During her career, University of Kentucky College of Public Health alumna Lea Lakes (MPH ’13) has been able to implement new initiatives and learn the importance of adaptability and strong leadership in public health.
One of her first innovations was having dentists offer vaccines in Wisconsin.
Lakes had the thought that “adults are very bad at going to the doctor, but they're pretty good at going to the dentist on a pretty regular basis." With the support and guidance of one of her career inspirations, Stephanie Shauer, Director of Immunizations at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Wisconsin, she was able to mold an idea into a practice.
"It made me think, what if you could get your flu shot at the dentist? Then you don't have to go to the pharmacy. You're already there. They have all the equipment and training," said Lakes.
While she was with the CDC during the pandemic, she learned adaptability was critical.
"I was the person who was writing the vaccine distribution plan for a theoretical pandemic before the pandemic. Then, we had the pandemic," Lakes said.
She said there was intense pressure during this time and adaptability was needed to handle the unknowns.
From her experiences, Lakes began to understand the importance of growing leadership skills. She said the best advice she can give is to try new things daily.
“The more you practice doing things you've never done before, the better you're going to be at doing something new” she said. “Being a leader is something new. And you're going to be prepared to do that new thing because you've done other new things."
Lakes said each position she has held during her 10-year public health career has supported her trajectory to her current role as the Continuous Improvement Manager, where she coordinates and leads the continuous improvement efforts of the Environmental Health Services Division at King County, Washington.
In her current role, she looks to the future and sees public health as having two branches: digital technology and community relations.
"We need to be building our ability to adapt technology to meet the needs of Public Health and our relationships with our community members,” Lakes said. “Those are the two pillars that we need to be focused on in public health. As public health professionals, our job is to weave those two things together.”
She emphasized the importance of students building their software skills and to focus on coding. She said GIS is one of the tools in public health being used in everything.
“We are making decisions based off the data we collect in the field. And that's all done through software and coding," Lakes added.
She said building community comes from listening to the community and hearing what their needs are.
Lakes has held eight positions in the public health field since starting her career ten years ago and is enjoying her current role of Continuous Improvement Manager.
"This is the first time in my career where I don't know what my next career step is, and practicing being okay with that is good for me… It's okay to be happy with where you're at. You don't always need to be looking for the next step," she advised.
To learn more about our people, programs, and passion for public health, visit cph.uky.edu.
The University of Kentucky College of Public Health is undergoing a review by the Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH) for re-accreditation. Part of this process includes the invitation to provide third-party comments. Anyone, including students, alumni, employers, community partners, etc., is allowed to share relevant information about the college directly with CEPH. If you would like to provide input to CEPH to inform their review, send your comments to submissions@ceph.org by May 4th, 2025.
