Internship mid-point (already!)

July 5th, 2016

It’s already the mid-point of my internship. I’ve mainly been reading, writing, and formatting material for the ACS report (to be submitted soon!), but I already feel that I’ve become more aware about the publication writing process, cervical cancer and barriers to prevention, as well as how public health research is implemented. I recently started helping out with a second project that was launched recently (a few months ago), called the Digital Communication Toolkit. This project involves drafting a series of guidelines that will help governmental and health organizations to implement effective digital campaigns (Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, etc.) to raise awareness of cancer. I am writing the background/overview of the toolkit (about the prevalence/impact of cancer and the digital landscape in India) as well as the case studies (successful examples of digital health campaigns in India).

I was concerned that with my time split between two projects, I won’t be able to meaningfully learn about and contribute to one topic. However, Sandra explained to me that I am involved in the topic of cancer communication in both and will gain experience about this topic from both perspectives.

I had expected that I would be involved with field work–I was slightly disappointed that I could not go and witness the process of interviewing different stakeholders firsthand. However, the field work for ACS project is already completed and field work hasn’t started for the Digital Toolkit project because relevant stakeholders haven’t yet been identified. Therefore, I intend to ask workers around me in the office about the process and–aside from my assigned work and data analysis on my laptop–try to attend as many meetings so that I can still learn about the investigation process and how ideas/partnerships/projects form.