THESIS Success Stories
One of just a few non-public health majors in 2023, Jordan Craig was an inaugural member of THESIS, Tribal Health Experiential Student Internship Seminar, a collaboration between Southern Plains Tribal Health Board, Centers for Disease Control and John Lewis Scholars programs. A criminal justice major at Cameron University, Lawton, Craig said she soon learned public health is not just direct health care, but also involves social work, health and Tribal policy law, Native history, and community interaction. Her summer internship research focus, Addressing Gaps in Prenatal Care for American Indian and Alaska Native Patients with Opioid Use Disorder, reinforced her passion for harm reduction in Native communities which may include reducing substance abuse through needle-exchange programs, or
condom distribution to reduce unwanted pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease, or HIV infection.
The single mother of four, first generation college graduate, finished with honors in May 2024, motivated by her children. Craig now works for the Comanche Nation as a case worker for the Tribal Child Support program. She said her work includes promoting cooperation and agreement by parents regarding fulfillment of their duties to their children. Services include establishing paternity, establishing and
enforcing child support orders, modifying child support, and locating hard-to-reach or incarcerated parents. The program provides full performance child support services to children and custodial parents residing in the Comanche Nation eleven-county jurisdiction, Oklahoma, and other states, according to her job description.
Craig’s role is to work as part of a team providing broad and specialized knowledge of all child support services. She understands legal processes, conducts investigative interviews, and monitors cases to ensure support obligations meet and comply with court orders. She said her first job was surveillance operator at Comanche Nation Casino, Lawton. A citizen of the Cherokee Nation, Craig said THESIS brought her in contact with her current work in child support and Tribal health with and for the Comanche Nation. The summer internship offered her contact with, “an amazing mentor and wealth of knowledge in Tribal public health, equivalent to a college degree.” As a highlight, the opportunity to fly to Atlanta and visit with knowledgeable CDC professionals was a once in a lifetime experience, she said, especially for an older, non-traditional student.
Jordan Craig
2023 Alumni
Kadine Powell
2023 Alumni
Kadine Powell, 2023 THESIS intern, said understanding and prioritizing specific health needs belonging to the community of people with whom you work is essential for a public health worker. “Once you move from one community to the next, your focus might change completely. You must prioritize,” she said in a recent interview.
Following her internship with THESIS, Powell moved to South Africa and began working as a community health coordinator with the Salvation Army Western Cape Division. Part of her work was training and developing education to help adult and adolescent substance abusers gain and keep sobriety. She said developing training on how to get sober, how to be successful in treatment and recovery, and how to support sobriety was her focus. As part of her efforts, an interactive map of aftercare services she developed was available to adolescents.
She also helped maintain national social media accounts in an awareness campaign for the Salvation Army’s national Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking program across South Africa and part of Namibia. The campaign presented information on how to recognize trafficked victims, how to prevent victimization, and how to report. Finally, Powell was also involved in a community initiative supporting sex workers and people who inject drugs. She handed out condoms and educational literature citing the dangers of sex work and sharing needles. She said her group also focused on teenage and young adult males at higher risk to contract HIV and AIDS. Emphasizing the need to understand specific community needs, Powell said priorities in Sub Saharan Africa focus on education to prevent the spread of different diseases. For example, unlike the focus on HIV/AIDS in South Africa, another of her public health experiences in Angola showed a priority to stop the spread malaria and yellow fever.
Although occurring a world away, these activities were closely aligned with Powell’s experience in THESIS which focused on substance abuse within American Indian/Alaska Native communities. “The most important thing is understanding how diverse communities have different needs or different priorities in terms of public health” she said. Powell firmly believes that THESIS and similar John Lewis Scholars programs lay the groundwork for understanding what public health is and the many roles and responsibilities undertaken by public health professionals. She added that knowledge gained from her Salvation Army experience and her Master of Public Health graduate course work prepared her to move on to the next stage of her public health career. Since completing her time in South Africa, she has taken her talents and experiences to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In her new role as a Public Health Advisor through the CDC’s Public Health Associate Program (PHAP), she works within a local health department to implement and support initiatives aimed at reducing the spread of STDs and STIs while gaining hands-on experience and training in applied public health practices.
