Tansy Wells, MPH

Improvement Advisor
Quality and Safety Department
Sanford Health
Fargo, ND

Background

I grew up in Jamestown, North Dakota. In 2014, I graduated from Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota with Majors in Biology and German, and minors in Business and Sociology. These specializations and fields set the foundation for an interest in diseases, research, policy, and populations.

Specialization in at NDSU

I graduated with my MPH in the spring of 2017, and I specialized in the Management of Infectious Diseases.

How did the NDSU MPH prepare you for the workforce?

NDSU’s MPH prepared for the workforce through a mixture of classes, a practicum experience, and an assistantship. The classes set the foundation of public health theory and application, and prepared me to take the knowledge we learned and apply it in the real world. The practicum experience then let me take class skills and apply them to a project with the aid of an advisor. Lastly, I worked as the Policy Graduate Assistant for the American Indian Public Health Resource Center located at NDSU for the two years of my Master’s degree. This provided real-world public health situations and educated me on American Indian population health in North Dakota and common themes nation-wide.

Current Position

I currently work at Sanford Health in Fargo, North Dakota as an Improvement Advisor in the Quality and Safety Department. My main areas of focus at work include healthcare acquired infections, vaccinations, and quality improvement work in Roger Maris Cancer Center.

How are you impacting the health of North Dakotans?

As a healthcare organization, Sanford Health serves the people of North Dakota. I get to use my public health skills and background to not only help address factors contributing to healthy outcomes for our patients, but to use a systems approach to population health as a foundation of understanding the dynamics of the people we serve.