Meet the CAAS Staff! Q&A With Sydney

This is CAAS Staff Profile #2, featuring Sydney! Sydney is a Health Specialist with the Head Start Program here at CAAS, and has been making sure our students and teachers have a safe and healthy classroom to come back to this fall!

How did you get started in the field?

I got my BA in public health from Simmons University with a focus in sociology. I've always been interested in a public health career and I’ve loved working with children. I saw the job and thought it was a great mixture of things I enjoy. I've always been interested in health and helping people in general. Public health is very broad and there are a lot of different sectors you can go into, but I've always been interested in the community health and health education aspect.

What’s your role here at CAAS and how long have you been here?

It’s been almost exactly a year at this point! I do a bunch of different things throughout Head Start. I collect health documentation to make sure that we have all the things we need for a child to be safe in the classroom. If someone has asthma or an epipen, we make sure teachers have all the things they need to keep them safe. Alongside my manager, I do health screenings for all the children enrolled in the program.

I also work on the more public health side of things. Right now I'm working on a covid-vaccine campaign for under-fives and throughout the year we have been doing covid testing in our classrooms. When I was first hired, I didn’t know I was going to be working on anything covid-focused, but it has been interesting learning and adapting as new information comes out. We have a good system down for covid testing, but it took some time. We have a label maker now, but before I was writing the labels on all of the testing tubes for the kids and manually prepping all the covid testing kits. Now Roberta and I make sure we know who has tested positive and when they can start testing again.

What keeps you energized around this work?

The fact that I feel like I'm actually making a difference. Head start is an amazing organization and we're helping families that truly need it. Doing something like the vaccine event is really exciting because we’re making an actual difference in the health of our communities

I feel like the environment of CAAS and Head Start is very friendly and very open. You can pull anyone to talk about anything at any time. I am very grateful that both my managers are very supportive and give me the opportunity to work on projects that I am passionate about.

What was an exciting project or big win that you’ve experienced here?

The vaccine project has been one of my favorite projects. I keep coming back to that because it’s something I am really excited about! The Health Department first started discussing it when the under 5 vaccine was first authorized. I told my managers that I wanted to be involved with it and they gave me the opportunity to be the team lead for the event.

We were waiting for the vaccine to be officially released and when it was we wanted to get a head start on the event - no pun intended- but we had to figure out a partnership to get people to the event. We decided to partner with the Department of Public Health. They’re bringing the vaccinators and all the vaccines and monitoring the portal, and we’re doing the marketing to Head Start families and the community.

What do you like to do for fun outside of work?

I like to play tennis, go to concerts, cook, and hang out with my cat. I picked up tennis last summer with my roommate. It’s a new hobby but I really enjoy it. My cat is 5 years old, her name is Cleo, and she's very, very cuddly. Everyone who meets her loves her.