Graduate Student Internship Program

2008 Catalog of Internship Opportunities

This internship has been filled.

Evaluation of a Statewide Parenting Newsletter

Program: Maternal and Child Health
Department of Health and Hospitals, Office of Public Health, Metairie, LA
Skill Area: Program Evaluation

Agency Information

The Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Program in the State of Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals serves to assure access to primary and preventive health care services for pregnant women, women of childbearing age, infants, children, and youth in Louisiana. The Louisiana MCH Program strives to identify leading causes of death and illness among women and children in order to create targeted public health campaigns to educate people about prevention. The MCH Program supports a variety of educational services designed to prevent future infant deaths, accidental injuries, preterm births, and low birth weight outcomes, including a multicultural parenting newsletter designed to raise awareness of developmental issues pertinent to young children. The newsletter is available to all Louisiana parents free of charge and is funded in part by the Louisiana Title V Block Grant.

Purpose, goals, and objectives of internship

Beginning in the 1950s, the MCH program distributed Pierre the Pelican newsletter to all first time mothers in Louisiana. In 2002, evaluation results indicated that the newsletter was not meeting the needs of its target audience and was discontinued. Building upon a successful newsletter from Maine, a new, multicultural newsletter called Happy & Health Kids was introduced in Louisiana in 2005. Happy & Health Kids incorporates current knowledge of infant psycho-social and emotional development and is comprised of 28 newsletter issues covering developmental issues relevant to children ages 0-5 years. The overarching purpose of this internship is to assist with evaluation of the Louisiana Happy and Healthy Kids parenting health education newsletter. Specific goals for the intern include:

• To learn about the fundamental concepts of program evaluation, data collection, data analysis and interpretation;
• To apply theoretical program evaluation knowledge;
• To practice data manipulation and analysis skills in a real world setting;
• To draw conclusions and make recommendations regarding the future direction of the newsletter with respect to topic content, message effectiveness, and newsletter desirability;
• To advance writing and oral presentation skills through a summary report and oral presentation to stakeholders. A summary report for publication in a Public Health newsletter or journal may also be prepared.

Specific objectives include:

• Assessment of the quality of program evaluation data collected for the Happy and Healthy Kids newsletter evaluation. This will be done by calculating the response rate for surveys and analyzing the percent of missing data for key data variables.
• Analysis of program evaluation data. This will be done by calculating percents and/or means of survey variables in order to assess:

  a) How useful and acceptable the newsletter is to the target audience?
  b) Whether parents report changes in knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs based on newsletter contents?
  c) Whether subscribers report changing their child rearing behaviors as a result of reading the newsletter?

• A written summary report and PowerPoint presentation for dissemination to MCH stakeholders.

Data or analytic tasks and activities

In March of 2008, a survey will be sent to a sample of about 300 parents who have been receiving the newsletter for at least one year. A database will be created and completed surveys will be entered by June 2008. The Graduate Student Intern will be responsible for exporting this database into a statistical software package, SPSS and SAS are available, in order to analyze the survey results.

Data or analytic skills required

A successful intern will be proficient in Microsoft Access, Excel, and either SAS or SPSS. The primary skills required for this internship include advance proficiency in data manipulation, including recoding of existing data into meaningful categories and calculation of new variables. It is anticipated that data analysis will be limited to descriptive statistics, including percents and/or means, with some reporting by various subgroups. It is imperative that the intern have excellent verbal and written communication skills to prepare a final report of findings.

Supervisors

Dr. Lyn Kieltyka, CDC MCH Epidemiology Assignee to the State of Louisiana and MCH Program Senior Epidemiologist, will be the primary supervisor and mentor for the intern. Dr. Kieltyka will oversee the evaluation by supervising all aspects of data manipulation and statistical analyses related to the evaluation. She will schedule weekly meetings with the intern to discuss progress and challenges as well as be available to answer questions and provide guidance as needed throughout the internship. Dr. Kieltyka has a PhD in epidemiology, a Masters in Public Health in Behavioral Science, and has worked in the Louisiana MCH program since 2003.

Kristie Bardell, MPH, will serve as the secondary supervisor. Ms. Bardell received her MPH in Community Health Sciences with an emphasis in Health Education/Communication from Tulane School of Public Health. She is the current MCH Health Education Coordinator and administrator of the parenting newsletter. She will assist with the program component of the project and planning the implementation of the evaluation. Karis Schoellmann, administrator of the statewide social marketing campaign, Partners for Healthy Babies, and professor at Tulane School of Public Health will also be available for consultation regarding the newsletter evaluation.

Internship begins

Any time after May 15, 2008 is a suitable time to begin the internship

Housing

Temporary housing may be found through subletting from local university students; however, no guarantee for housing can be made at this time.

Transportation

A personal vehicle is required, as this worksite is not accessible via public transportation

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