Graduate Student Internship Program

2008 Catalog of Internship Opportunities

This internship is now open —Apply Today!

MCH Data Intern

Program: Lifespan Health Services
Health & Human Services, Lincoln, NE
Skill Area: Data Analysis and Monitoring

Agency Information

Lifespan Health Services (formerly Family Health) conducts the statewide MCH assessment, does planning, leads initiatives, develops policies, and administers programs to improve the health of men, women, infants, children, adolescents and families in Nebraska. Through the Title V/MCH Block Grant, Lifespan Health also supports community-based organizations,
e.g., local health departments, community action programs, and programs administered within Native American Tribes, academic institutions, and hospitals. Programs within Lifespan Health Services are:

1. Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC),
2. Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP),
3. Reproductive Health,
4. Immunization,
5. Perinatal, Child and Adolescent Health,
6. Newborn Screening,
7. MCH Epidemiology unit that includes the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring Survey (PRAMS) and the Child Death Review Team, and
8. Office of Women and Men’s Health which administers the Every Woman Matters breast & cervical screening programs, a colorectal screening program, and other women’s and men’s health initiatives.

Purpose, goals, and objectives of internship

The Lifespan Health Services Unit (LHS) has several pending projects from which a GSIP intern could choose. Our first priority is a study of perinatal regionalization in Nebraska; our goal is to understand how/whether perinatal regionalization is working in the state and what improvements should and can be made. In the spring of 2007, an MPH student surveyed 73 state birthing hospitals, obtaining information about their perinatal services and transport agreements, and contrasting hospital’s self-designated perinatal capacity ‘Level’ with their formal Level based on definitions from the AAP/ACOG Guidelines for Perinatal Care. The next phase of that project is to analyze birthing distributions and outcomes by Level. The final phase of the project would be to develop policy recommendations for improvements to the system. A second desired project would be working with the state’s Birth Defect Registry (BDR) and Birth Certificate databases. The two separate goals of this project would be to a) define the sensitivity and specify of birth certificates in detecting birth defects using the BDR as the “gold standard,” and b) produce a state-wide profile of demographic, spatial and temporal trends in birth defect occurrence. Continuing down the wish list would be:

• producing a profile of WIC clients and outcomes by linking PRAMS to the WIC database, with a secondary goal of determining whether PRAMS subjects that report WIC participation are an unbiased subset of all WIC clients.
• conducting a formal analysis of maternal mortality, involving linking deaths to women of reproductive age with birth certificates, and assessing the sensitivity of our existing passive systems of detecting maternal mortality. Historically, this matching has involved a considerable amount of hand inspection of matches, although this would be easier now with the Linkage Wiz program. Analysis of individual medical charts may be possible.

Data or analytic tasks and activities

Basic regression and descriptive statistics; linking datasets (we use Linkage Wiz); policy development.

Data or analytic skills required

SAS, Excel, Word

Supervisors

Primary Supervisor would be Dr. Debora Barnes-Josiah. She is an MCH Epidemiologist in LHS and has worked on numerous statewide data analyses, including birth outcomes, PRAMS, and linking BC to Medicaid data. She also coordinates the state’s Child Death Review Team and writes that annual report.

Secondary Supervisor would be Ms. Paula Eurek, LHS Administrator and Nebraska’s Title V/MCH Director, who does not have an analytic background but does have a keen mind for understanding the goals and big picture of analytic projects.

Internship begins

Flexible

Housing

DHHS is in the downtown area, close to many apartment and housing complexes. Campus dorm rooms may also be available, depending on the exact timing. Our previous interns have preferred to find apartments / rented rooms.

Transportation

The building is served by several major bus routes.