Psychology master’s student helps keep disease out of the US

Christy Smith is a master’s in clinical counseling psychology student at Brenau and a quarantine public health advisor for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

As part of the preparedness team that works with quarantine stations at the land borders and the two major airports in Georgia — Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport — Smith is tasked with keeping illnesses from entering the country. In her five years at the CDC, she has been involved with responses to other viruses such as Ebola and Zika.

“Everybody has been coming together to respond to this pandemic,” Smith says. “All the effort that is being done to carry out these plans has always been there, but it’s magnified now. I’m proud to be part of it, even though it may not be recognized as much. I see it firsthand, and I know that we have extremely talented people doing difficult work.”