Taking Important Issues to Task for the CDC

Posted December 4, 2015

A year-long capstone project called Task Force prepares students in the Ivan Allen College School of Public Policy for professional jobs and graduate studies. Consistently excellent work each year has led the Center for Disease Control and Prevention to work regularly with the School to gain insights from the next generation of public policy experts.

Task Force students this year are divided into two teams, under the guidance of SPP professors Kimberley Isett and Diana Hicks. One team is creating an effective framework for report distribution and considering the impact metrics to measure how the reports are being used. The second team is exploring how the Affordable Care Act has had an impact on sexual violence prevention. 

Hicks discusses the third year of collaborating with the CDC, "The students appreciate projects that address issues relevant to the current national conversation." Isett says, "We want to take projects of salience to the organization," adding clients have been pleased with the quality of work produced by SPP students.

Mike Donohue, PP 2012, worked with Living Room, Inc., an Atlanta-based nonprofit that provides housing solutions for Atlantans living with HIV/AIDS. He shared this reflection on his experience, "In the Task Force course, we had real clients depending on us. We had to deliver excellence in every assignment because our own reputations and credibility were on the line." He recalls adopting a client-service mindset, while working with a team to define and solve a large scale problem. Donohue credits Task Force with preparing him for consulting work.

Read more about Task Force in the Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine, Vol. 91 No. 4 2015. See past Task Force projects, including work with the CDC, here.