August 04, 2010
Five graduate students at UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, recipients of summer fellowships to work with the nongovernmental organization IntraHealth International, participated in a recent poster exhibition and discussion that featured their research.
 
Fellows include master’s students Laura Houenou and Natalie Gill (health policy and management), Kristen Brugh (maternal and child health) and Kate Krieger (health behavior and health education) and doctoral candidate Zulfiya Chariyeva (health behavior and health education).
 
Founded this year, the IntraHealth-UNC Summer Fellows Program gives UNC public health graduate students the opportunity to complete a 10-week internship with IntraHealth, a locally based international health NGO.
 
“This internship is the perfect example of what we would like to see more of; we can’t educate our students without organizations like IntraHealth,” explains Gretchen Van Vliet, director of the UNC public health school’s Office of Global Health. “While [students] are learning things in the classroom, they need to be able to apply, and to see, theories in action, here in an organization.”
 
As the internship ended, the students shared their research and insights on IntraHealth programs.
 
“There aren’t a lot of paid, structured opportunities out there for public health interns,” says Houenou, who supported IntraHealth’s USAID-funded project in Senegal this summer, “and even fewer for global health,” she adds.
 
Fluent in French, Houenou created questionnaires as part of an overall evaluation plan for following up with French-speaking health workers, trained by IntraHealth medical staff in maternal health, family planning and malaria.
 
“When I started my master’s degree, I had my heart set on an internship abroad,” Houenou says. “I became attracted to this program because it offered so much of the international experience I was looking for, but just miles from campus.”
 
Other fellows echoed Houenou’s enthusiasm for the program developed by IntraHealth and UNC, remarking that the cumulative experience is more integrated and stimulating than what they called “typical” internships.
 
Read more on IntraHealth International’s website.
 
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UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health contact: Ramona DuBose, director of communications, (919) 966-7467 or ramona_dubose@unc.edu.
 

 

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