by Amanda Dennis | Aug 15, 2019 | Career Exploration, General, Internships, Student Perspective |
By Elizabeth Warner This summer I had the privilege of interning for The Philadelphia Citizen. The Citizen is an online media organization that focuses on providing both deeply reported, solutions based journalism, and civically minded events for the community. I am the Civic Impact, Events, and Programming Intern that focuses on the civically minded events. This summer we had many events which included a conversation between Ali Velshi and Richard Vague, and a happy hour networking event for women in Philly. A big project that I worked on is a day-long festival called Ideas We Should Steal. The festival focuses on highlighting good ideas working in other cities, that we should bring to Philly. I worked on finding people to invite for panels and TED style talks. The event will be on December 10th and I am excited to continue working on the event through the school year. I was also able to write stories for The Citizen. We publish a weekly article called, “Do Something” where we highlight cool things happening in Philly for our readers. That was a fun way to research events and explore the city in the summer. For my other articles, I was able to interview interesting people doing good things in the city. Some articles I worked on featured a Philly couple that runs a summer camp for kids that do not thrive in traditional camp settings, another article focused on an Iranian immigrant that sells art in Reading Terminal Market. The Citizen focuses on solutions journalism that provides agency to community members and works to highlight problems in our community, while still...
by Amanda Dennis | Aug 13, 2019 | Career Exploration, General, Internships, Liberal Arts, Student Perspective |
By Eliza Brosgol This summer, I spent ten weeks working as a data and research intern for the Health Care Improvement Foundation (HCIF) through the Whitehead Internship Program. HCIF is an independent nonprofit organization in center-city Philadelphia drives high-value health care through stakeholder collaboration and quality improvement initiatives. The organization works to fulfill the needs of patients and consumers, and to achieve better health care. On a day-to-day basis this means that HCIF serves as a facilitator among collaborating individuals, companies, hospitals, and health systems for the projects of which it is a part. Each of the initiatives falls under one of two branches within the organization: clinical improvement or population health. At HCIF, I worked mostly with the clinical improvement team. I spent my time working on two projects: CPR Ready and the Pennsylvania Urology Regional Collaborative (PURC). CPR Ready is a Philadelphia area campaign that strives to increase bystander response and cardiac arrest survival rates. My work for CPR Ready included taking notes during coalition meetings, assisting with hands-only CPR during sessions, and communicating with organizations that were interested in arranging a CPR training. At the beginning of the summer, I had the opportunity to do research on CPR Ready’s partners and write an article, that was published, about the mission of the campaign and the success that it has achieved thus far! PURC is a quality improvement initiative that brings together urology practices in a physician-led, data-sharing collaborative aimed at advancing the quality of diagnosis and care for men with prostate cancer. My favorite part of my work with PURC was building, disseminating, and analyzing the...
by Amanda Dennis | Aug 8, 2019 | Career Exploration, General, Internships, Student Perspective |
By Rachel Spitzer As an intern at Riverside Early Intervention, funded by the Gertrude Heller Memorial Grant, I work with children who are 0-3 years old and have developmental delays. Support for these children can include physical therapy, speech therapy, occupational therapy, social work, psychiatry, and/or work with developmental specialists. As a result of the varied disciplines involved in providing comprehensive care for families and their children, I get the opportunity to learn about treatment from many perspectives. For each individual child, I get to see how multiple specialties combine to support their development holistically. My days consist of a mix of assisting in group play sessions, attending staff meetings, and observing therapy sessions for children in their homes. Group sessions are my opportunity to engage most directly with the kids in the program, and they are how I start each morning. Although Riverside Early Intervention serves children from birth, most groups include only toddlers between 18 months and 3 years old. Some groups run with caregivers participating in the room, and others are for children only so that they can practice separating from caregivers. We specifically encourage the toddlers to engage with each other, use words to communicate, and follow directions during transitions and structured circle times. Sometimes the children can easily accomplish these goals, but most of them have significant barriers to understanding how to participate effectively in group play. Many have Autism Spectrum Disorder, global developmental delays, speech delays, motor impairments, or other neurological disorders that impact their functioning. The play group program at Riverside Early Intervention aims to help these children integrate into structured social...
by Amanda Dennis | Aug 5, 2019 | Career Exploration, General, Internships, Student Perspective |
Pictured: A photo taken by Susan Wright of herself and Molly Biddle, after finishing her closing speech of a money laundering trial. By Molly Biddle Earlier this year in February, I had the opportunity to travel to the Chelmsford Crown Court in East England to witness the sentencing of the Stansted 15, a group of protestors who had been accused essentially of terrorism offences after preventing the deportation of immigrants. This was my first chance to see the English criminal justice system personally. I had been invited to the hearing as the guest of Susan Wright, a barrister from London who was advocating on behalf of one of the protestors. After this opportunity, I reached out to Ms. Wright, hoping that she might take me on for a period over the summer. She very graciously agreed, and due to the generosity of Haverford’s CCPA and the Deborah Lafer-Scher International Internship, I was able to stay in the UK for six more weeks—having already spent the year studying abroad in the country. This is the beginning of my fourth week working as a ‘mini-pupil’ with Ms. Wright, and I must say that it has been an incredible experience. This is largely due to the consideration demonstrated by Ms. Wright. Ms. Wright acted as a defense attorney in the United States for many years before relocating to Europe. She also notably represented one of the first people to be accused by the war crimes tribunal in Sierra Leone and acted as Head of Rule of Law for the Office of the High Representative in Bosnia in addition to holding...
by Amanda Dennis | Jul 26, 2019 | Internships, Student Perspective |
By Lillian Alonzo I currently work at the AIDS Institute of the New York State Department of Health. I work within the Center for Quality Improvement and Innovation (CQII) as a part of the Office of the Medical Director (OMD). Every day I work to help further end health disparities through the ECHO Collaborative, a HRSA Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program initiative focused on increasing viral suppression in four subpopulations identified as having the greatest disparities in viral suppression. These subpopulations are MSM of color, Youth, Black/African-American and Latino women, and Transgender people. The CQII’s role within the AIDS Institute is to help the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program’s structure and implement quality improvement projects. Such projects can include, but are not limited to, care continuity, addressing and combating stigma within partnered clinics, and helping set up diversity training for health providers and their staff. While working with CQII, I engage in projects aiming to improve the process and quality of care received by the before stated subpopulations around the country. Through regular meetings with health providers, quality improvement coaches, and people living with HIV (PLWH), I have been able to learn about the intersection of quality improvement, medical care, and technological innovation. The Collaborative will inform clinics around the nation, and possibly the globe, on how to utilize telecommunication for quality improvement in regards to healthcare. Some projects I am currently in charge of are drafting a manuscript about the Collaborative and its successes for future publishing, a Change Package consisting of all the initiatives enacted by community partners and health providers within the Collaborative, and a collection of best...
by Amanda Dennis | Jul 24, 2019 | Career Exploration, General, Internships, Student Perspective |
By Devi Namboodiri Hey! I am Devi Namboodiri, she/her/hers, and I am a rising junior. In this blog, I’ll go over my internship details and at the end, show in a video how to take some vital signs! This summer, I am very grateful for the sponsorship of the Jaharis Scholarship. Through this funding, I am working at a free clinic in Dayton, Ohio called ReachOut of Montgomery County. ReachOut does vital work in the community: many people come in seeking more affordable health care which can be hard to find. I joined ReachOut because I wanted to become a part of the process to help people in need feel better. There are many nurses, doctors, pharmacists and training professionals who come volunteer their time for this same cause. As a pre-med volunteer, I still get to do a lot in the clinic. Our shifts are generally 5 hours at a time, which are during the walk-in hours of the clinic. The first, longer part of the shift is my favorite: triaging. This is a process where the clinic assesses the relative urgencies of treatment for the patients that come for walk-in appointments. This is done differently if the patient is new or returning. For new patients and returning patients that have not come for about a year, the first step is taking the medical histories and records. This is to inform the clinic of any chronic diseases and current medication that might cause complications or cause worse symptoms if left untreated. Next, we evaluate the chief complaint: the reason or reasons for the visit. Next, some measures of a...
