Department of Nursing
Perhaps the most meaningful lesson from this internship was understanding the concept of One Health from a practical perspective. As a nursing student, many people asked why I chose a conservation internship instead of a hospital placement. Before coming to South Africa, I also viewed healthcare and environmental conservation as two separate fields. However, this internship changed my perspective. Healthy ecosystems support healthy wildlife, and healthy wildlife contributes to healthy human communities. Issues such as climate change, biodiversity loss, emerging infectious diseases, and environmental degradation all demonstrate that human health cannot be separated from environmental health. This experience helped me understand One Health not as a theory in textbooks but as something I witnessed every day in the field. This internship has changed the way I think about both my future career and my role as a global citizen.
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