Example of an Independent Project Public Health Students Can Do

Here I share an example of an independent project public health students can do. I’ve had a lot of questions over a recent article “How To Find An Internship During Covid-19 or check out the IG post below.

In this post, I share different ways how to find an internship and I had many questions asking what is an example of an independent project a public health student can work on. When you think of public health there are many ways you can get involved in an independent project.

Sometimes we think we have to do extravagant work to be able to illustrate our public health knowledge and skills, but there are so many simple ways to do useful independent work. Here is an example of one that I was able to do during my Master of Public Health.

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The Project I Worked On

The project I worked on that could have been done as an independent project was my Rural Health Advocacy and Policy Internship with Suwannee River AHEC. I worked on this project as an additional internship that was done remotely for the most part. It was also suppose to be doing this project with another Master of Public Health student, but ended up doing it alone.

So in the role, I was tasked with researching and authoring a Rural Health Whitepaper that focused on health inequities between rural and urban Florida as stated in the excerpt of my resume above.

This was done by:

Defining what it meant to be rural vs urban using Florida Statutes
Identifying and separating the rural and urban counties by definition found above
Identifying data sources (all public) to do analysis with from a Social Determinants of Health perspective
Downloading that data – the main data I used was from the US Census Bureau DP05 American Community Survey & the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS)
Analyzing and doing the write up

Though higher level statistical analysis could have been done for this project, in light of time and my capacity data was averaged when possible or shared as a range for rural and urban counties. That being said the only software I used was Excel and then my calculator lol.

This sort of project can be done for a variety of topics with data that is publicly available. The major downside is definitely just that it can be a time-consuming and boring task to find, organize and analyze the data. In the long run, you will be thankful if you do embark on an independent project. It has a great way of displaying the skills you have acquired during your public health schooling.

The Mistake I Made & How To Not Repeat Yourself

It’s funny how I was made aware of this mistake. It was after I had presented at the Florida Rural Health Association conference on this project. The CEO of my other internship was at the conference and realized that I had averaged the data incorrectly. Thankfully, he brought it up afterwards and I was able to make the changes before I presented again at another conference on the project. The changes needed weren’t difficult to make, but they sure were time consuming.

The mistake I had made was that I had used the rates for certain indicators and averaged them the way you can only do using higher statistical analysis. Thus my rates should have been a range of rates rather than an average as it would have been impossible to get the averages with only the data I had available.

If I have any piece of advice here: make sure to get your work checked while you are doing the project by someone with more expertise that yourself. You’ll be a lot happier making the mistake in the early stages and making changes than it coming up in the latter stages like it did for myself.

How You Can Work On A Similar Project

Idea

There are so many different questions that can be used to develop a good and relevant public health data project.

You can work on these types of projects by yourself, with a partner, or even with the assistance of a professor or other public health professional. Figure out something that interest you as well as will be beneficial to the community or for yourself in speaking about it in an interview.

Analyzing and synthesizing information is great. Being able to take information and research evidence based practices and use integrate them as recommendations is OG level stuff – that’s what any typical white paper does. This type of project gets you to pull on several skills and your acquired knowledge to build a case for whatever topic you are interested in.

Data

Under Section 501(r)(3)(A) requires a hospital organization to conduct a community health needs assessment (CHNA) every three years and to adopt an implementation strategy to meet the community health needs identified through the CHNA. Thus this data is widely available for public health students to use to do certain projects or first figure out an area of interest.

Other places where you can get useful public public health data:

Check out this illustration site to see Summary of Current Surveys and Data Collection Systems that you can use for your data needs.

Other Example Projects

Some other great ways that public health students can do independent projects could include:

Doing some sort of community or school survey. Then presenting findings and recommendations to stakeholders.
By hosting focus groups around a topic. Presenting those results and recommendation.
Key informant interviews. Get creative around your topic and stakeholders. Present takeaways.
Using NVIVO to do qualitative analysis of twitter, Facebook information (probably need support from a professor).
GIS Mapping of certain social determinants of health in relation to a topic of interest.
Policy brief on a specific or several policies and their implications for a certain focus area.
Online photovoice projects around a particular topic of interest.
Then you can always do regular research and development through researching articles around a topic.

There are many many ways to get involved in an independent project as a public health student. It truly depends on your willingness to seek out the opportunity to explore the data and come up with a project that interest you. Though it can be hard to maintain motivation to do this kind of work, it can truly pay off in the long run. And as I said earlier, get yourself a friend or professor you can work alongside on the project.

Conclusion

There are many ways to use the skills that you are acquiring during your bachelors of public health or master of public health in doing a independent project.

As public health becomes more competitive, doing an independent project might be the thing that sets you apart from other candidates. In any light, doing an independent project is a great way to show the world what value you can bring to real world issues.