answer that sounded official enough to shut that anxiety-inducing line of questioning down.

Carl Droessler yearbook photo

(my 2020 yearbook photo – if only he knew)

My relief tangibly morphed into a heavy nervousness in my stomach as I stepped into our initial orientations hosted by Ampact, the nonprofit that manages the Public Health Corps program. Shuffling around the room was a mass of well-dressed, well-educated, and competitive-looking people, consisting of my Public Health Corps peers and all of our site supervisors from MDH. Upon sitting down and participating in all the lovely, corny icebreakers I realized they were all just people, and great ones at that. I would have the same realization for every coworker I met at MDH. Although they may have high-level degrees and fancy titles, their end goal was only to learn, help their communities, and do quality work. My fear was quickly replaced with respect and admiration.

Since September 2024, I’ve been working in Food, Pools, and Lodging, an environmental health division of MDH, attending awesome conferences, never-ending meetings, and forcing so much socialization in order to learn as much as I can about the divisions, sections, and units that interest me at this department. This frantic uncertainty that currently plagues the field of public health due to funding unpredictability, layoffs, and despicable administrative decision-making feels right at home with the chaos that has been my young adulthood so far. Oddly enough, with that unique perspective, I have only hope for the future of public health as a field. Thanks to the Public Health Corps, I’ve learned that…

 

  • No matter what our communities look like, however large, small, rural, urban, rich, or poor, public health will always have a place. Layoffs and a lack of funding can damage the work we do, but they don’t do a thing to its importance in our communities. That fact will always create demand.
  • Public health workers are a resilient, lively, and supportive community. They have been infinitely supportive of my exploration of the field. From giving me career advice to offering connections and informational interviews, it truly feels like the folks I’ve met at MDH have an innate desire to build each other up for mutual success, regardless of what kind of work you do in the department. The more time I spent with my team, the more I felt comfortable being a flawed human around them. I also got to see their passion and depth of knowledge in these topics that initially seemed so niche and obscure to me. I didn’t expect to experience these kinds of relationships in governmental work, and these folks have warmed my heart.
  • Public health is the kind of work that goes entirely unnoticed when done well, but bears an enormous responsibility when anything goes awry. It’s humbling to see the effort put into the public resources and protections I would have taken for granted or never consciously noticed before this service.
  • Public health will only grow stronger with continued intra- and inter-departmental collaboration. Public health principles have a place in and improve the safety and longevity of an incredibly broad range of projects, from city planning and construction work to high-level public policy. I think as the department catches up with technology and partnership becomes easier, this strength will only become more evident.

 

While I’m sad that funding changes mean I won’t get to pursue another year of service with the Public Health Corps, I won’t ever lose the knowledge I gained here and will be actively applying it to whatever my future brings to help create a better future for those ahead of us. I want to extend my sincerest thanks to all of the Ampact and MDH staff who helped me find comfort enough to branch out and make the most of this experience.

 

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