‘A Hidden Secret’: An Alum Shines Light on the Uniformed Public Health Service.

‘A Hidden Secret’: Alum Shines Light on the Uniformed Public Health Service
Michelle Sandoval-Rosario (SPH’06) discusses her journey as a commander in the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps.
After a career spent promoting public health across the country and overseas, Michelle Sandoval-Rosario (SPH ’06) returned to Los Angeles, the city where she grew up, to raise her three children.
In her current assignment as the regional director for the Department of Health and Human Services’ PACE (Prevention Through Active Community Engagement) program, she spearheads the “Ending the HIV Epidemic in the U.S.” initiative leveraging her experience in the United States Public Health Service (USPHS) Commissioned Corps to conduct community outreach and provide evidence-based strategies for HIV prevention. She looks forward to an upcoming visit to the White House where she will meet the other PACE regional directors in-person for the first time to discuss future policy directions with Harold Phillips, director of the White House Office of National AIDS Policy.
“I’m very hopeful and excited right now to represent the federal government,” says Sandoval-Rosario, who has worn the USPHS Commissioned Corps uniform for the past 15 years and counting. “This administration gets equity in the center. We have the first transgender women as Assistant Secretary for Health—I work in her office—Dr. Rachel Levine. It just shows that it doesn’t matter who you are, your gender, your sexuality, where you come from—there are so many opportunities [in public health].”
After falling in love with public health in an epidemiology class her senior year of undergrad at the University of California, Irvine, Sandoval-Rosario came to SPH to earn her MPH. Upon graduation, she completed an Applied Epidemiology Fellowship through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists. As a fellow, she spent two years training with the Texas Department of State Health Services at a CDC quarantine station on the United States-Mexico border. She was then offered a coveted, full-time position with CDC—with the caveat that she join the United States Public Health Service (USPHS) Commissioned Corps.
The USPHS Commissioned Corps is one of the nation’s eight uniformed services. While lesser known than the armed branches, the USPHS Commissioned Corps has an over 200 year-long legacy of service. The corps was created in the 1700s to protect the health of sailors and immigrants, and its mission has since expanded to “protect, promote, and advance the health and safety of the nation.” With more than 6500 officers working in healthcare delivery, research, regulation, and disaster relief, it is the largest public health program in the world.
“I always feel like it’s a hidden secret—a lot of people don’t know about it,” says Sandoval-Rosario, who herself remembers seeing individuals dressed in uniforms during her fellowship and asking, “What is the Navy doing at CDC?”
Trained medical, health, and engineering professionals, Commissioned Corps officers serve in a variety of agencies across the government, from CDC to the Indian Health Service to the Food and Drug Administration. Sandoval-Rosario accepted the job and was commissioned as an officer in 2008. For her first assignment, she worked in CDC’s Division of Global Migration and Quarantine as a public health advisor at the El Paso Quarantine Station where she did her fellowship.
“We actually physically sit in airports and our mission is to prevent the introduction of communicable diseases through international ports of entry,” says Sandoval-Rosario. She stayed in Texas two more years before moving within the Division to the Los Angeles Quarantine Station, where she worked for another three years.
While other uniformed service members often have little choice in their assignments, Commissioned Corps officers can apply to different positions as they see fit, says Sandoval-Rosario, who, after seven years in border health, decided to take her career in a new direction. In 2013, she traveled to West Africa with CDC’s Global Immunization Division and spent four months in Liberia working on the Stop Transmission of Polio program.
“I always tell folks, if you’re in a position where you don’t feel you’re learning anymore, it’s probably time for you to move on to something new,” says Sandoval-Rosario. Upon her return from Africa, she relocated to Indiana and later to Arizona for CDC epidemiology assignments with each state’s health department. During this time, she took advantage of her status as an active-duty service member and earned her DrPH tuition-free from the University of Illinois, Chicago through a hybrid online program.
Sandoval-Rosario says that part of the reason she joined the USPHS Commissioned Corps was to reap the benefits of the many professional development opportunities it offers. Her parents, immigrants to the U.S. from Colombia and Mexico, were not able to get an education in the U.S. themselves because they had to work full-time to support their children. Sandoval-Rosario says their hard work and sacrifice instilled in her the value of education.
“I’m just excited to see where we’re going. We’re finally starting to talk at the federal level… about the social determinants of health equity and racism as public health issues,” says Sandoval-Rosario.
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