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Available Practicum Opportunities

Institute for Family Centered Care
www.familycenteredcare.org

HEALTH CARE QUALITY IMPROVEMENT AND PATIENT/FAMILY CENTERED CARE AND EDUCATION INITIATIVES

Type of Organization:  The Institute for Family-Centered Care provides leadership to advance the understanding and practice of patient- and family-centered care in hospitals and other health care settings.  By promoting collaborative, empowering relationships among patients, families, and health care professionals, the Institute facilitates patient- and family-centered change in all settings where individuals and families receive care and support.  A non-profit education and advocacy organization based in Bethesda Maryland with a satellite office in Seattle Washington.

Street Address: Capital Hill neighborhood in Seattle WA

Project Description: Varies from assessment, development, implementation and evaluation of patient and family centered care initiatives, and the development of education materials, resources, and programs. Data collection, research training and working with colleagues throughout the country may be involved.

Skills Required/Requested: - Excellent communication skills - oral and written - Computer skills - MS Office (Word, Excel, and Access) and email; desired skills also include familiarity with , PowerPoint and survey related software - Team player, good attitude, good independent problem solving skills - Experience with project coordination, program planning and evaluation.

Starting Date: Anytime - minimum 10 weeks/ maximum 1 year

Contact Person:
Cezanne Garcia, MPH Adjunct Faculty, School of Public Health
Senior Program and Resource Specialist
Institute for Family Centered Care
cell phone: 206-459-5516
email: cgarcia@iffcc.org

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PALS - Physical Activity for a Lifetime of Success
Co-sponsored by UW Health Promotion Research Center and the Southeast Seattle Senior Center

I work with a program called PALS (“Physical Activity for a Lifetime of Success”), cosponsored by UW’s Health Promotion Research Center and the Southeast Seattle Senior Center. Our program is free, open to anyone over 50 who wants to increase their level of exercise or who needs help continuing with their current level, and who feels they would benefit from having a volunteer “phone buddy” call them 2x/month for support and assistance in staying motivated. We work individually with each participant to design an exercise program specifically for their level of fitness, interests, and circumstances – including exercise classes at our center, walking with friends, and doing exercises at home. We have participants ranging in age from 54 to 88, and in fitness levels from homebound to 70-year olds presently training to walk their first half-marathon. For more information, see www.seniorservices.org/PALS <http://www.seniorservices.org/PALS>

We are always looking for new volunteers, and it occurred to me that the MPH program might have students interested in volunteering. Our volunteers attend a 5-hour training on motivational interviewing. They are then assigned 2-4 PALS participants, whom they call from their own homes 2x/month. These conversations typically last about 10-15 minutes and include an assessment of how the participant is doing with meeting their goals, helping problem-solve to see what can be done to overcome any obstacles that have arisen, and discussing goals for the next 2 weeks. After the initial training, each volunteer spends about 2-3 hours/month, and we ask volunteers to make a commitment for a minimum of 9 months. It’s a wonderful opportunity for volunteers to get connected with seniors in the community, to learn about some of the health challenges of aging, to support seniors in becoming more physically active and staying independent, and to see how a community-based program operates.

If you think there may be students interested in volunteering with our program. 

In addition, it occurs to me that the volunteer recruitment effort itself could perhaps be developed into a practicum project for one of your students.

For more information, please contact:
Jean Anton
PALS Program Coordinator
Southeast Seattle Senior Center
4655 S. Holly St.
Seattle, WA 98118
206-722-2550
JeanA@seniorservices.org

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Washington Breast and Cervical Health Program

The Breast and Cervical Health Program (BCHP), funded by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention and Washington State, provides free breast and cervical cancer screening for low-income women.

The program in King County targets women with the lower screening rates. Community outreach and education are provided by 20 community-based organizations who tailor messages to specific ethnic communities. Screening services are provided by 45 clinics and 16 radiology facilities.

We are interested in having practicum students come and work in our program. If interesed, please contact:

Jodi Olson, Education Consultant
Washington Breast and Cervical Health Program
401 5th Avenue, Suite 900
Seattle, WA 98104-2333
206-205-3914

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WASHINGTON HEALTH FOUNDATION

The Washington Health Foundation (WHF) is an independent nonprofit organization working to make Washington the Healthiest State in the Nation. The Healthiest State Campaign encompasses public affairs, policy and advocacy, grantmaking, the Community Health Access Program, and the largest civic engagement campaign in the history of the state. Today, the Campaign continues to grow, so far involving 35,000 individuals, almost 1000 participating organizations and over 350 schools—with more joining every day. We welcome students and colleges to be involved with the Campaign. More information is available at www.HealthiestState.org.

We welcome interest from students eager to help build healthy systems and promote healthy living. Attached is a list of current internship opportunities at the Washington Health Foundation.  Please contact me with any questions or internship queries.

2008 Internship Opportunities

Lorna Stone
Vice President of Programs
Washington Health Foundation
600 Stewart Street, Suite 601
Seattle, WA 98101

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White Center Projects

I have 4 projects that I am wondering whether there would be a fit with your learning objectives for students, from either of your perspectives. 2 are for PHSKC and 2 for the Community Health Leadership Forum of WSALPHO (what used to be called the PH Nursing Directors.)

1. For two reasons, PHSKC is wanting to redefine boundaries for home visiting. We are losing space in Auburn and will need to relocate our public health nurse field staff into other offices, still covering that area of the county but from our Kent and Federal Way offices. In White Center we are beginning a new project funded by the Gates Foundation that will enroll people north of our current White Center boundary and it doesn't make sense to involve 2 offices in this project.

We have geocoded our home visit data in 2 ways, both by latitude and longitude and by census track/block group. We know how many home visits each FTE can do and we can determine how many cubicles are possible in each office. We need help organizing the data to allow us to look at existing boundaries and various options for changing them, within the parameters of space available to house the staff. We are losing the Auburn space mid-year, so need a plan by the end of the first quarter.

2. In business continuity planning for emergency preparedness, PHSKC has the need to identify how many of our staff by job class live closest to each site so we can determine the potential workforce available if transportion infrastructure were to be severely damaged. We have a database of employee job classes and addresses. We need help in both running the current data and recommendations about how we might reevaluate this data in an emergency. Sound Shake 2008 earthquake disaster drill in in March, so hopefully this would be an easy and quick project!

3. The Community Health Leadership Forum has been working on outcome measures for PH services for children and families and have piloted four measures in five counties in November. Our next steps are to refine them based on the input from the pilot sites and develop protocols for when they would be collected on whom by which programs. We will need a data repository in order to report these data across jurisdictions. In order to lay out the case for DOH housing a data repository for this purpose, we need to develop a project charter that outlines the business need, impact, objectives, stakeholders, assumptions, constraints, and risks. Our DOH champion for this work has left the agency, so IT people at DOH do not have this on their priorities. Within the LHJs we do not have the capacity to put this analysis together, yet it is a necessary step for engaging DOH further on this issue. It would be a good experience for a student to learn how to do these documents and also involve them in working across LHJs and DOH.

4. DOH with emergency preparedness funding has purchased a learning presentations for orientation and training that could be put on the system and shared but we don't have a way to catalogue those and prioritize them for converting into high quality on-line sessions, or the skills for doing that conversion. PHSKC has staff who have learned the basics about putting Powerpoint presentations on SmartPH; Spokane RHD has video capabilities. Maybe others have some other assets I don't know about. Work on this project could take several forms. Technical assistance to convert presentations to on-line mini-courses, assistance in developing a way to coordinate efforts across jurisdictions, a survey to determine who has raw material and what topics would be prioritized.

Thank you for your consideration of these projects. For the right student I think any one of them would be great learning experiences.

Kathy Carson
Parent Child Health Administrator
Public Health-Seattle & King County
206/263-8283

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Please direct all questions regarding the practicum program to:

Rene' M. Lucas, MPH Practicum Coordinator
Dean's Office
School of Public Health and Community Medicine
Box 357230
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195-7230
(206) 685-8904

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MPH Practicum Program
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