File:I Am CDC Zarecki-Brown-Newsome.webm

English: I’ve been at CDC for 10 years. I work for the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, leading a project that works to identify the best ways to care for people with spina bifida across the lifespan. I work for the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control where I translate CDC guidance into training materials that educate healthcare providers about safer, more effective opioid prescribing. I work for the Center for Preparedness and Response, providing clinical and epidemiologic expertise to help CDC and partners make decisions during public health emergencies. We all have different jobs at CDC, but we’re all nurses. During the Ebola crisis, I deployed to Alabama and used my nursing skills to teach healthcare responders how to stay safe when performing activities such as triaging people with unknown Ebola status and transporting a body to the morgue.

I deployed to Flint, Michigan to make home visits to children with elevated blood lead levels. Many families were nervous about “the government” coming into their homes, but being a nurse and knowing nurses are one of the most trusted health professionals, I was able to use my health communication skills to gain trust and help families. One day, while deployed to Africa, we went to help identify a possible Ebola case—a single mother with twin boys, Jonathon and David, the same age as my son. We found she had died overnight, with both boys lying next to her. Six days later, Jonathan had a fever and died before the ambulance could arrive. A test confirmed that David also had Ebola. The hardest day of my CDC nursing career was when I learned that he too had passed. I’m one of almost 200 nurses at CDC. We respond to emergencies and outbreaks, because we are nurses. I’m clinically educated. I’m a leader and I care about people. We have a lot of CDC nurses in non-traditional nursing roles, but we also have nurses staffing our Occupational Health clinic. We have a CDC Nurses Work Group that brings us together. Our mission is to advance nursing knowledge, educate and engage CDC nurses, and promote leadership. I’m Kim Newsome, I’m Loretta Jackson-Brown, I’m Commander Shauna Mettee Zarecki. We’re nurses and we ARE CDC!

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