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Available Practicum Opportunities

International Practicum

Washington Breast and Cervical Health Program

The Breast and Cervical Health Program (BCHP), funded by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention and Washington State, provides free breast and cervical cancer screening for low-income women.

The program in King County targets women with the lower screening rates. Community outreach and education are provided by 20 community-based organizations who tailor messages to specific ethnic communities. Screening services are provided by 45 clinics and 16 radiology facilities.

We are interested in having practicum students come and work in our program. If interested, please contact:

Jodi Olson, Education Consultant
Washington Breast and Cervical Health Program
401 5th Avenue, Suite 900
Seattle, WA 98104-2333
206-205-3914

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White Center Projects

I have 4 projects that I am wondering whether there would be a fit with your learning objectives for students, from either of your perspectives. 2 are for PHSKC and 2 for the Community Health Leadership Forum of WSALPHO (what used to be called the PH Nursing Directors.)

1. For two reasons, PHSKC is wanting to redefine boundaries for home visiting. We are losing space in Auburn and will need to relocate our public health nurse field staff into other offices, still covering that area of the county but from our Kent and Federal Way offices. In White Center we are beginning a new project funded by the Gates Foundation that will enroll people north of our current White Center boundary and it doesn't make sense to involve 2 offices in this project.

We have geocoded our home visit data in 2 ways, both by latitude and longitude and by census track/block group. We know how many home visits each FTE can do and we can determine how many cubicles are possible in each office. We need help organizing the data to allow us to look at existing boundaries and various options for changing them, within the parameters of space available to house the staff. We are losing the Auburn space mid-year, so need a plan by the end of the first quarter.

2. In business continuity planning for emergency preparedness, PHSKC has the need to identify how many of our staff by job class live closest to each site so we can determine the potential workforce available if transportation infrastructure were to be severely damaged. We have a database of employee job classes and addresses. We need help in both running the current data and recommendations about how we might reevaluate this data in an emergency. Sound Shake 2008 earthquake disaster drill in in March, so hopefully this would be an easy and quick project!

3. The Community Health Leadership Forum has been working on outcome measures for PH services for children and families and have piloted four measures in five counties in November. Our next steps are to refine them based on the input from the pilot sites and develop protocols for when they would be collected on whom by which programs. We will need a data repository in order to report these data across jurisdictions. In order to lay out the case for DOH housing a data repository for this purpose, we need to develop a project charter that outlines the business need, impact, objectives, stakeholders, assumptions, constraints, and risks. Our DOH champion for this work has left the agency, so IT people at DOH do not have this on their priorities. Within the LHJs we do not have the capacity to put this analysis together, yet it is a necessary step for engaging DOH further on this issue. It would be a good experience for a student to learn how to do these documents and also involve them in working across LHJs and DOH.

4. DOH with emergency preparedness funding has purchased a learning presentations for orientation and training that could be put on the system and shared but we don't have a way to catalogue those and prioritize them for converting into high quality on-line sessions, or the skills for doing that conversion. PHSKC has staff who have learned the basics about putting Powerpoint presentations on SmartPH; Spokane RHD has video capabilities. Maybe others have some other assets I don't know about. Work on this project could take several forms. Technical assistance to convert presentations to on-line mini-courses, assistance in developing a way to coordinate efforts across jurisdictions, a survey to determine who has raw material and what topics would be prioritized.

Thank you for your consideration of these projects. For the right student I think any one of them would be great learning experiences.

Kathy Carson
Parent Child Health Administrator
Public Health-Seattle & King County
206/263-8283

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Please direct all questions regarding the practicum program to:

Rene' M. Lucas, MPH Practicum Coordinator
Dean's Office
School of Public Health
Box 357230
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195-7230
(206) 685-8904