My Internship

My internship site performs pediatric research in Western Kenya. Right now, we are working on a global health partnerships project pertaining to bidirectional partnerships. A bidirectional partnership is a collaboration between two entities that work together toward a common goal. In our case, the bidirectional partnerships are global, meaning that one organization is located in the United States while the other organization is in another country. We want to learn more about other organizations' bidirectional partnerships and the organization's views on them. Communication with the global health contacts from these organizations is my main role. I communicate with them via email and later on in the study I will be sending out surveys in order to hear their opinions on bidirectional global health partnerships. It is important to continue learning more about bidirectional global health partnerships in order to grow them to their fullest potential. 


AMPATH is a global health partnership between Moi University in Kenya and Indiana University. This program is the basis of our survey project. The website is linked below in order to give resources to learn more about AMPATH and global health partnerships as a whole. 


The Tedx Talk linked below explains global health partnerships. When thinking about global health partnerships, it is important to remember to check your privilege and help the partnership to remain bidirectional. This video is insightful as it explains the importance of keeping global health partnerships ethical with the help of a personal story. 


Tedx Talks. (2019, June 27). Global Health Partnerships: Check Your Privilege at the Border [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NUEepj06pc

Learning and Skills

This internship will help me to grow and build my existing communication and teamwork skills. In addition, I believe this internship will challenge me to learn new things by using different sofware and computer programs.

I want to become more comfortable with the topic of global health and the impact bidirectional partnerships has on each partner and the world. Additionally, I hope to gain communication and teamwork skills. I am most excited to have the opportunity to co-lead a study about bidirectional partnerships.

I am most confident in my communication skills and my ability to be independent. I would like to grow my application skills and the way I confront failure. I believe I can grow my application skills by setting new goals for myself and gaining familiarity with my site. 

Although this internship has not aligned very much with my classes this semster, one thing that has helped me with my internship is my Chemistry lab. Many of the experiments use Excel to create graphs and write formulas. This has helped me become more fluent in Excel work. The research I have been prepping for requires an Excel spreadsheet to keep everything organized.

This semester I have grown in my communication skills with people in higher positions, and I have learned more about global health partnerships. Coming into this internship I did not have any particular interest in these partnerships, but as the semester has gone on I have enjoyed learning about them and how they can be improved. 

My contributions of reaching out to the global health contacts at each institution, creating the survey in REDCap, and making/writing certain things for the manuscript have contributed to the end goal of the project. The next step after all of the data has been coded is to write a manuscript, I will be a part of the editing of said manuscript. All of these smaller tasks led up to the end goal because without participants and a survey, we would not be able to write this manuscript. 

The Workplace

I have seen great leadership, creativity, and interpersonal skills. As a professional and teammate I would like to grow in my creativity and leadership skills. 

This internship has been different than what I expected because I did not expect to be able to do as much and participate as much as I have been able to. I have been given so many opportunities to give my input and be in charge of different parts of the study. 

I have been greatly impacted by my team. Although they have not impacted my attitudes or beliefs, they have taught me so much about global health, pediatrics, and research as a whole, and for that I am so grateful. The knowledge they have shared with me has helped me grow as a professional, researcher, and future doctor as a whole. 

Successes and Challenges

I have had many successes while sending emails to possible survey participants, I enjoy getting positive responses and making connections with pediatric residency programs. In addition to it being a part of the study, it is a great way for me to network for the future. It has been challenging for me to manage my time well. I think the addition of the internship along with my current course load has been challenging. I want to do well on both my school work and at the job, but it has been hard for me to do ten hours of work a week along with school. I think this has been the most challenging part of my experience thus far. Looking back, my team helped me overcome these obstacles by making sure that school came first for me. My supervisor was always persistent that my work could wait if I had too many exams or assignments.

I have also had successes while working on things for our manuscript such as a flowchart and a table about the characteristics of our participants. Creating these visual pieces for our manuscript have made me feel like I am a crucial part of the team. 

I would consider the relationships I have built with my supervisor and team as a whole to be one of the main successes of this internship. They have helped me to learn and grow so much as a professional, and they guided me every step of the way. I would not know half as much as I do now about global health and global health partnerships if it weren't for them. I am so thankful for all of them and cannot wait to see what we can accomplish through this research.