My Internship
AMPATH (the Academic Model Providing Access to Healthcare) is the partnership between the IU School of Medicine and the Moi University School of Medicine in Eldoret, Kenya. This is a major part of my internship because my supervisor conducts research in collaboration with AMPATH, and I will have the opportunity to work close to and with other AMPATH providers, as well as medical students visiting from Moi University. This will give me a more specific look into this kind of global health, which will help in my future in this career as the program is located within Indianapolis.
During my sophomore year, I was an intern studying HIV care and outcomes for adolescents in Kenya. This work is done in order to ensure that children being treated for HIV continue this treatment, while also examining the effect of stigma of having HIV, including work with mental health, isolation, and barriers for care.
My site examined reasons that adolescents in Kenya with HIV would not return to receive care. This is extremely important because HIV is the leading cause of death for adolescents globally. There are 1.8 million adolescents living with HIV, and 80% of them live in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Pictured (Fall Site Visit): Clemette Morris (left), Dr. Leslie Enane (right)
elevator pitch.pptxDUTIES
I read and summarize scientific literature, will participate in literature reviews, prepare tables/graphs and figures, read and analyze interviews and focus group information, help design presentations, and contribute to and co-authoring manuscripts.
The most challenging aspect of this internship will be understanding how to code and format scientific literature in order to create manuscripts. A lot of the work that I will be doing is reading transcripts of interviews of healthcare workers in Kenya and understanding factors that they are encountering that cause treatment of HIV to cease for some children. Additionally, I will be doing data verification and ensuring that everything is in order.
Connection to School
One of the biggest parts of my internship is understanding the reasons why children with HIV wouldn't return to care. This specifically deals with family factors and stigma. Within my fall semester, I took sociology, which explores relationships to society. In this, there was a discussion of stigma, especially with people who have certain diseases, disorders, and illnesses, like HIV. Having this sociological background is extremely helpful with comprehending the reasonings behind children discontinuing care, and having this internship has helped me make real examples of some sociological topics.
Expectations v. Reality
My only expectation of this internship was that there would be a lot of reading and analysis of different interviews. This has been held up accurately through my time here. I did somewhat expect more hands-on interactions with patients, but I realized that the work done in my site was more of research than clinical work. However, there are times where my supervisor goes in to clinics, and I intend on going in to shadow and see what a day in the life really looks like in that environment. I also will be connected to other doctors in different fields to see different careers in real life.
Skills Gained
- Used Dedoose and Covidence for collaborative research done by the group I worked with (see Poster subpage)
- Adapted to new situations as I experienced virtual meetings with my research group from August through May
- Practiced analyzing scientific works and extracting the most important information
- Required strong communication skills during weekly conference calls to discuss team progress