This series highlights the outstanding internships undertaken by students in the YSPH Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases (EMD) Program. Here, second-year MPH student Shilpa Mudumbe describes the skills she acquired and the contributions she made to her field of study during her internship.
What organization did you intern with this summer and where were you based?
Shilpa: I interned with the CT Emerging Infections Program in the FoodCORE project, based in New Haven.
What was your role or the title of your internship position?
My title was FoodCORE team member.
What were your main responsibilities and deliverables during the internship?
My main responsibilities were interviewing patients with foodborne illnesses and entering data into various databases. My two deliverables were a Cyclospora research poster and an informational poster about common foodborne illnesses.
How did your coursework at Yale inform your work during the internship?
The qualitative interview assignment from EPH 507 (Social Justice and Health Equity) taught me how to ask probing questions based on what the respondent says. This was helpful when I was conducting interviews because I was able to develop additional questions on the spot to collect a more comprehensive exposure history.
What were the most important insights you gained through the internship?
I learned how public health surveillance is conducted as well as how data are used during outbreak investigations. I also learned about a variety of risk factors that can make people more susceptible to infection with foodborne illnesses.
Learning how to interview patients can have a big learning curve, so I would recommend persistence, and eventually you will get the hang of it!
Shilpa Mudumbe
What advice would you give to a student considering this internship?
Learning how to interview patients can have a big learning curve, so I would recommend persistence, and eventually you will get the hang of it!