Internship at the Washtenaw County Health Department

Carrie Rheingans

You know you’re a public health dork when… you leave a two-hour meeting at your internship with your head buzzing about the possibilities of health promotion programs in your community. For my social work field placement this academic year, I’m placed at the local health department, Washtenaw County Public Health. On my first day of orientation to SPH, I remember hearing someone say that if you’ve seen one local health department, you’ve seen ONE local health department – meaning that each local health department is so different from the next that there aren’t many generalizations that can be made about them. WCPH is fortunate to be able to do many health promotion programs that are in addition to their mandated public health duties as required by state or federal regulations.

Our division meeting included updates on a number of health promotion programs, from smoking cessation and healthy eating to biking to work and substance use prevention. It was reassuring to hear a lot of terms I’ve been learning in my graduate studies, and to see how health programs operate in my local community – instead of just reading about it from research articles. One staff member gave a report from a presentation at  statewide conference she had recently attended in which a health communication campaign out of Jackson, Michigan was discussed. I had heard about this campaign before in my health communication course last fall – it was a final project option for some of the students in my class! It was nice to see it come to fruition and be lauded across the state. You can learn more about it on their website – Most Teens Don’t!

Most Teens Don't Logo

Another major topic of the meeting was a big grant we’ve been writing for the last couple weeks for the Michigan Department of Community Health (MDCH). It’s been a fun process being part of this grant proposal. The MDCH has funded 16 community organizations and local health departments over the last year to do planning in their communities for addressing health disparities among various ethnic populations. Washtenaw County was funded to work with African-Americans and Latinos, and we just submitted our proposal for the next phase of the grant – implementation. Even if we don’t get funded, it was a great learning experience to be able to work on developing the programs for the Latino-focused part of the proposal, as well as the evaluation plan. I got to apply what I learned in HBHE 651 (Program Development) and what I’m learning right now in HBHE 622 (Program Evaluation), in addition to many of the theories I learned in HBHE 600 (Psychosocial Factors in Health-Related Behavior) and SW 502 (Organizational, Community and Societal Structures and Processes).

Field Placement Bringing my Dual Degrees Together

 

Carrie Rheingans

 

My current social work field placement is really bringing my two degree programs together. I’m a dual degree student – doing a Master of Public Health in SPH (in the department of Health Behavior and Health Education) and a Master of Social Work at the School of Social Work. I’m studying Community Organization and Community & Social Systems in social work. There are many dual degree options for students in public health, and it can be a really great investment if you want to work in multiple fields.

This is my third and final year of the dual degree program, and I’m happy that my courses and field experiences are really coming together in my learning. For my public health department, students usually do a 3-4 month field placement between their two years. I did a year-long placement at the HIV/AIDS Resource Center as an AmeriCorps member for the National AIDS Fund’s national direct AmeriCorps program in Detroit. For a social work degree, students can elect to do either two field placements (one each during each academic year) or one longer-term placement (from January – December of one calendar year). Most students elect to do the single placement, but I elected to do two.

This year’s placement is at the Washtenaw County Public Health department and I’m working with a number of community members to develop a Latin@ community center, Casa Latina, for Washtenaw County. I’m applying coursework in both schools that has covered grant-writing, program development, program evaluation, community participation, multi-level interventions, social marketing, survey design, materials creation, leadership development, and community organization and development. It’s nice to be able to apply what I’ve learned, and even combine some tasks at my field placement with current coursework. For example, for my program evaluation class, my final project is to create an evaluation plan for a health program – which is one of my tasks for a grant I’m writing at my placement. For another class, my final project is to create a community participation plan, which is something we need to do for Casa Latina anyway.

It’s great when I get to do public health practice during the semester and apply the things I’m learning in the classroom to the real world. Sometimes I wish there was a larger field component in public health, but there are definitely options for getting more real-world practice if you look for them.

My Last First Day of School

Carrie Rheingans

Today’s my last first day of school and it’s been a great one so far! It’s sad to think that this long journey will be over in eight short months, but I know I’ll be happy to be done and start applying all the wonderful knowledge and skills I’ve learned in my two degree programs, public health and social work.

I always feel so optimistic at the beginning of a new semester – like maybe this time I can actually do all the reading! I’m very excited about my two public health classes this semester (EHS 500 – Principles of Environmental Health and HBHE 622 – Program Evaluation in Health Education). The environmental health class interests me because of the material and my background in the biological sciences, and the program evaluation class because it’s a valuable and transferable skill in the field(s) in which I’ll be working upon graduation.

I’m also excited to start teaching again. Last semester was my first being a graduate student instructor (GSI), and I really learned a lot, both about being a teacher and about being a student. I gained a lot of patience and improved my skills for speaking publicly and making sure people are following what you’re saying. I also learned how to better manage my time as a student, as well as what amount of work goes on behind the scenes in the classes I take. I also learned that while teaching is fun, grading is NOT fun. The worst part is that my midterms are at the same time as the ones I have to grade – which doesn’t make it easy to study for my own classes.

The other exciting development this semester is my field placement for social work. I’m working with the Washtenaw County Public Health Department to help develop a Latino community center for our community (Washtenaw County, the county in which the University of Michigan is located). Currently, there is no such organization that caters to people of Latino/Hispanic ethnicity or Spanish speakers.

I hope to write posts this year about my public health and social work classes, my field placement, teaching, and my passion, HIV and AIDS. Stay tuned!

White House Office of National AIDS Policy Coming to Michigan!

Carrie Rheingans

The White House Office of National AIDS Policy is coming to Michigan to host a Community Conversation, in which they will receive feedback and testimonies of people affected by HIV about what should be included in a national AIDS strategy. The Campaign to End AIDS (C2EA), the Black AIDS Institute, and the National Association of People With AIDS (NAPWA) are also supporting the event. I’ve worked with C2EA for the last two years, particularly with their Youth Caucus and the Youth Action Institute, and I will be the Michigan-based contact person. See my previous SPH blog posts about this year’s YAI here and here.

The event will allow people to provide 1-2 minute testimonies about their experiences with HIV (as someone living with HIV, affected by HIV, or working in the field), and what they think should be included in a national AIDS strategy. The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) is a program through which the US government supports work to turn the tide against the AIDS epidemics in various hard-hit countries. One requirement to receive PEPFAR money is that each country must have a national AIDS strategy – which the USA itself doesn’t even have! These community conversations, happening all over the country, will help inform the eventual national USA AIDS strategy here at home.

You can give testimony yourself at the event:

FREE ADMISSION

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

6:00 PM – 8:00 PM

Affirmations Community Center

290 West Nine Mile Road

Ferndale, MI 48220

(248) 398-7105

For more info, please contact me at crheinga@gmail.com or leave a message at 734-572-9355 x238

You can also give testimony online. Please register for the event here. Naturally, I’m very excited about this opportunity! Very rarely does such an easy opportunity for policy advocacy happen, and even more rarely can I work on it as part of my social work internship! This opportunity gives me a chance to flex both my public health and social work muscles!

Now I’m a Dual Degree Student

Carrie Rheingans

I’m now officially a dual degree student in the School of Public Health (SPH) and the School of Social Work (SSW). I’m studying Health Behavior and Health Education in SPH and Community Organizing and Community & Social Systems in SSW. I started in SPH and applied to join the SSW after my first year because I wanted to learn more about community-level work. There are a few really great classes in SPH about community-level work, but I wanted more. The dual degree programs are great, because you can get both master degrees in a shorter amount of time. Some classes cancel out requirements from the other program, so it saves money and time in the long run. Since U-M has so many great graduate programs, it’s a great addition to your professional training. There are a number of dual degree programs you can do with public health.

Social work is often divided into two major fields – micro practice and macro practice. At U-M, the SSW micro field is called Interpersonal Practice and the macro field is broken up into three separate tracks: Community Organizing, Management of Human Services, and Policy & Evaluation. To do the dual MPH/MSW, you have to be in the HBHE department in SPH. Some students do the dual MPH/MSW because they feel that public health is very broad and macro-level, so they want to learn more how to work one-on-one with individuals and families. Some feel that HBHE focuses on individual behavior change and not enough on community-level change. After talking to the other nearly twenty dual degree students, we realized it is really up to your interpretation. I’m very happy I added the MSW, but I’m still very excited about my future public health courses that I have left (especially my course HBHE 640: Community Organization for Health Education!).

Each school has their own webpage explaining the dual MPH/MSW, see them here: SSW page –  SPH page

Greetings From Carrie!

Ann Arbor has beautiful autumns!

Hello all!

Carrie Rheingans

Thank you for visiting the University of Michigan School of Public Health student blog!  I’m excited to share my experiences with you during my time here.  I’ll try to avoid acronyms, and I’ll use real names for professors and classes, so you can learn more about them from their faculty pages.  I will, however, be changing my friends’ names to give a little privacy.

This is my 6th year as a University of Michigan student, since I went here for 5 years for my undergrad degree in German Language and Literature and Cellular and Molecular Biology.  I took a couple years off to work in the field at the People’s Food Co-op and the HIV/AIDS Resource Center (HARC).  I learned a lot about natural remedies at the co-op and gained valuable public health experience doing HIV testing, education/outreach, and event planning at HARC.  I’m in the department of Health Behavior and Health Education (HBHE), and I’m in the process of applying to the Unviersity of Michigan School of Social Work to do the dual degree.  Right now, I’m doing my field placement for HBHE as an AmeriCorps member serving with a team of seven AmeriCorps members in Detroit.  I grew up mainly in Michigan (except for two years in Georgia in elementary school), and I’ve lived in Freiburg, Germany and Durban, South Africa, both times doing research and playing lots of soccer!  I’m excited to be doing an additional field placement in Lima, Peru this summer through the Field Experience in Latin America (FELA) program.

As a student blogger, I hope to give you some insight into campus and Ann Arbor life, U-M Public Health courses, professors, and more.  Please leave comments to ask questions and add opinions – and take the polls!