My Internship
My internship focuses on analyzing numerous public health data in the state of Indiana. One project my team and I are working on is analyzing STI (specifically gonorrhea and chlamydia) treatment across the state and how they differ from the CDC-recommended treatment. Another project we are working on is building a sickle cell dashboard for the health department's website to track the prevalence of the disease in Indiana. These projects will help the public be more informed about healthcare issues around them.
Internship Summary
Chlamydia and Gonorrhea are some of the most prevalent sexually transmitted infections in Indiana. While treatments are readily available for curing these infections, disparities in how and where they are administered exist. This project aims to analyze the disparities in treatment to determine if patients are receiving the CDC-recommended treatments and in which setting (public or private) patients are more likely to receive the correct treatment. Data was collected from both private and public hospitals such as the Indiana Department of Health, and Marion County Public Health Department that reported infection cases between 2018-2021 as well as other factors such as age, gender, and location of the affected individuals. Further analysis was conducted on the data to determine the treatment rates stratified by year, age group, sex, and race. The ultimate goal of this project is to provide insight and recommendations that can help public health officials and medical professionals in Indiana develop more effective strategies for treating and preventing these STIs, reducing their impact on individuals and communities in the state.
Learning Skills
In my internship, I hope to build on my Python and R programming skills, SQL querying, and a better understanding of medical data as well as its analyses. These programming skills will be utilized to analyze data coming from the Indiana State health department. I hope to build these skills through continuous practice and learning from the training provided.
As a bioinformatics major, I have taken courses such as info infrastructure, and data mining that has prepared me for my internship by teaching me about data analysis using programming tools such as python and software such as excel. I'm currently enrolled in a course that involves me learning about R programming and SQL database querying. This course has been pivotal in teaching me how to apply what I've learned to my internship and vice versa.
So far, I've been able to achieve my learning goal by attending training and tutorials to improve my programming skills and practicing my skills through the projects my team and I are working on.
I've grown tremendously as a public health informatics intern this semester in ways I couldn't imagine. I've learned how to communicate with a professional team, advocate for myself and my professional needs, and discover how to amalgamate my role as an intern and my future career goal of becoming a physician.
The Workplace
A workplace that celebrates the diversity of ideas and contributions as well as promotes professional growth is an ideal environment where employees can thrive. As an intern, I have learned a lot about the close-knit relationship and the willingness of the team to not only guide me in the first few weeks but also provide me with the space to grow.
My team at Regenstrief comprises different people who bring different skills to the table. I've learned a lot from my direct supervisor about how important it is to analyze public health data in order to keep citizens informed about the level of care they receive. My team leader, a post-doc student, has introduced me to statistical analysis using SAS tools and I've introduced him to modern analytical tools such as Jupyter notebook.
My internship experience has exceeded all my expectations and continue to exceed my expectation in various ways. For example, I have gained knowledge about global health informatics and the ways different countries are implementing informatics in their healthcare systems. I've not only grown in my professional life, but I've also grown in my academic and personal life because of this great workplace environment.
Successes and Challenges
The first time I felt successful as an intern was when I helped another intern with a technology access issue. It was an easy solution to a very minor issue but it helped reinforce the why of my role. I'm someone who is passionate about helping others and being able to help my fellow intern felt like a win to me.
My first semester as an intern has come with its fair share of challenges. In the first few months, I faced some issues with getting access to the accounts required for me to start working. Once I was able to get the accounts set up, I faced a new challenge with getting access to the data required for my role. However, during this process of waiting for everything to fall into place, I spent my time learning from the other interns about how they approached their project(s) and contributed some ideas about some areas of improvement among others.
With everything set in place now, I am in a better position to complete my assigned tasks and achieve my internship goals.