What organization did you intern with? What was your role?
Puli Christian Hospital in Taiwan. I was in charged with providing basic care to rural residents and analyzing clinic data from the hospital, hoping to understand more about the health of rural residents in Taiwan.
Where was your internship located?
Puli Township, Taiwan.
What is your career goal?
I am hoping to go back to Taiwan and work with rural residents, both clinically as a nurse and doing public health research.
What was your internship funding source?
YSPH.
What were your duties/responsibilities during your internship?
I was a nurse and an analyst for the hospital. I helped in the mobile clinics that traveled in the mountains. I also analyzed clinical data from the mobile clinics in hope of understanding more about the health and health-related behaviors of local residents.
What did you take away from your experience as an intern? What was the value of the internship to you?
I learned the importance of being local and understanding the lives of the locals when looking at quantitative data. Although numbers can represent certain phenomena, understanding the reason behind quantitative results is important for us, as public health workers, to find solutions for the problem. As an intern who worked with a lot of quantitative data, I realized that the story of clinical data does not paint the whole picture of the health of the population. I had to talk to local residents and visit many infrastructures to understand the underlying health problems in the community.
What was the most rewarding aspect of your internship? What was the most challenging aspect? The most surprising aspect?
I got to really know my own country better. As a person who lived in the city, I never truly understood the underlying difficulties caused by health problems in rural communities. I would often blame “laziness” for a lot of the problems. But after this internship, I was able to utilize the theories and methods learned at YSPH to understand structural problems that are affecting health in rural communities in Taiwan.
The most challenging aspect was having to connect with the locals. Due to historical reasons, indigenous people aren’t always willing to share and talk about their problems with outsiders. It was challenging to really have people tell you their health problems.
How has YSPH prepared you for this internship?
Courses in social justice and health policy really helped me. I was using social theories like fundamental theory and weathering theory as I worked in the communities every day. Health policy helped me gain a critical perspective on the health care system in Taiwan, and to understand rural health policy better.
What would you say to a student who’s considering a similar internship?
Work in a setting you love and are passionate about. That’s what will bring the most out of you as a training public health professional.