King’s College Internship & Public Health History – 3rd Week at NYU London!

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Michaela Greenlee

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Michaela Greenlee

<i>"Hello" in your host country's language:</i> Hello! <i>Home Institution (your U.S. University/College):</i> New York University <i>Expected graduation year:</i> 2024 <i>Destination city & country:</i> London, United Kingdom <i>Program provider:</i> NYU London <i>Major/minor:</i> Global Public Health <i>Demographics:</i> Caucasian/White, Hispanic/Latinx <i>Future career aspirations:</i> My future career goals involve becoming a university professor of public health in the social and behavioral sciences. I hope to conduct research in my own laboratory that explores how to mitigate health disparities among low-income and racial/ethnic minority populations. As a future professor, my mission is to empower my students (particularly females and students of color) to volunteer in my lab and develop a passion for working towards health equity. <i>Top 3 goals for your time abroad:</i> My top three goals for my time abroad include developing a comparative lens to analyze differences in health care infrastructure between the United States and United Kingdom, building strong and professional relationships with my internship mentors, and becoming an independent individual who can learn to take accountability by navigating through challenging situations.

Hi everyone! I’m excited to tell you about my academic-credit internship that I started last week at King’s College London – King’s Health Partners (KHP). KHP is an academic health services center that seeks to deliver better health for all through high impact innovation. Specifically, their mission is to provide sustainable health improvements to their patients, communities, staff and students. Within KHP, I’m interning in the Institute for Women and Children’s Health, which focuses on striving to improve children’s health services, systems and policy in the UK and European countries. As an intern within the Institute for Women and Children’s Health, my fieldwork responsibilities include stakeholder mapping regarding partner organizations, communications, functions and interests. Additionally, I will be helping to research and produce a communications and engagement strategy for the Institute. Lastly, I will be expected to produce regular communications outputs and design/run engagement events including symposia, public and professional research prioritization events.

In terms of my current project, I’ve been tasked with creating a short, two-minute animation video about the “Ask the Institute” service – a resource that offers advice and hands-on specialist input to all areas of research and clinical delivery related to women and children’s health. The video I design will be featured at the KHP’s Annual Conference in October where academic health professionals from universities and partnerships will attend virtually to get a better understanding of the services KHP provides. Admittedly, I was slightly intimidated by the idea of having to put together an animation since it is my first time working with video editing software. However, I feel that this is the perfect opportunity to rise up to the challenge and develop a new skill that will benefit me if I decide to pursue a future career as a public health practitioner, where it will be necessary to educate others through effective, sustainable digital health campaigns. I’m already in the process of drafting the animation storyboard using the Powtoon software with the hopes of eventually transferring the video to Adobe. Next week, I’m looking forward to getting feedback on my progress from the Ask the Institute director!

When I’m not working at my internship on Tuesdays and Fridays, you’ll find me exploring the lively streets of London. Just yesterday I wandered around the Soho neighborhood where I accidentally ran into the John Snow pump that my professor spoke to us about in my Epidemiology course last Fall! John Snow is known as the “Father of Epidemiology” for having discovered that the city’s contaminated water supply was coming from the public pump on Broad Street and was the cause of the deadly cholera outbreak in the 1850s. Being the public health enthusiast that I am, I was already snapping pictures with my phone once I laid eyes on the iconic pump. Funnily enough, today you will find a pub (pictured below!) named in honor of John Snow just several feet away from the pump – I’m hoping to try out their fish and chips one of these days.

Thanks so much for taking the time to read my third blog post! Next week I’ll be sharing more of my experience from my classes and London adventures. See you all soon :)