Jennifer Burchett said she was looking for a career change after working as a nurse in a number of settings.

She wasn’t expecting it to be in public health.

Burchett has spent the last dozen years working in public health, first with the health department in Ashland and Boyd County, and then in Clark County for almost two years.

Burchett started working as a nurse after graduating from the University of Kentucky in 1993. After spending several years working as a nurse in hospitals and private practices, she said she was ready for a change.

“I had a friend working at the health department,” she said. “Once I got into it, I realized I really, really loved it.”

Burchett said she found working in public health was still nursing, but with a different focus.

“It was a type of nursing that focused on prevention rather than (treating) someone who’s already sick,” she said.

Prevention is a huge part of what the health department does, she said, from screenings to vaccinations and immunizations.

Prevention, though, can be tough to measure.

“Often times, you can’t quantify everything,” she said. “We give flu shots every year, but we can’t tell you how many cases we prevented. It’s still worth the effort.”

Some diseases have been gone so long, like polio and tuberculosis, from the U.S., there are few people alive who remember what those diseases looked like in people, she said. That may have contributed to some distrust in vaccines and the resurgence of some diseases like measles, she said.

It can underscore the need for the department’s programs like screenings.

“I feel like we’re helping folks who can’t help themselves for a variety of reasons,” she said. “Just because you may not have insurance, we can give a level of health care” and refer patients to other resources.

“My favorite saying is, ‘Health for all y’all,’” she said. “That’s not my saying. I just preach it.”

Burchett’s duties include working with the department’s two clinical nurses, helping with screenings in the community and tracking reportable diseases such as hepatitis, salmonella and cholera, among others.

Those screenings, she said, have uncovered some issues patients were unaware they had, she said.

One of the things she would love to see the department expand is its dental program.

“We have a dental program in the schools,” she said. “They go out and provide cleanings and an assessment for cavities. What it’s supposed to do it identify if parents need some additional dental care (for their children).

“We’d love to have some kind of dental program for pregnant women. We do know women with really poor dental hygiene can have some detrimental effects for their pregnancy.”