UNMC student does summer internship at CNN

UNMC medical student Zac Handler, left, with CNN’s chief medical correspondent, Sanjay Gupta, M.D. Handler, a second-year medical student, spent this past June as an intern at the cable news giant.

Handler in front of the CNN building in Atlanta.

Zac Handler only had one year of medical school under his belt when he took an internship with CNN in Atlanta this past summer.

But as luck would have it, that’s all he needed to impress the deputy director at the Centers for Disease Control on his first news story.

“I was working with medical correspondent Judy Forten on a story about Lyme disease and went along for the interview,” Handler said. “As it happens I had a problem based learning case in my first year of school on Guillain-Barre syndrome, which presents a lot like Lyme disease and was able to ask Ali Khan (M.D.) how a physician would distinguish between the two. Dr. Khan’s eyes lit up and he tells Judy, ‘you have a very smart medical student on staff.’ ”

As an intern for CNN’s medical unit, Handler was often sent along on news stories to help explain things the medical correspondents didn’t understand.

He was thrilled to be able to meet the professionals at the CDC.

“People forget that the real name of the CDC is Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and they hold a lot of sway on what guidelines physicians use in practice and do a lot of research in public health,” Handler said. “It was really cool to see the place I’d always heard so much about.”

Handler spent the month of June working seven days a week at CNN in the medical unit.

His mentor during the internship was none other than neurosurgeon Sanjay Gupta, M.D., the famed doc who appears daily on the national network.

Handler said he was impressed with how involved Dr. Gupta is in his work at CNN and at his private practice.

“Sanjay would be in the studio at 7 a.m. for the morning live news with the anchors and then after working at his clinic he’d be fielding questions from Anderson Cooper at 11 p.m.,” Handler said. “I heard he only sleeps four hours a night.”

UNMC meets CNN Click here to see the CNN “America’s Killer Diet” segment featuring UNMC student Zac Handler.

Aside from accompanying the medical correspondents on their daily assignments, Handler also helped research stories for Dr. Gupta, helped newsroom editors choose what stories to run, edited stories and wrote scripts.

“The days were long, but it was a lot of fun,” Handler said. “I liked the excitement of it, the fast pace. It was more work than I anticipated, though.”

Handler’s behind-the-scenes work paid off with a few on-camera shots that he appeared in.

In the hour-long documentary “America’s Killer Diet,” about the obesity epidemic in the United States, Handler is seen in a piece filmed at an Atlanta eatery.

The piece features a segment in which several restaurant patrons in Atlanta are evaluated on mindless eating.

“Television can reach hundreds of millions of people worldwide and should be a tool to improve people’s quality of life. CNN does a great job with awareness.” UNMC medical student Zac Handler

In order to do so, the wait staff is told to remove the plates of one group after they have finished a platter of chicken wings and before being offered their second platter.

The control table’s plates are not removed, in order to allow the restaurant patrons to see just how many chicken wings they ate.

In the end, the people who have eaten the most chicken wings are the ones whose plates were cleared before the next platter of wings is brought out.

Handler is seen weighing the chicken bones from each person and later handing out chocolate chip cookies to participants as they leave the restaurant.

The piece aired in early October.

The segment didn’t escape Handler’s mom, who “taped it and made eight copies,” he said.

Handler said he applied for the internship in CNN’s medical department because of his interest in pursuing a career in preventive medicine.

“Television can reach hundreds of millions of people worldwide and should be a tool to improve people’s quality of life,” Handler said. “CNN does a great job with awareness.”

Handler worked at the American Journal of Preventive Medicine in San Diego for a year after graduating from the University of California in San Diego with a bachelor of science in biology. The experience at the journal spurred his interest in preventive medicine, he said.