Notes from the Field--U.S. 2008
August 24, 2008
Wrapping up the summer
These past twelve weeks have flown by! I am in the process of wrapping everything up, sending thank you notes, packing, etc. If I could offer any advice to future MHA'rs (and all people doing field work, actually) it would be to use your time wisely! Spend as much time as possible learning about the people you are with - asking lots of questions, while continuing to build your own skill sets. You may not be afforded such an educational opportunity once you're out in the real world. Along the same lines: if you are given the choice of doing an internship or not, DO IT!
I also highly recommend (for those who have lived in the same places their whole lives) experimenting with placements away from friends and family. Not only will you be able to expand your network, but you will also be able to explore parts of the world you may not have seen otherwise. You have the rest of your lives to live wherever you want - a summer is only 3 months long.
Thanks again for the opportunity to share some of my summer with you!
August 7, 2008
My last post from Saipan!
I can't believe I'll be heading home in two weeks! Amazing how time flies when you're having fun! This will be my last post of the summer, as the rest of my time here I'll be busy wrapping up my internship, travelling, and soaking in all that Saipan still has to offer.
I just thought I'd share what I've been up to in my free time - I've been working hard, but also taking advantage of my summer in this beautiful part of the world. My spare time has been filled up with street markets, lots of snorkeling, sushi, beaches, travelling, lots of hiking, and one online summer course. Since pictures speak louder than words, I've attached a few favorites below.
I hope you've enjoyed reading my blog this summer, I wasn't ever sure if I was writing about what you wanted to know or not, so I tried to give you some variety. If you ever have any questions about the Northern Mariana Islands, are thinking about interning there, or looking for a vacation, feel free to drop me an email. Take care!
Continue reading "My last post from Saipan!" »
August 6, 2008
Thin Line Between Community Research and Interventions
Its over. July 25th was my last day in Mobile Alabama. I had the best and the worst time simultaneously. I suppose it was a lesson learned because it was the first time I had done community based survey research. Don’t get me wrong, I loved meeting people in these neighborhoods. Neighborhoods like RV Taylor, BirdVille, Alabama Village and Roger Williams could easily be amongst the poorest neighborhoods in America but some of the people I met were the happiest people I know. I think I was disappointed largely by the fact that the Mobile Youth Survey had been around for such a long time(11 years) and in that time, very little was done in terms of helping the community.
Indeed we gave a $15 compensation to survey participants, and the adults that were randomly selected to participate in the Adult survey got a slightly higher amount of money. So one could argue that this was a sort of immediate gratification from the presence of the study in Mobile. Over 5 million dollars has to date been given out to participants in this study and yet NOTHING has been done to improve the community as a whole. $15 dollars would buy possibly 3 MacDonalds happy meals meanwhile young residents of these neighborhoods do not have proper garbage disposal, proper housing conditions, recreational facilities and official after school activities.
It was great to be allowed into people’s homes and for that moment be allowed into the community. But beyond that I am dissatisfied by the fact that nothing is directly being done with the community. I suppose there IS a thin line between research and community service as I was told by my supervisors. However, I am left with a sense of hypocrisy; I think it is unfair to study a community’s adolescent risk behavior for 11 years and do next to nothing to address these behaviors. That being said, I am glad to be back in Minneapolis and hopefully I can develop my master’s project around this topic. Wish me luck! And if you have any suggestions please do comment or shoot me an email at dafea001@umn.edu. Thank you!
Occupational Hazards
So two Fridays ago, some guy jerked off in front of me. It was probably the scariest, most disgusting and make me feel sick to my stomach experience I have ever had! I cant explain why this teenage boy decided to act so inappropriately, maybe he was inebriated by alcohol or drugs. Whatever the case, he did not seem right. His eyes were red and his speech was slurred.
I was at his house to survey his little sister at home because she had missed at an administration. It was soon obvious that she wasn’t home. Her brother offered to take me and my partner to a school near by where she was supposedly hanging out with her friends. My partner and I didn’t think it was a good idea so I went back to tell him so. But when i started talking his hand started moving under the table and continued moving so fast that his body started vibrating to the motion. With a sudden realization of what was happening, I turned around and quickly walked away to a waiting car trying to block out his words for me to "come here". I still cannot believe it happened. I couldnt rilli get the look on his face out of my mind for a while after that but eventually i was fine especially since the people at work laughed it off. In retrospect it is probably one of the funny moments of my time here. I got teased a lot after that, I suppose it is just one of those occupational hazards.lol.
I suppose for the first time since I had come to Mobile, I was painfully aware of the potential for danger in the neighborhoods that I was working in. Because this boy was strong looking with huge muscles and under the influence he could have been dangerous. It made me reflect on the sense in coming to work here. Like was it worth it to potentially risk my life giving people a survey that after 11 years has done nothing to substantially change the community in which it is given.
August 1, 2008
Finishing up my study
How can it be August already?! My summer internship is soon coming to a close. I've learned so much and been able to greatly contribute to their PRAMS project here. We are over half-done with the surveys; their goal was to get all of the surveys done within a year, and they started in March, so we are two months ahead of schedule! I did a preliminary analysis of the data that was included on a grant that the Maternal and Child Health coordinator wrote. If I helped them get more funding for their program, I would feel like my hard work really paid off. It would make this experience even more rewarding!
I don’t think they want to make any of their data public until all the surveys have been completed, but I can at least tell you about the kinds of factors I’ve been analyzing. I’ve calculated the percentage of women who breastfed, were trying to get pregnant (versus unplanned pregnancies), smoke cigarettes, chew betelnut (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betel_nut for more info on this), and drink alcohol. When appropriate, like with smoking for example, we ask both about their habits before they got pregnant and during their pregnancy. We also look at prenatal care and when the women first start receiving it, and what topics are or are not being covered by their health care provider during those visits. For some questions, we compare answers by ethnicity also, which sometimes gives interesting results. There are 62 questions (many that have multiple parts) so that is just a small portion of the data I’ve been collecting. I have to be careful not to be make big assumptions, because the sample size is still too small to give a large amount of statistical power. The plan is to use this data to know what our biggest issues are, who they are affecting, and how to better our interventions.
I’ve had some requests for pictures of where I work, so I’ve attached them below. Enjoy!
Continue reading "Finishing up my study" »
July 28, 2008
An atypical day in the life of a summer MHA resident
My last post I mentioned that I would be visiting with the hospital's former president - he is 80+ years young. He was just great. Talk about knowledge. After he graduated from the MHA program he stayed in Minneapolis for a while then moved to Kansas City after beginning several successful business ventures.
My days are pretty eventful, full of high profile encounters with executives that I cannot begin to tell you how blessed and humbled I am to be a part of. This experience is something I doubt I'll be able to do once I'm in that first "real job."
Here is how an "atypical" day of mine goes - this does NOT happen all of the time:
7:30am - hospital board meeting
8am - meet with the Vice President of Strategic Development at the corporate offices across town
10am - meet with the director of managed care to learn about different insurance plans
11am - drive downtown to attend a discussion of the executive council (vice presidents) of the hospital
12pm - call colleagues with questions about my summer project
1pm - lead and facilitate employee discussion groups for a few hours
3pm - interview employees associated with a project I am managing
4pm - meet with the Chief Medical Officer and his team
5pm - forget I worked through lunch today and run down to the cafeteria!
6pm - answer emails and voice messages
6:30pm - find the night nursing supervisor and a patient care technician to shadow them for a few hours
9:30pm return to my office to pack up
10pm - go home and watch law & order SVU reruns
NEXT DAY:
7am - wake up and do it all over again, only a lot differently!
July 25, 2008
Field Experience Blog
This blog will describe my field experience with the Capitol Region Emergency Planning Committee (CREPC).
The overall goal of this field experience is to expand and enhance my leadership skills in public health preparedness in Connecticut’s Preparedness Region 3. CREPC provides an opportunity to be involved with an inter-agency, all-hazards planning group, to work on a government grant writing team and process, to provide leadership to the Regional ESF #11 initiative and to develop an ESF #8 component specific for veterinarians to further public health.
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July 22, 2008
Accepting the need to network and "sell"
I have never been good at networking. Over the last few years I have been working on it. I have developed my quick responses t:o "What do you do?" "Where will you work when you graduate?" "Why are you in public health?" etc.
Even with my responses ready, I still sometimes get uncomfortable "selling" myself, but am realizing that as my last semester approaches I need to "sell, sell, sell."
Recently, I have done a lot of footwork in the community surrounding my field experience site. I am trying to talk to as many community members as possible in order to get a feel for how many people really know about the African Outreach Health Center and how people feel about the center. I am usually met with pleasant smiles and "yes" or "no" answers, regardless of the nature of the question. Not feeling too confident in my findings, I have begun to slip in a description of my project whenever I talk to someone about my education or job search. I also have mentioned it numerous times while in the field for my job as a research assistant through the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs at the U of MN. While my work there is more sociologically focused, many of the individuals and organizations I am working are also working on public health related projects.
While engaged in typical office chatter about life and my sometimes not-so-successful attempt to fit work and school into a family life with two toddlers, I mentioned also trying to find time to really focus on my field experience. Someone asked about what I was doing and before I knew it I was learning about other clinics in the area of the Health Center that are offering in-home services and services at a number of the surrounding apartment complexes. This was precisely the kind of information I had been searching for. We proceeded to discuss the pluses and minuses of each type of program and did a bit of brainstorming on why my program seems to be under-utilized while the "on-site" services being offered by others seem to be doing well. We also discussed how difficult community interviews can be and speculated why no one had shared information about the other services in the area. Names and organizations were mentioned as potential contacts and I quickly developed a page of notes.
Needless to say, I have more detective work to do. At least now I have a bit more information to consider. I will keep looking in unexpected places and try not to assume who may or may not be helpful in gathering information. Similarly on the job search, I am slowly gathering contacts. Just the other day someone handed me a card and asked me to contact them as I near graduation. They were a member of a non-profit I hadn't considered to be in the public health arena and definitely didn't think would be interested in public health grads, but their essential mission is spot on with mine. I guess you never know...
Happiness is universal
Last Thursday I flew to Rota, the southernmost island of the Northern Marianas, to interview more women for this PRAMS-like study I’m working on. It is CNMI-wide (CNMI stands for the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands) so we need to interview women on Tinian and Rota, in addition to Saipan. So Thursday and Friday we spent trying to track down women with babies in the narrow age range needed to qualify for the study. There was also a wedding that weekend, and just as luck would have it, the groom’s sister, Maggie, was someone we were working with at the Rota Health Center. So she invited me to join the festivities!
The native cultures here are Chamorro and Carolinian, the majority being Chamorro. Their wedding traditions are much different than the US. First of all, in the US traditionally it’s the bride’s family who foots the bill, but here its all taken care of by the groom’s family (everything for both the night before and the day of the wedding). So the groom’s family (he was lucky to have a lot of sisters!) spent all day Friday cooking these amazing dishes, all sorts of island delicacies, and enough to feed hundreds of people. The night before the wedding, a complimento is held (like how we often have a groom's supper). So in the evening, we march across town, singing Chamorro songs and carrying all the gifts for the bride. At the bride’s house, we could see her and her family peeking out the curtain but they wouldn’t open the door. I don’t understand Chamorro, but I could tell that they were teasing. Later I found out the bride had jokingly said “Which boy is it?� Eventually the bride’s family welcomed the boy into the home. As many people as could cram into the living room all huddled around the couple while the groom presented the gifts to the bride (like a dowry). Besides all of the amazing food, the groom presented her with jewelry, not just the ring, but the matching necklace, bracelet, and earrings. He also provided her wedding dress, shoes, garter, bra, and undies. He held everything up for the crowd to oooh and ahhhh over and the poor bride was so red when her underwear was being shown off to the world. It was pretty hilarious.
Then we ate, drank, danced (there was a deejay brought in from Guam for musical entertainment) and socialized. The food was amazing, and that is coming from a very picky eater! But I tried everything, you have to fully embrace the culture! There was coconut crab, beef frittata, lots of different kelaguens, venison (there are deer on the island), special breads, different kinds of freshly caught fish, mussels, fresh fruits, huge hams, tons of desserts, and more. There wasn’t much that looked familiar to me, but sometimes it was better not to know what I was eating. Turns out beef frittata is basically cow guts cooked in cow blood. And from what I could tell almost all the food came from the island, by fishing or hunting or gardening. My one major mistake was eating my meal before getting dessert – by the time I went back for dessert it was all gone!
The major theme of the evening that pulled through to me was that happiness is universal, crossing all language barriers. I don’t speak a word of their language, but I could feel their joy and tell when someone said a joke or was teasing the groom because of everyone's smiles and laughter, and by watching where their attention is directed. I didn’t feel out of place at all. Plus, everyone was so friendly to me, and eager to share about living on the island (most people are bilingual and speak English too). One interesting point made to me by different people was that in the U.S. sometimes we have that “survival of the fittest� mentality when we all fend for ourselves. On the island, people all take care of each other. Even on my way to the airport, when my driver stopped to get a soda, he brought one back for me too. They would never eat or drink something if their friend was sitting there without. I am fascinated by all the beauty of their culture and am so grateful for my experience last weekend. Back at work in Saipan this week, I found out that Saipan no longer does the traditional Chamorro wedding rituals, and none of my coworkers (who’ve lived here for many years) had ever had the chance to experience what I did.
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July 16, 2008
Who Represents the Community?
So i have been away for quite a while, i do apologize.! Well, I turned 23 on the 14th(Monday). I spent the weekend before in Atlanta with my boyfriend and friends. It was a blast, I had a surprise pot luck thrown in my honor and I found out that my friend got me a “green� vacuum cleaner by Bissell(I have been wanting one forever! And YES I am domesticated), my boyfriend got me a Nikon CoolPix(much needed camera! Mine broke at the beginning of summer) and I am yet to receive a new phone(I was thinking about sprint’s version of the iphone but changed my mind when I tried it in the store-way too complicated! lol. Instead I am getting something called the Rumor so I can text away!...i happen to be a compulsive texter). My actual birthday passed quietly because I spent much of it on the road back to Alabama but I am especially touched by the tons of messages on Facebook, and my cell phone wishing me well. My mother even drank to my wellbeing three times in Ukraine with my grandpa(never mind that they should be drinking Alcohol in their conditions which I wont mention,lol). My father called me from Ghana and my little sister and big sister(who are currently in Delaware) sang for me. Twaz a great weekend and Monday!
But today i want to discuss a conversation that came up in class last week—we have weekly Wednesday meetings to discuss research methods and anything that may have come up the week before. Our topic of discussion was community based participatory research which is basically research that involves representative members of the community in the research process. The conversation centered around the autonomy of the actual residents in low income public housing. Most often when researchers go into communities, the figureheads they approach to gather information about the community is people in positions of "power" such as church officials, housing authorities, and recognized local leaders. The common argument that day was that such figureheads were probably not as representative of the community because they represented a sort of community elite that could possibly ignore the real needs of the community(in this case actual low income individuals). So in the case of survey research and the development of questions, the concern is that the questions would not be developed to be community appropriate. Also, in the event that a focus group would involve actual community members, which community members would be selected? For convenience, it seemed as if figureheads were better suitors to this responsibility because the assumption is they will be better educated and more conversant with the research process. But the problem is that by going straight to these people, you(as a researcher) may from the get go take away autonomy from community members.
At some point in the classroom conversation led to the question of whether or not the low income community was a reliable source of information. One girl, much to my aggravation, brought this point up citing one neighborhood in which trash littered the area. She said that she had talked to the children after she had given the survey and asked them why they didn’t clean up. The answer she got was that, that is what it had been like their whole lives. Although at first this could seem like a nonchalant attitude I think the bigger question is why the parents did nothing about it. Or more importantly, if they COULD do anything about it? I mean, with other economic responsibilities, I don’t think that they could afford to get extra garbage disposal other than that offer by the state(which was minimal because the neighborhood lacks tarred roads and truckers are reluctant to go there). Instead of pointing the finger at an obvious public health problem, I think that this students(and others like this student) should consider the fact that there are other factors that contribute to low income housing situations… and that without solving or addressing some of these problems, the immediate seems almost irrelevant. I must admit that I was irate last Wednesday considering that I grew up in a third world country in similar living conditions for much of my formative years and am very sensitive to these issues. I suppose my question to everyone is whether or not people are justified in being mad at the community’s poor for not doing more to upkeep the neighborhood?
July 15, 2008
4th of July parade
In Saipan, the year’s biggest parade is in celebration of the 4th of July. It runs along a stretch of Beach Road, appropriately named because it runs along the sandy beach of the Philippine Sea. My friend and I wanted to check it out, since the health center was closed for the holiday. We asked around and discovered the parade started at 2pm, but people suggested we show up by 9am to get seats! And let me remind you, it is hot here - there was no way we were going to show up five hours early! Turns out, people had set up open tents along the road an entire week ahead of time! The only reason we got good seats was because we walked to the parade with my friend’s landlords, who ran into his cousin, who graciously offered us a spot in her tent, as well as all the food we could eat! So we got lucky!!! Everyone is connected on the island.
The parade was different than we expected. For starters, it was 2 ½ hours long! They didn't really have floats like I'm used to. It was either groups of people walking/dancing through, or people in cars driving by. Sometimes there were signs on the cars announcing who was inside, like the governor, but other times we had no idea who was waving at us. There was a lot of commercial advertising, and of course the typical fire engines and ambulances, etc. What I found really neat, though, was the wide range of cultures and organizations represented. The dancing was so entertaining! I’ll post the pictures below and you can figure out who represents what, we weren’t even sure on all of them.
After the parade we were invited to a barbecue on the beach. We ate some traditional dishes, listened to the locals tell us crazy stories about the island, and had an all-around great time. What a perfect way to spend the day!
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July 12, 2008
On Poverty
Greetings! Things are humming along in the city that never sleeps… certainly, I have not been sleeping enough; and the sun is making grand rounds in the heavens as mid-summer heat melts the concrete out here. Yesterday morning as I descended into the 2 / 3 subway station at 110th and Lenox, I noticed that I was already drenched in sweat. Good way to start the day!
As part of The City of New York Summer Internship Program, all interns are invited and encouraged to attend seminars given by leaders in New York City government.
This past Tuesday at 8 AM several of us met up with a gaggle of other interns at the Administration for Children’s Services Center, right next to Bellevue Hospital on First Avenue, to hear our deputy mayor Linda I. Gibbs speak about current initiatives to reduce poverty in New York City. A 30-second lesson on the deputy mayors of New York City: there are SEVEN of them. There is one who is the First Deputy Mayor (Patricia E. Harris), and the other six each cover a distinct sector of the city’s governance: Deputy Mayor For Economic Development, Deputy Mayor For Health and Human Services, Deputy Mayor For Legal Affairs and Counsel to the Mayor, Deputy Mayor for Government Affairs, Deputy Mayor For Operations, and the Deputy Mayor for Education and Community Development. Linda I. Gibbs is the Deputy Mayor For Health and Human Services, and she oversees a number of city departments including the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (an old name, but this is our city’s public health department), the Center of Economic Opportunity (CEO), and the department I work for, Human Resources Administration (HRA), which is, in essence, the Department of Social Services. There. Are you ready for your test?
CEO is a newer entity, established by Mayor Bloomberg in 2006 to “reduce the number of people living in poverty in New York City�. A major CEO initiative that Deputy Mayor Gibbs spoke to us about is “Opportunity NYC�, the nation’s first conditional cash transfer (CCT) program. There are about 20 other countries that are using CCT programs with great success. Relating to us the history of the current poverty measure (a nutritional scale in which one-third of a person’s income represents the cost of food and three times this amount is the line at or below which someone is considered to be living in poverty) Gibbs informed us that New York City is working to replace this measure with one recommended in a study by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). The current measure is outdated for several reasons, not the least of which is that the average cost of food today is about one-eighth of a person’s income. In the conditional cash transfer program, 2,400 families in New York’s poorest areas are receiving cash incentives for “health, education, and employment activities� that work to increase human capital. Building human capital is the primary goal of the program: by giving incentives for achievements that represent lasting positive life transitions and not just efforts geared toward getting by for today. Opportunity NYC is in it’s first year of a three-year program, and is privately funded.
Back to work! At HRA’s Office of Citywide Health Insurance Access (OCHIA), we are primarily concerned with getting New Yorkers covered, and that means finding resources for more affordable health insurance options. In my last blog I told you about the work we were doing to promote the use of Section 125 plans as a means of getting more employers to offer health insurance to their employees. We are now shifting our efforts to getting the online decision support tool we are developing up and running. While this is going to take some time, it is also going to require some evaluation. I am researching the use of focus groups to test our tool once it is finished. This includes making contact with intermediary organizations that can help us to identify and connect with small business owners in New York City, our primary population of interest for this project.
Anything other than work, you ask? Well yes, in fact. We interns are invited to a BBQ picnic at Gracie Mansion next week. I was there last year with my boyfriend, who was interning as a speechwriter for Mayor Bloomberg, and it was a good time. I hope the day is as beautiful and the food as delicious as it was last year. Yum…
July 7, 2008
Work, Travel and a Movie
Wow! I cant believe this week went by so fast! On Monday i had the most moving conversation with a young man. Without betraying the integrity of our conversation, i want to repeat some of the things that he said to me:
Chaperoning his little sister who was taking the 1 hour survey, we talked as he waited. He said that he was grateful that the survey compelled the young generation to think about their lifestyles and how that affected them. He was aware of the fact that community programs would not recieve funding without proof of adverse adolescent behavior This was a well spoken, intelligent young man that admitted that he had dropped out of school when he was 17. He told me that he was getting ready to take the GRE a third time.Having missed the passing grade in the past by a few points and giving up academia he had run into minor trouble with the law, drugs and booze. He said that he had a strong desire to pursue technical training but could not do so without his GED which he was apprehensive about. He also said a curious thing...that he didnt think he could get any scholarships because who would want to sponsor him? And also, he didnt want to take out any loans because it didnt make sense to put himself into debt when he probably would not get hired into a good enough job to pay it off. So the way he saw it, he was probably better off not going to school in the first place. I felt a strong emmotion overwhelm me. I wanted to say alot to this 24 year old man with so much potential but instead i let him talk because somehow that seemed to be what he needed. In the end, all i said was that he needed to take one step at a time...GED first and everything else would fall together. That in essense was the extent of our conversation. In the end i dont really know why he chose to speak to me, and i am not exactly sure why i feel the need to share this experience. But what i do want to say is that the feeling of helplessness is a real and profound feeling that can and probably will overcome you if you ever work with less fortunate communities. I it is not an emotion that you can control or even resolve at times but you should know that it is normal to feel that way and sometime even feel an accompanying element of guilt. And with that knowledge approach your volunteer experiences knowing that you cannot single handedly save the world.
So, the rest of my week went by quietly, the team threw a BBQ pool party which i was grossly late to because i just "HAD" to finish up an episode of Law and Order on USA. And even though i arrived when some were leaving, it was still nice to dress up for something because that rarely happens on a weekday.
I closed the week off in ATL for the independence weekend(we got Friday off with pay). Another girl from the team and i made the 5 and a half hour drive down to Atlanta. It was a nice trip because i got to see friends and my boyfriend(he lives in Atlanta). I spent the weekend at a Christian conference which was great except for the fact that we(my boyfriend and i) got serious pressure to get married. We have been officially together for a year and my church family strongly advocated marriage(so we do not get into "trouble" if you catch my drift). Although we love each other very much, it was hard none the less because we feel that the decision should be ours ultimately. But,watching "Wanted" on Saturday evening TOTALLY made my weekend! It was probably the BEST movie i have ever seen! It had me hooked from the first scene. Ofcourse i have to admit that it was totally unrealistic but such is the beauty of psy-phi. If you havent already, you should TOTALLY go see it!!!
July 4, 2008
A Tree Fell On My Car Last Night
Blogging isn't half bad...this is my second in like 30 minutes! Anyway, I know many of you have heard of the storms in the Midwest. Last night it was hailing and lighting all over the place. And on my way to work I found a nice surprise - a tree got struck by lighting and fell on my hood! Thank God no one was hurt, and my car is ok. I had to call the "foresters" when I got off work. Apparently they don't really send the foresters out though - just an independent tree cutting person.
I actually wasn't all that happy to be late to work - I missed a chance to meet with the hospital's former president. But he'll be back on Monday so I'll tell you how that goes. He's also an alum of Minnesota's MHA program and we had been playing phone tag the past few weeks trying to schedule time for coffee. He just happened to be on campus today so he gave me call. My mentor/preceptor/current hospital and health system president (who is also an alum!) was this gentleman's administrative resident 30 years ago...I am happy to be a part of the Minnesota MHA tradition here at the hospital.
Sorry I'm late!!!
Hey everyone!! My name is Tara and I am going to be a 2nd year student in the MHA program. This summer I am doing my required residency (aka 3-month internship) at St Luke's Health System (SLHS), in Kansas City, MO! St. Luke's is an 11-hospital system that spans all over the Kansas City Metro Area. It's vision statement is to be the "best place to get care and the best place to give care." I'm mainly at their flagship hospital - Saint Luke's Hospital (SLH) working directly with the president and vice president on figuring out the best ways SLH can achieve it's vision of being the best place to give care. At Minnesota, one of my concentrations is Strategic Management so I am definitely able to apply some of those course objectives to this real life situation. I look forward to being able to share with you my progress! Ask me anything and I'll be sure to respond ;)
Oh yeah I'm a first-time blogger so I guess we'll learn together lol
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