Gordon Stewart has been a health inspector for more than 20 years.
"I basically got interested in it when I was in high school,"
says Stewart. "I had a relative who was [a health inspector] and went out
with him and... thought it was pretty cool and interesting.
"I was always pretty interested in the food industry and food sciences,
and so that kind of sparked my interest," Stewart adds.
Stewart enjoys the fact that health inspectors are always educating the
public. They teach safe practices to restaurant owners, barbers, tattoo artists
and others. But, unfortunately, their best efforts don't always lead to safe
practices.
"You can't always educate, and sometimes enforcement is the last sort of
step in education, and that's a challenge," says Stewart.
"Another big challenge is that people don't understand what we do, and
so the public support isn't really there because they don't realize how important
prevention work is," says Jasmina Egeler. She's an environmental health officer
(another term for a public health inspector).
"If you're successful at preventing, nothing ever happens, which means
you're doing your work but no one really knows what's going on," says Egeler.
"So a lot of times what happens is we don't get the funding, we don't get
the dollars, so we're always operating with scarce resources to accomplish
what we need to accomplish."
Egeler says she "just kind of fell into" becoming a public health inspector.
"At the time I was working toward my bachelor of science degree and to
be completely honest I was a little bit bored with it and decided I wanted
to do something a little bit more specific," says Egeler.
One day she was browsing through a college course guide. "I just stumbled
across the environmental health program and basically just made a decision
then and there," says Egeler. "And once I had submitted my application I met
a bunch of people that were just finishing the program or were just starting
and then it kind of all fell into place."
One of the things Egeler enjoys about her job is the ability to work independently.
"You can set your own schedules to meet your targets," she says. "There's
a lot of variety in your work, and that can change as well, depending on what
kind of a setting you're working in, but if you enjoy the outdoorsy kind of
lifestyle there are a number of opportunities where you'd be spending a lot
of time outdoors."
Erin Reichert says health inspectors should have a natural curiosity and
a concern for the health of communities. She's an advisor for the bachelor
of environmental health program at Colorado State University. Reichert also
says communication skills are essential, particularly "the ability to speak
with people who are at upper management level but at the same time might be
an 18-year-old working their first job in a restaurant."
Being able to speak a second language is also an asset. "A foreign language
is always helpful because a lot of the restaurant owners or restaurant workers
that you see may not have English as a first language," she says.