Every summer, MCAH students develop their leadership and research skills through internships with an organization of their choice. For 2018, MPH candidates Christine Smith, Jalang Conteh and Helena Hutchins interned at the California Preterm Birth Initiative/SF Department of Public Health, The Gambia Country Office, UN Development Fund, and Title V MCH, Wyoming Department of Health, respectively. Read more for details!
MPH Candidate Christine Smith
California Preterm Birth Initiative/SF Department of Public Health
Over the summer, Christine worked with both the California Preterm Birth Initiative (PTBi) and the San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH). For SFDPH, she worked on structural racism projects, specifically with qualitative research on racial equity. In addition, she worked on the Nurse Leadership Conference, helping facilitate group activities around racism and health equity. As a result of her work, Christine is helping create race equity competencies to be used for programs when thinking about organizational support and operation. She also supported SF Department of Public Health’s MCAH monthly brown bag series on racial equity by co-developing homework assignments that support the development of a racial equity lens, enabling staff to support MCAH clients.
With PTBi, Christine helped research effective social marketing strategies and campaigns for the initiative to effectively communicate risk for preterm birth in communities of color in California. She also created an internal policy strategy map for PTBi, identifying ways the initiative could educate local and state level California policy makers in preventing preterm birth.
MPH Candidate Jalang Conteh
The Gambia Country Office, UN Development Fund
Jalang Conteh interned over the summer at the Gambia Country Office of the United Nations Development Fund in Banjul, Gambia. There, she worked on several projects including proposal writing, donor scoping, developing programming for adolescent sexual and reproductive health services, and creating a framework for capacity building of health workers with the health ministry. Her biggest project has been to help scale up male clinics in the area, which focus on increasing male involvement in sexual and reproductive health services and family planning with their partners. Additionally, this project is also working with clinics to increase male partner's presence at childbirth.
MPH Candidate Helena Hutchins
Title V MCH, Wyoming Department of Health
Over the summer, Helena worked with a co-intern at the Wyoming Department of Health's Title V MCH to develop and disseminate data-informed recommendations for implementing Bright Futures, 4th Edition in Wyoming. They collected qualitative data via surveys and interviews with healthcare providers, medicaid leadership, child-serving organizations, and parents/caregivers across the state to identify priorities, barriers, and opportunities to implementing Bright Futures as a standard of preventive children's healthcare. They also synthesized existing quantitative children's health data for the state to inform their recommendations, working closely with the MCH Unit and Medicaid throughout the process. Helena gained valuable public speaking experience presenting their project to Wyoming Medicaid and at the Regional Title V Block Grant Review in Denver, Colorado. She was also able to complete several mini projects, including creating Wyoming perinatal data sheets for the state's first Perinatal Quality Collaborative meeting, researching and compiling trainings for public health nurses to address MCH priorities, and updating Wyoming's Life Course Indicators data.