Title V Agency Placement & Project
- Kansas Department of Health and Environment, Bureau of Family Health
- Summer 2024
- Fatherhood & Non-Birthing Partner Needs Assessment
Internship Focus
During my Title V summer internship with the Kansas Department of Health and Environment's Bureau of Family Health, I worked under the guidance of Dr. Jennifer Miller, the State MCH Director, and Cora Ungerer, the State’s Children with Special Health Care Needs Director. Our project was part of Kansas's 2025 Title V MCH Needs Assessment and focused on identifying the needs of fathers and non-birthing partners (NBPs), a population that had been historically excluded from the state's MCH network.
Our objectives were to assess what services and organizations currently exist to support Kansas fathers/NBPs, to determine what father-serving organizations identify as needs and challenges for fathers and NBPs, and to identify what fathers and NBPs themselves need to feel supported and empowered in their parenting roles. During my internship, my co-intern and I built a statewide resource inventory and community map of all services and organizations serving these populations, developed protocols for key informant interviews and focus groups, and submitted a full IRB application. We were able to identify 23 active father/NBP-serving organizations and recruited 12 organization leaders for key informant interviews.
Beyond these deliverables, this experience also deepened my understanding of how state health departments build evidence to support underserved populations, and it gave me hands-on exposure to qualitative research design, stakeholder engagement, and the realities of navigating institutional processes like IRB approval within a government agency setting.
Project Output and Impact
One of my primary deliverables was the resource inventory and community map of father/NBP-serving organizations across Kansas. Since no centralized list of these services existed previously, building the inventory required extensive outreach and calling organizations we identified online to confirm that they were still active. During these calls, we also documented details about their programs and services such as cost, language accessibility, virtual availability, and whether they used inclusive terminology like "non-birthing partner" rather than defaulting to "father." Through this process, we built a comprehensive inventory and map of 23 active organizations. Our findings revealed that father and NBP-specific services were heavily concentrated in eastern and northeastern Kansas, leaving other regions underserved. We also found that nearly all services were free, but only three offered virtual options and only three offered bilingual English/Spanish support. The inventory and map was also intended to be published on the KDHE website and made publicly accessible for families to use directly.
Developing this deliverable taught me how foundational work like resource mapping can be the essential first step toward equity-driven policy and help a state agency build the evidence base it needs to justify future investment in service providers serving historically underserved populations.
Key Takeaways
My biggest takeaway from this internship was that meaningful public health work often starts with the people and populations who have been left out of the conversation entirely. Before this internship, I didn’t fully realize how absent fathers and non-birthing partners were from MCH data and program design, despite substantial evidence that their involvement shapes health outcomes for the entire family unit.
"One moment that stuck with me was when an organizational leader I interviewed told me that no one from the public health department, at the state or local level, had ever reached out to him or his organization to ask about fatherhood before. Hearing that was an emotional reminder of how invisible this population has been in MCH systems, and reinforced to me how important it is to uplift the voices and contributions of fatherhood-serving organizations into the broader field of MCAH."
Building this needs assessment from the ground up, with no existing data to build on, also showed me that equity work sometimes means creating the evidence base yourself before you can even begin advocating for resources.
Professional Growth
This internship experience has helped to shape my future career goals and has guided my decision to pursue roles specifically within government health departments and MCAH divisions. Seeing firsthand how a state agency identifies and responds to the needs of different populations has provided me with a lot of insight on how we can design public health programs and policies to be more inclusive and responsive to the needs of underserved populations, and I have gained a deep appreciation for how government public health work can translate community voice into systems-level change.
Since completing my Title V internship, I have gone on to intern with the California Department of Public Health Office of Health Equity and am currently interning with the Alameda County Public Health Department’s Fatherhood Initiative. Going forward, I hope to build a career in government public health where I can continue centering historically excluded populations, like fathers and non-birthing partners, in the systems and policies that shape family and community wellbeing.
Photo: Leah and her co-intern presenting their work at the 2025 Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs (AMCHP) Conference in Washington, D.C.
Advice for Title V Interns
For any students interested in working for a state or federal public health agency, or who are curious about what state-level public health work looks like, I think this internship is an amazing entry point and I cannot recommend it enough! I would advise students to go in knowing that government work can move slowly, but that pace doesn't diminish its impact. The work being done genuinely shapes how a state identifies priority areas for Title V funding and expands its capacity to engage historically excluded populations. I'd also stress the importance of knowing when to ask your preceptor or team for help, rather than trying to figure things out on your own. Lastly, don't underestimate yourself because of your academic background! As a community college transfer student, I sometimes doubted whether I belonged in these spaces, but this internship, and later presenting our work at a national conference, showed me that meaningful contributions to public health don't depend on where you started. You are more than your undergraduate title, and your contributions and lived experiences are just as valuable!
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