Marion County Uses PHIG to Launch First Paid Internship Program
With PHIG funds, the Marion County Public Health Department (MCPHD) launched its first paid internship program in spring 2024. MCPHD initially partnered with Indiana University’s Fairbanks School of Public Health and has grown to include more interns and schools. In the summer of 2024, MCPHD hired an Internship Coordinator to streamline internship processes and support the goal of creating a pipeline for students to pursue public health careers. This work included developing a process for paying interns (no previous system was in place) and ensuring a consistent process for all interns, whether paid or unpaid. As a direct example of the program’s community impact, a PHIG-funded intern created a bilingual (English and Spanish) electronic application form for MCPHD’s Diaper Den project, increasing its capacity to process diaper requests from 150 to about 600 per month. The intern also created an electronic tracking form that captured information such as the number of diapers distributed each month by size.
