IHSJ 2011 Summer Interns

Compiled by Allie Broas

PIH's Institute for Health and Social Justice (IHSJ) features an internship program each summer for a select number of students and professionals early in their careers who are interested in learning about current issues in health and social justice. The Summer 2011 interns worked on a wide variety of PIH projects. Read more about them and their individual projects and accomplishments:

Xeno Acharya is a recent MPH graduate from the University of Washington where he focused on health services and global health. He is originally from Nepal, where a non-profit organization he founded runs a primary school and mobile clinic in the urban slums of Kathmandu. Before coming to Partners In Health, Xeno was in Ethiopia and Sudan working with the Ministry of Health on tuberculosis infection prevention in hospitals. He worked with Dr. Edward Nardell this summer on tuberculosis core messaging strategies and wrote a report for a meeting that he attended in The Hague with TB experts from around the world. He is interested in finding common solutions to the issues of health and quality education through public-private partnerships in urban slums around the world.

Nick Baer is a senior at Brown University, where he is studying history and completing his pre-med requirements. Before interning at PIH, Nick worked at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City on a research project focused on financial and insurance-related barriers to healthcare for elderly, low-income adults with chronic disease. During his time at PIH, Nick worked as a Programs Team intern. He supported Dr. Joia Mukherjee’s team in accompanying PIH doctors from Haiti, Rwanda, and Lesotho, and coordinating logistics for them while they studied at the Harvard School of Public Health. He also worked under PIH Chief Operating Officer Ted Constan’s team to bolster PIH’s relationships with its fiscal agencies. Interviewing PIH and fiscal agency staff, Nick assessed challenges and successes in the relationships to date. His work and research culminated in a report on expectations and guidelines for PIH’s involvement with its fiscal agencies. Nick plans to build on what he has learned at PIH and hopes to pursue a career in medicine.

Allie Broas is a junior at Boston College, where she is studying English, international studies, and film. Before coming to Partners In Health, Allie participated in service trips to Costa Rica and the Appalachian region, working in impoverished areas to improve access to education and natural resources. During her summer at Partners In Health, Allie worked with the Communications team, focusing primarily on the development of and the plan to release PIH’s first iPhone Application. She also assisted the training team in developing a marketing plan for a Program Management Guide, identifying and reaching out to target audiences and setting the timeline for the release. In addition, she worked on several ongoing projects related to PIH’s social media strategy and website. Allie hopes to use what she has learned at PIH to further her study of the role of communication in global health policy and to broaden her university’s involvement in the global health arena by starting a FACE AIDS chapter at Boston College.

Shannon Brunner is a second year graduate student at the University of Illinois-Chicago, where she is pursuing a Master's of Public Health in epidemiology and global health. Before coming to Partners In Health, she spent two years working as a secondary science teacher in Chicago Public Schools while concurrently serving as a corps member with Teach for America. This summer, Shannon interned with PIH’s Training department. She created a data collection system for use in organizing and evaluating training assessments, conducted a literature review of community health worker trainings, and researched various platforms for eLearning in an effort to develop long-distance management trainings. In the future, Shannon hopes to further her passion for health and social justice through medical training and continued involvement with PIH and like-minded organizations.

Kevin Carney is a senior at the University of Michigan, where he is majoring in international studies, with a sub-concentration in political economy and development. On campus, Kevin is the student ambassador for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and a founding member of the Student Advisory Board at the Center for International and Comparative Studies. Before coming to Partners In Health, he spent a summer in Managua, Nicaragua working for the Department of State in the Economic Section of the US Embassy. This summer, Kevin interned for PIH’s Public Sector Development team. He researched reconstruction efforts in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, writing a report about key donors, the Haiti Reconstruction Fund, and the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission. Additionally, he drafted a grant proposal for PIH’s program in Malawi and compiled data into a report about development aid in Rwanda. In the future, Kevin hopes to further his passion for social justice through graduate studies and continued involvement with PIH.

Colette DeJong graduated from Brown University in 2011 with a degree in development studies. As an intern with the PACT Project in Boston, Colette worked with the Training and Technical Assistance team to define the core competencies of PACT's community health workers and research tools to evaluate them. Her work was a continuation of her undergraduate honors research, which chronicled the translation of the PACT model to 28 hospitals and health centers across New York City. Next year Colette will join the team of Green City Force, a nonprofit that engages unemployed New York City youth in service and training related to the clean energy economy. She hopes to attend medical school in Fall 2012, with a focus on urban access to HIV care.

Sarah Fernandez is starting her sophomore year at Dartmouth College, and aspires to complete the pre-veterinary track, a major in geography and a minor in international studies. She seeks to combine her interest in veterinary medicine with her passion for global health by studying zoonotic diseases—those which originate in animals but eventually are transmitted to humans. Sarah will assume a leadership position at the Dartmouth Coalition for Global Health in the fall, and is an active member of the Student Global AIDS Campaign, as well as the local NAACP chapter. Sarah spent the summer interning for PIH Deputy Director Paul Zintl, doing research that will help PIH receive funding and will help form new partnerships. She developed a comprehensive spreadsheet of all the universities in the United States that have global health programs, explained and classified each. She also compiled a map, indicating and describing in detail all of the locations where PIH has an impact outside the twelve countries where PIH provides direct service. Sarah will be helping to plan the student symposium in September, and hopes to maintain her ties to Partners In Health for years to come.

Kate Glynn is entering her second year of graduate business school at Boston University School of Management. After graduating from Brown University in 2005, Kate worked in advertising before transitioning to the American Cancer Society’s development department. She is currently concentrating in the Public and Nonprofit Program at BU as she plans to return to a nonprofit organization after graduating with her MBA. Kate used her experience in community engagement and volunteer management at the American Cancer Society to review Partners In Health’s existing community engagement efforts and make recommendations for further improvements. Working as a member of the Individual Giving department, Kate interviewed PIH staff and supporters to discover needs and opportunities and distilled these into strategic recommendations.

Sudha Guttikonda is a junior at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, majoring in biology. At MIT, Sudha is a member of iHouse, a living and learning group focused on international development, and is the editor of Komaza, a magazine featuring student projects on international development work. Prior to coming to PIH, Sudha traveled to China to work with migrant factory workers affected by occupational health hazards. This summer at PIH, Sudha helped the Medical Informatics team develop documentation for the reporting module to the electronic medical records system, OpenMRS. She also developed an online form and report outlines for PIH's new rehabilitation program in Haiti. After PIH, Sudha hopes to go on to medical school and pursue a career in public health.

Donal Hanratty is going into his 5th year at medical school in University College Dublin, Ireland. He is active in the promotion of the Irish Language and with his campus charity, UCD Volunteers Overseas. Last summer he initiated a 'STOP AIDS' campaign and rally in Vijayawada, India, bringing together NGOs from across the city and gaining the attention of international media. This summer he researched gender based violence at Harvard School of Public Health under Associate Professor Louise Ivers. A thousand surveys of families in Parc Jean Marie Vincent, (a spontaneous 'internally displaced person' camp in Port-au-Prince, Haiti) greeted him on his arrival to Boston. The surveys assessed the prevalence of violence, food insecurity, and health of the inhabitants of the camp. He conducted data analysis and produced reports on the conditions in each zone of the camp. He also made an evidence table and wrote a review of the medical literature on gender based violence. He hopes to practice as a doctor and further his passion for global health.

Jessica "Sika" Holman is a second year MPH student in the Department of Global Health at the University of Washington in Seattle. At school, she is the Student-Faculty Representative, a member of the Social Justice and Equity Forum, and will be chairing the Student Committee. Before graduate school, she was a Peace Corps Volunteer for two years, where she taught nursing in Malawi. There, she put her experience as an RN to good use, while learning that there was a whole other way to look at health and the world. Sika interned with the Guatemala and Chiapas team, but her interactive curriculum project focused on Malawi. She has been researching, writing, and coding a choose-your-own-adventure about global health all summer, and she has found it challenging, frustrating, and awesome. In the future, Sika hopes to actually complete her thesis and then to find a great job that allows her to use her interest in and passion for nursing, structural analysis, and lots and lots of data.

Hannah Judge is a rising senior at Middlebury College, where she is a geography major, with a minor in global health. Before coming to PIH, Hannah worked as a summer Communications intern at John Snow, Inc, traveled to Uganda as a GlobeMed GROW intern, and spent two semesters in India studying public health and human rights. As the Campaigns and Development intern at PIH this summer, Hannah worked on a variety of projects and campaigns including the Summer Reading Series and Back to School campaign. She helped draft campaign materials and content, and prepare for two live chats with staff and supporters as part of PIH’s Summer Reading Series. Hannah also did research and analysis on effective campaign and engagement efforts, and was particularly interested by the idea of 'demonstrating impact'. In light of this, she created an interactive map of PIH's project sites, and compiled resources and ideas for how maps can be used to convey information and engage supporters. In the future, Hannah hopes to stay engaged with PIH's work, and apply what she has learned to her role as co-president of GlobeMed at Middlebury in an effort to build the movement for global health equity and social justice.

Peter Kaminski is a first year medical student at Brown University and an MPH student at UMass Amherst. As the intern for PIH’s International Operations team, he worked on a variety of projects relating to the procurement of supplies and medications for PIH programs. Included in this work was an examination of current drug pricing, sourcing supplies for the expanded rehabilitation programs in Haiti, and helping to identify additional medications necessary for PIH's new hospital in Mirebalais, Haiti. During his summer at PIH he also greatly enjoyed learning about PIH's programs and the infrastructure that supports them, all anchored in the ethos of accompaniment. Grateful for the stories and lessons imparted over the course of the summer, Peter looks forward to further advocating on the behalf of vulnerable populations by integrating the accompaniment model into medical education.

Kaitlin Keane graduated from Northeastern University with a degree in journalism and political science in 2007 and spent several years as a daily newspaper reporter on Boston’s South Shore. She developed an interest in public health and social justice after a stint in Thailand, where she worked with an NGO that helped empower survivors of sex trafficking, and a time spent in Peru with a community group focused on the education and nutrition of poor children. During her summer at PIH, Kaitlin worked with the communications team on a variety of stories, blog posts and informational health pages. She produced content on non-communicable diseases and cholera, interviewed a Haitian seminary student who came to America for life-saving brain surgery, followed the cross-country fundraising trip for a group of student bicyclists and edited the PIH intern blog that chronicled the experience of her fellow interns at PIH. 

Helen Knight is a junior at Yale University, where she is majoring in English and fulfilling premedical requirements. Prior to her PIH internship, Helen served as an intern for Yale's Global Health Leadership Institute Conference, which is annually attended by health policy makers and practitioners from around the world. This summer, Helen interned with Dr. Giuseppe Raviola, PIH's Director of Mental Health, supporting the development of training programs in mental health for sites in Haiti and Rwanda. Her primary activities included researching existing mental health programs in resource-limited settings, revising the PIH mental health curriculum for community health workers, and drafting other written materials to facilitate the transition from strategic planning to implementation of mental health services.

Michaela Kupfer is a senior at Washington University in St. Louis where she is studying anthropology, women and gender studies, and fine arts. Michaela has been thoroughly engaged in the movement for global health equity through her involvement with the Wash U chapter of GlobeMed, a student-run non-profit working to improve the health of people living in poverty through long-term partnerships. During her summer working at Partners In Health, Michaela assisted the Institute for Health and Social Justice (IHSJ) in a wide variety of their advocacy and policy initiatives; some of the work she was involved in included researching local production of ready-to-use therapeutic food, helping to compile the IHSJ Reader, and improving information sharing within PIH. Her summer working with PIH deepened her commitment to and understanding of health equity and social justice. She hopes to bring back that commitment to her studies and community at Wash U, while continuing her engagement with Partners In Health.

Andrew Leggett is a junior at Duke University, where he is pursuing a pre-medical school curriculum with a major in Classical Civilizations, a minor in Chemistry, and a Certificate of Global Health. This summer Andrew interned for both Dr. Gene Bukhman and Deputy Director Paul Zintl. Dr. Gene Bukhman is currently working to implement a non-communicable diseases (NCDs) care program in Rwanda. Andrew helped Gene research and edit guidelines that health providers and community health workers will follow when managing patients with NCDs. For Paul Zintl, Andrew helped to compile information on what initiatives the members of the Consortium of Universities for Global Health are taking to fulfill PIH’s mission of Service, Training, Research, and Advocacy. In the future, Andrew hopes to continue pursuing his passion for equitable health care for all by advocating throughout his pursuit of a medical degree.

Malini Malhotra is a sophomore at Franklin & Marshall College, where she is pursuing a major in public health. Prior to coming to PIH, Malini had spent a lot of time traveling, primarily in Malawi and India, learning about poverty, healthcare, and the developing world, which drew her to her passion for global health and social justice. This summer, she spent most of her time working with the Haiti-Rwanda Commission (HRC), a small, non-governmental organization affiliated with PIH, led by Didi Bertrand Farmer. HRC looks at the learned experiences from a post-genocide Rwanda and shares those policies with post-earthquake Haiti in an effort to create collaborations between the two countries and others in the global south. As a member of HRC, Malini did a lot of work on the website, both helping to design it and develop content, as well as other research and administrative tasks the team needed. Additionally, she helped Paul Farmer's team with necessary day-to-day tasks. In the future, Malini hopes to pursue law or policy-based work with a focus on human rights and social justice.

Sarah Phillips will be a junior at Colorado College this fall, where she is planning to collaborate with faculty to create a global health major alongside her Spanish minor. Prior to PIH, she spent time abroad in Honduras, Ecuador and Chile, where she began to understand the injustices in our world and her passion to help others. This summer, Sarah was an intern with PIH’s Right to Health Care team, which allowed her to be a patient advocate and understand the social determinates to health. Accompanying patients to doctor’s appointments often filled her days; however, she also helped research transition steps for patients who receive Temporary Protected Status, which allows them to continue to live in the US. In addition, she helped in implementing a new system for patient files and compiling a list of pipeline patients for the USNS Comfort, a naval hospital ship that provided medical care in Haiti. Sarah hopes to begin a GlobeMed chapter at Colorado College and fire up her classmates about the student movement for global health equity before applying to medical school and pursuing a career in medicine and public health.

Brittany Powell is a junior at Harvard College, where she is concentrating in neurobiology with a secondary in global health and health policy. She is also intimately involved in the fundraising team for Circle of Women, an organization founded at Harvard and committed to bringing sustainable education opportunities to women in impoverished areas around the world. Brittany became interested in global health work during the compelling lectures in Dr. Paul Farmer’s undergraduate course Health, Culture, and Community: Case Studies in Global Health. She was fortunate to be placed on Dr. Farmer’s team during her summer internship with Partners In Health under the mentorship of Paul’s Executive Assistant Emily Bahnsen. In this position, Brittany assisted in tasks surrounding the July book release of Haiti After the Earthquake, especially with compiling the Haiti earthquake gratitude website and with getting signed copies of the book out to PIH supporters. In the future, Brittany hopes to pursue medical school while continuing a close relationship with PIH.

Jill Shah is a junior at Northwestern University, majoring in Anthropology and Sociology. Before interning at PIH, Jill served as a student staff member for the GlobeMed National Office in Evanston, IL. In 2011, Jill served as the co-director of the GlobeMed Global Health Summit, a global health conference that brings together undergraduates from across the country for a weekend of sessions, workshops, and lectures with a range of experts. During her time with PIH, Jill interned with the Events team in the Development department. Throughout the summer, Jill worked with the Events Coordinator to create an Events manual that covered logistics, history, and best practices of event-planning. Jill hopes to use her experiences at PIH to strengthen her work with GlobeMed and beyond as she pursues a career as a lifelong advocate for global health equity.  

Nina Skagerlind is a senior at Dartmouth College where she is a government major with a focus on international relations and comparative politics. During her time at Dartmouth she has had the opportunity to study in Brazil and Argentina, and lead a service trip to Honduras. Nina is also involved with Dartmouth Coalition for Global Health and Social Equity, and is a mentor to a 7-year old girl through an organization called DREAM. This summer, as an intern for PIH's Lesotho team, Nina was exposed to the various facets of running a country program. She worked with writing capacity statements and grant proposals on cervical cancer, HIV/AIDS programs and maternal and child health. She researched and summarized various articles relevant to PIH's work in Lesotho, and updated and compiled national data on various health indicators. During her time at PIH, Nina also had the chance to meet PIH Lesotho clinical director Hind Satti, and attend meetings with the Monitoring & Evaluation team to learn more about reporting on projects and data collection. After graduating college, Nina hopes to pursue a master in international affairs and continue to work in international development and global health.

Robert Szypko is studying geography, French and government at Dartmouth College. Working with GHDonline this summer, Robert interviewed and wrote profiles of GHDonline users from around the world, compiled summaries of discussions about global health on GHDonline, assisted with research for case studies, and edited website content in preparation for a site relaunch. He also helped edit articles about the Global Health Delivery Project for submission to peer-reviewed journals and he selected daily news stories to be posted to the site’s news feed. Prior to his IHSJ internship, Robert has worked as a tutor and teacher’s aide for an education NGO in Ghana and studied abroad in Paris, France. At Dartmouth, Robert is the arts and entertainment section editor for the daily newspaper The Dartmouth, works as a research assistant in the government department, and is preparing to write his thesis, about graffiti and urban marginalization in Paris. After college, he hopes to work in journalism, teach, and/or pursue a career with a social justice focus.

Rosie Taam recently graduated from Cornell University with a degree in human biology, health & society and minor in global health. This summer, Rosie interned with PIH’s Human Resources team. As an HR intern, she worked in multiple disciplines of the department. A highlight was the rollout of a new online course program for employees. The online course program will be one tool for employees to gain leadership and professional skills. Rosie also researched mental health programs to build up PIH's support for their employees. Continuing with the growth of PIH since the earthquake, Rosie assisted with recruitment. These experiences with HR team coupled with the internship seminars allowed Rosie to gain insight into the operation of PIH, which will be invaluable knowledge as Rosie pursues a career in healthcare.

Zach Tyerman is currently enrolled in an MD/MPH program at Eastern Virginia Medical School. After completing a degree in biochemistry at Stony Brook University, he volunteered at the nation’s first skilled care facility dedicated to people with HIV/AIDS – Bailey Boushay House in Seattle. This summer while working with the PACT program, he created a provider survey, helped finish a diabetes study, and interviewed patients to better understand substance use among PACT’s patients. Zach plans to pursue a career in Addiction Psychiatry.