Brief Bio

Sophie Wenzel, MPH currently serves as the Director of the New River Academic Health Department. Her position is jointly funded by the New River Health District and the Virginia Tech Center for Public Health Practice and Research (part of the Department of Population Health Sciences, housed in the College of Veterinary Medicine and funded by the Institute on Society, Culture and the Environment.) She oversees all joint activities between the two organizations including student practicums, research and practice opportunities, workforce development and more. The New River Academic Health Department was initially created in 2012 and was formalized by a Memorandum of Agreement in May 2015.

Sophie has been working in the field of Public Health since 1999. She holds an MPH in International Health and Population Studies from Emory University and a BSLI in Linguistics and Spanish from Georgetown University.  She started her career in Public Health when she joined the Peace Corps and was sent to rural Paraguay to promote maternal, child, and adolescent health. She was selected to join the Centers for Disease Control Public Health Prevention Service, with which she served one year at the CDC in Atlanta and two years managing a hair mercury biomonitoring program in Alaska. She was awarded the Bales-Bradford Award for Excellence in Public Health Leadership at the end of her three years. She then took a position managing the State of Alaska's Adolescent Health Program, for which she oversaw a $1.2 million yearly budget. Sophie moved to Blacksburg in 2012 and joined the Health District  and Virginia Tech's Center for Public Health Practice and Research in 2013.

Areas of AHD Experience or Expertise

Getting Started with AHD Partnerships

• Developing written partnership agreements
• Setting parameters for partnerships
• Building relationships between practice and academia
• Building leadership support for an AHD partnership
• Transforming informal relationships into formal partnerships
• Identifying AHD champions
• Identifying potential partners
• Developing an AHD partnership
• Selling the AHD concept

Components of AHD Partnerships

• Sustaining classroom teaching
• Sustaining continuing education
• Expanding practicum sites
• Expanding research
• Developing service delivery

Operationalizing AHD Partnerships

• Funding an AHD
• Sharing personnel access across organizations involved in an AHD
• Ensuring continued AHD operations

Understanding Impact/Evaluating AHD Partnerships

• Determining the value of AHD partnerships
• Measuring AHD outcomes