Below are the current Erie County Public Health Fellows.
Erie County Public Health Fellow Program
Tania Islam, Erie County Public Health Fellow Program Coordinator
Tania manages the day-to-day operations of Erie County's public health fellowship program. She has recruited community based organizations to participate, and placed more than 60 fellows, and counting, making it one of the most robust fellowship programs in NYS.
Erie County Public Health Fellows
Mary Beth Hughes
Mary Beth is focusing on emergency medical service availability in Erie County. She does outreach, training and education work with the Public Health Emergency Preparedness (PHEP) program. She also assists with many culturally diverse outreach events for PHEP. Mary Beth recently began working on the financial side of Emergency Medical Services (EMS) in Erie County. She coordinates and teaches Hands-Only CPR, Stop the Bleed and Just in Time trainings.
Melissa Kennedy
Melissa works on developing educational resources and presentations focused on cannabis. She promotes awareness and informed decision making enabling consumers to prioritize their health and well-being.
Samantha Maley
While working in the Office of Epidemiology and Disease Surveillance, Samantha investigates and monitors reports of communicable diseases and follows up with cases to ensure there is no risk to the community. She assists with data analysis, examines trends and investigates outbreaks. Samantha also works on weekly and monthly surveillance reports that are uploaded to the ECDOH website.
Colette McDonald
Colette is the Buffalo and Erie County Food Policy Council (FPC) Coordinator, and part of the Office of Health Equity. Her role involves coordinating FPC meeting agendas, taking meeting minutes, developing interdepartmental reports, creating social media content, corresponding with members of the public, representing the FPC at community events, and managing grant projects and opportunities.
Ashraful Islam Rony
Ashraf is part of the Erie County Department of Health (ECDOH) Tuberculosis (TB) Control Program. He works to raise awareness about TB prevention within the community and provides education on TB prevention, management, and Diabetes Self-Management Education and Support. He also helps organize mobile TB testing clinics in high-risk communities, conducts outreach, collects and enters data on latent TB cases for the CDC and NY State, and organizes Bangladeshi American Social & Cultural Organization’s (BASCO) citizenship course.
Annika Smith
Annika is focusing on communications in the Erie County Department of Health. She creates communications materials for the website and social media, as well as content for departmental events and programming. Annika also assists with drafting press releases and emergency and risk communications for the county.