Global Health Research Internship 2016 in Boston

Transcription

1 801 Massachusetts Ave, Crosstown 2079 Boston, MA Tel: Karsten Lunze, MD, MPH, DrPH, FACPM, FAAP Research Assistant Professor of Medicine Global Health Research Internship 2016 in Boston This learner-centered internship is based at Boston University. It provides educational components and intensive practical research activities to students interested in advancing their research skills in global health. Geared towards interested public health and medical students, it also offers exposure to clinical settings and public health practice sites at Boston University and other institutions in the Boston area. Goals/ Objectives: Dates: 1) To develop advanced students global health research skills through contributions to a current project involving existing data 2) To develop a targeted research question and a specific analytic plan 3) To produce a research deliverable meriting coauthorship on a peer-reviewed publication or, depending on the intern s contributions, draft a publishable paper 12 weeks in summer 2015; the dates are flexible You will join a cohort of research interns at Boston University (BU) and be paired in teams. You will be supervised and mentored by the project principle investigator, Karsten Lunze. At the beginning of your internship, in coordination with your mentor at your home institution, we will agree with you on your individual learning plan and target it to your learning needs. 1) Research skills development You will be offered an intensive, individual multiple session curriculum on research concepts, methods and tools, including regular assignments related to your chosen topic. You will undergo and receive certification in the ethical conduct of research. Together with other master and doctoral students, staff and faculty, you will participate in regular didactic seminars and meetings. You will critically appraise your peers work in progress meetings and journal peer reviews. You will develop your management and leadership skills by taking on a challenge related to your research and developing an action plan to address it. Depending on your topic, arrangements will be made to connect you to relevant stakeholders and collaborators at other universities in the Boston area, such as Harvard, MIT, Tufts, or Brandeis.

2 801 Massachusetts Ave, Crosstown 2079 Boston, MA Tel: Karsten Lunze, MD, MPH, DrPH, FACPM, FAAP Research Assistant Professor of Medicine Global Health Research Internship 2016 in Boston This learner-centered internship is based at Boston University. It provides educational components and intensive practical research activities to students interested in advancing their research skills in global health. Geared towards interested public health and medical students, it also offers exposure to clinical settings and public health practice sites at Boston University and other institutions in the Boston area. Goals/ Objectives: Dates: 1) To develop advanced students global health research skills through contributions to a current project involving existing data 2) To develop a targeted research question and a specific analytic plan 3) To produce a research deliverable meriting coauthorship on a peer-reviewed publication or, depending on the intern s contributions, draft a publishable paper 12 weeks in summer 2015; the dates are flexible. You will join a cohort of research interns at Boston University (BU) and be paired in teams. You will be supervised and mentored by the project principle investigator, Karsten Lunze. At the beginning of your internship, in coordination with your mentor at your home institution, we will agree with you on your individual learning plan and target it to your learning needs. 1) Research skills development You will be offered an intensive, individual multiple session curriculum on research concepts, methods and tools, including regular assignments related to your chosen topic. You will undergo and receive certification in the ethical conduct of research. Together with other master and doctoral students, staff and faculty, you will participate in regular didactic seminars and meetings. You will critically appraise your peers work in progress meetings and journal peer reviews. You will develop your management and leadership skills by taking on a challenge related to your research and developing an action plan to address it. Depending on your topic, arrangements might made to connect you to relevant stakeholders and collaborators at other universities in the Boston area, such as Harvard, MIT, Tufts, or Brandeis.

3 2) Research Project: Maternal and newborn health in Zambia Even with recent global progress towards Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5 for 2015, an estimated 287,000 women die during pregnancy and childbirth every year. Nearly 3 million newborns die during their first month of life. Improvements have been uneven and inadequate. Existing disparities are stark and reflect persistent barriers and bottlenecks to scale-up quality health care for women and newborns in low-resource contexts. Proven interventions that reduce maternal and newborn mortality and morbidity are well established, yet these essential interventions are not delivered at scale in low- and middle income countries (LMIC). To increase availability and coverage of these essential interventions, countries must overcome challenges of demand, supply, quality of health care, and the enabling environment. As part of post-2015 planning, efforts at national and global levels continue to take stock of achievements and lessons from the MDGs and looking for implementation strategies to further reduce preventable maternal and newborn deaths and disability. In Zambia, similar to many resource-limited countries, there has been some progress in reducing mortality of children under 5 years of age and infants under one year, but less to increase neonatal survival. Most neonatal deaths occur early, during the first and second day of life, and many are preventable. At the same time, newborn care practices in sub-saharan Africa at the community level are poorly understood. A better understanding appreciation of environmental and local behavioral factors, and traditional practices that place neonates (and mothers) at risk in resource-limited settings in sub- Saharan Africa might improve the design and implementation of appropriate interventions to prevent maternal and newborn deaths in the communities. Your responsibility will be to conduct a secondary data analysis or a newborn (maternal) healthrelated meta-synthesis of existing data. In general, your research will explore and understand practices and attitudes as well as perceived barriers and potential facilitators of preventing and managing maternal and newborn health problems among communities in rural Zambia or similar settings with limited access to health care and a poor infrastructure. You will use existing data from facility-based surveys as well as focus group discussions (FGD) and in-depth interviews (IDI). Specifically, your research project will analyze current newborn (or maternal) health related practices and identify potential strategies to improve newborn (or maternal) care and health outcomes. Past interns have worked on newborn care seeking in Lufwanyama and on the use of point of care testing for malaria in Southern Province. Part of the internship s orientation week will be a discussion between you and your internship mentor, reviewing available datasets and the current research agenda to determine and formulate your research topic. We will then identify and develop a feasible research question with you at the beginning of your internship. You will receive an office, computer, and dedicated software for the duration of your internship to conduct your research project. We use NVivo and SAS and will train you in these programs. You may choose to work with software you are familiar with, should you bring relevant experience.

4 3) Clinical and Public Health Practice Component: With consent from the internship mentor, qualified students who progress on their research project may be offered to participate in practical public health and research-related clinical activities. This includes placement with the Boston Public Health Commission, the Massachusetts State Department of Public Health, harm reduction programs or screening, brief intervention and counseling activities (SBIRT) or office based opioid treatment (OBOT) programs at (BMC). Medical students may be offered to participate in primary care clinics at BMC or in public health clinics maintained by the Boston Public Health Commission. Responsibilities and expectations: Results-driven, intensive 12 week internship First two weeks includes: orientation, certification in ethical conduct of research, research methods and skills curriculum, networking activities Subsequent weeks include active and productive conduct of research activities, regular review and revision of deliverables, active participation in longitudinal educational components, ongoing networking Note that this is a competitive internship posting: - Experience in research and in drafting abstracts papers would be preferred, but is not required. - Experience in the subject area through academic work or research would be an advantage, but is not required. - Interns must have sufficient working knowledge of English (expert reading and writing, advanced speaking) and must have German writing skills commensurate with their background. Financial support is available through the DAAD RISE program (travel costs and full stipend). Please apply by 15 Dec 2015 directly at In your application, please indicate why you are interested in this research area. Please also include a statement of motivation (what are your career plans and professional goals related to this internship, and how does this rotation relate to them), learning goals for this rotation (what are you trying to achieve during and after this rotation), as well as a CV and letter of recommendation from a faculty member or instructor who is familiar with you and can attest to your capabilities. To demonstrate your capabilities in academic English, please also compose and submit a 1 page essay on a major challenge for maternal or newborn health. In your essay, briefly comment on how your research might address your chosen challenge in today s global health context.

5 2) Research Project: HIV prevention among key populations in Russia and Malaysia The HIV/AIDS epidemic in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia is concentrated in vulnerable groups who are at high risk for HIV infection. Key populations such as people who inject drugs (PWID) experience most of the HIV burden. Among PWID, HIV transmission occurs through unsafe injections, and increasingly through unsafe heterosexual vaginal intercourse among HIVinfected drug users and their non-infected sex partners. Thus, concentrated HIV epidemics carry the inherent potential risk of viral spread from most at-risk populations through their sexual partners, the so-called bridge populations, to the general population, where it subsequently can transition into a generalized epidemic. Without addressing the needs of key populations, a sustainable response to HIV cannot be achieved. With growing evidence on the role of genetic, environmental and social determinants on health and risk behavior, HIV transmission is increasingly understood as not limited to the result of decisions and behavior at the individual level. Environments generate or produce risks and are as important determinants of HIV transmission as are individual behaviors. The risk of HIV transmission is thus influenced by the interactions of individual, biological and environmental factors. Your research will focus on the environmental risks of key populations such as PWID. Approaches seeking to understand the dynamic and complex relationships of individualenvironment interactions in the production and reduction of risk (social epidemiology) include quantitative methods as well as qualitative methods to map how social, political, and cultural conditions generate and reinforce vulnerability to HIV, particularly among socially marginalized populations such as PWID. You will use the concept of risk environment as analytic framework in order to advance our understanding of how risk and response relate to the situation and the structure of the environment in which they occur, and in order to inform intervention strategies that can contribute to HIV prevention among drug users in various global settings. Risk environment is defined as the space, either social or physical, in which a variety of environmental factors interact and determine the chances of risk occurring. The risk environment is conceptualized as environments of several types (physical, social, economic, legal, policy, etc.) which interact at various levels (micro, meso, and macro). Bringing about changes in these various types and at various level of environment to influence HIV risk and prevent HIV is an approach termed enabling environment or structural HIV prevention. Using existing data from our current studies (quantitative datasets from surveys and qualitative data from anthropologic research) conducted in Russia and Malaysia, options for your project include, but are not limited to: - Policy analysis of risk environment and key populations health analyzing qualitative data from various sites in Russia - Analysis of survey data from clinical HIV prevention trials in St. Petersburg, Russia to identify the role of certain risk factors (such as stigmatization) on adverse health outcomes or health care access among HIV infected PWID - Analysis of data from three sites in Malaysia to determine the risk environment of PWID Alternatively, you may identify and develop another feasible research topic and question in discussion with the internship mentor at the beginning of your rotation.

6 3) Clinical and Public Health Practice Component: With consent from the internship mentor, qualified students who progress on their research project may be offered to participate in practical public health and research-related clinical activities. This includes placement with the Boston Public Health Commission, the Massachusetts State Department of Public Health, harm reduction programs or screening, brief intervention and counseling activities (SBIRT) or office based opioid treatment (OBOT) programs at (BMC). Medical students may be offered to participate in primary care clinics at BMC or in public health clinics maintained by the Boston Public Health Commission. Responsibilities and expectations: Results-driven, intensive 12 week internship First two weeks includes: orientation, certification in ethical conduct of research, research methods and skills curriculum, networking activities Subsequent weeks include active and productive conduct of research activities, regular review and revision of deliverables, active participation in longitudinal educational components, ongoing networking Note that this is a competitive internship posting: - Experience in research and in drafting abstracts papers would be preferred, but is not required. - Experience in the subject area through academic work or research would be an advantage, but is not required. - Interns must have sufficient working knowledge of English (expert reading and writing, advanced speaking) and must have German writing skills commensurate with their background. Financial support is available through the DAAD RISE program (travel costs and full stipend). Please apply by 15 Dec 2015 directly at In your application, please indicate why your are interested in this research area. Please also include a statement of motivation (what are your career plans and professional goals related to this internship, and how does this rotation relate to them), learning goals for this rotation (what are you trying to achieve during and after this rotation), as well as a CV and letter of recommendation from a faculty member or instructor who is familiar with you and can attest to your capabilities. To demonstrate your capabilities in academic English, please also compose a 1 page essay on a major challenge for HIV prevention in key populations (PWID or others). In your essay, briefly comment on how your research might address your chosen challenge in today s global health context.