The city of Mission has partnered with the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley to give students hands-on experience handling mosquito-borne illnesses.

Starting this fall, UTRGV students will intern alongside the city's mosquito vector control team to help track mosquito populations and prevent the spread of disease.

This is the first time the program has partnered with a city.

"The idea is [it] can then expose students to different kinds of activities that public health offices normally engage in, things related to certain surveillance activities, things related to vector control that they wouldn't necessarily have exposure to purely in academic settings," UTRGV medical entomologist Dr. Christopher Vitek said.

The city says the program will support efforts to protect the community from illnesses like West Nile virus and Zika.