The Gift Internship
Bureau of Family Health (LA Dept. of Health and Hospitals- Office of Public Health)
Summer- Fall 2014
The Bureau of Family Health provides qualified public health students with a rewarding practicum/internship. Students will gain valuable public health experience, specific to maternal and child health/breastfeeding. Students will provide programmatic support to a statewide breastfeeding initiative targeting LA maternity care facilities (The Gift) with a focus on evaluation and data collection/analysis. The purpose of the Bureau of Family Health Gift Program internship is to foster skilled public health professional s and advocates for maternal and child public health issues, specifically breastfeeding. Students will learn how social, behavioral, environmental and biological factors contribute to breastfeeding outcomes and specific strategies to address policy, community, organizational barriers to breastfeeding. The Practicum Student/Intern will be embedded within the Data Action team and his/her primary purpose will be to work with The Gift Program Manager and Data to Action Team Leader on the evaluation of The Gift program.
Detailed description of the internship
Primary Purpose: To measure The Gift program’s impact on breastfeeding initiation, exclusivity and duration among women delivering in Gift designated hospitals.
Secondary Purpose: To evaluate the success of The Gift model in aiding participating hospitals in improvement in the Ten Steps to achieving The Gift and/or the Baby-Friendly Hospital designation.
Goals
1. Gain experience in program evaluation in the “real world
2. Practice database design skills
3. Analyze, summarize and present data.
Objectives
1. Explore literature on the evaluation of the breastfeeding initiatives targeting delivery hospitals.
2. Describe design considerations for controlling for confounding factors in real world evaluation of programs which exist in communities with multiple efforts aimed at influencing breastfeeding practices.
3. Design relational databases for hospital specific information (descriptors, application information, mPINC scores), hospital assessments, and pre/post-test training instrument data.
4. Apply statistical methods to self-assessment data and pre/post training data
5. Link delivery hospital data to PRAMS data to analyze breastfeeding initiation and duration for women who delivered at The Gift designated facilities.
6. Transcribe qualitative interview data from hospital staff.
7. Summarize, write up and present aggregate and hospital specific results to The Gift staff.
8. Apply theory and strategy based communication principles across different settings and audiences.
9. Demonstrate effective written and oral skills for communication in the process of design, implementation and evaluation of public health programs.
10. Develop/improve a contacts/outreach management system for the program.
Click more for responsibilities/activities, qualifications, and more about supervisors
For more information or to apply, please contact Marci Brewer at Marci.Brewer@la.gov
Main Responsibilities/Activities
Data and Analytic Tasks
The Gift-collected application, assessment, training and interview data, Louisiana PRAMS (2011) data, Louisiana Vital Records (Birth Certificate data) will be used for all analyses. To measure breastfeeding practices associated with Gift designated hospitals, Vital Records and PRAMS data will be linked by a unique identifier. Monitoring hospital improvements in the 10-Step process will include data entry, management and analysis of application, assessment and survey data. Analyses will include calculation of totals and percentages. The internship is within the Data Action Team. A large part of the assignment is the preparation and communication of the findings/results. The intern will be expected to prepare the results in easy to understand format and summarize what the data are “telling” us in terms of what “action” The Gift staff and participating hospitals can take to further refine their efforts.
Administrative Function & Other
- Attend meetings, conference calls, etc. related to The Gift
- Record minutes at meetings and other tasks as assigned
- Maintain website & other social media (i.e. Facebook)
- Prepare and disseminate bi-monthly e-newsletter to stakeholders
- Participate in other OPH/Bureau of Family Health related meetings as indicated
- Coordinate, as needed, with other practicum students working on breastfeeding programs and initiatives
Required Skills/Qualities
- Organized
- Highly independent worker and motivated
- Critical thinker
- Strong foundation in data management and manipulation
- Strong aptitude for written and oral communications
- Intermediate knowledge of SAS and combining datasets in SAS
- High level of competence with PPT, Excel
- Advanced Microsoft Access skills for database and query design as well as creation of data entry forms for data input.
- No specific analytic competencies are required, as they will be learned as part of the internship experience.
Primary Supervisors
Jane Herwehe, MPH
1450 Poydras Street, Room 2038, New Orleans LA 70112
Jane.herwehe@LA.GOV
Epidemiology Supervisor, Louisiana Office of Public Health, Bureau of Family Health
Jane Herwehe, MPH has 24 years of public health experience. She received her Master of Public Health degree from Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in 1989 and has worked nationally and internationally, in program design and evaluation with an emphasis on health care access and utilization, infectious diseases, behavioral health, and public health informatics. She recently joined the staff at the Bureau of Family Health and is spearheading evaluation of select Bureau programs. In her previous position with the Louisiana State University Health System, she supervised and mentored six graduate student interns from LSU School of Public Health, Tulane University and George Washington University. With the BFH, she supervises the Data and Action Team comprised of 4 epidemiologists and 4 survey and interview coordinators for the Pregnancy Risk and Monitoring System (PRAMS). Jane designed the evaluation for The Gift (Guided Infant Feeding Techniques) Program, the Bureau’s breastfeeding initiative.
Marci Brewer, MPH
1450 Poydras Street, Rm 2032, New Orleans, Louisiana 70112
Marci.Brewer@LA.GOV
Breastfeeding Program Manager, Louisiana Office of Public Health, Bureau of Family Health
Marci Brewer received her Master of Public Health (MPH), with a focus in Maternal and Child Health, from Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in August 2008. Prior to moving to New Orleans to pursue her Master in Public Health (MPH) in 2006, she worked in Western Samoa in their Ministry of Health and with the Women, Infants, and Children Program (WIC) in Fairfax County, Virginia where her passion for breastfeeding as a public health issue developed. She has a strong passion and interest in breastfeeding as a public health issue and made breastfeeding and maternal and child health the focus of her MPH related studies. As the Breastfeeding Program Manager for the Bureau of Family Health, she coordinates The Gift, a hospital-based breastfeeding initiative and designation program, and also oversees the Louisiana Breastfeeding Coalition.
