Navajo NARCH - Career-Enhancement-Project 1 (Internship)

Dine' College, Tsaile AZ

Investigators

Abstract

The Navajo NARCH team has a long-term partnership with the Navajo Nation Department of Health (NNDOH), having worked with the Health Education, Community Health Representative and Tribal Epidemiology programs for more than a decade. These collaborations are committed to cultivating and sustaining a productive strategy to foster Navajo Nation based internships that support the growing and multi skilled workforce of Diné public health professionals. Supporting the Center’s goal to improve the health of the Navajo people through education, research, and expansion of institutional infrastructure, this Career Enhancement Project (CEP-1) will build a Public Health Internship Hub to support the practical education and experiential learning of the next generation of the Navajo public health workforce on Navajo Nation. CEP-1 will bridge Navajo high school students, Diné College undergraduate students, and recent graduates of Diné College and NAU’s Bachelor’s and Master’s of Public Health (BSPH and MPH, respectively) with paid internships at NNDOH, where they will gain hands-on experience, skills, and operational knowledge of NNDOH and various programs. The expected outcome is an increase in Navajo public health professionals working for NNDOH and other health/public health agencies on Navajo Nation. This component will be led by Diné College MPIs Bauer and Dickerson with support from NAU. In Years 01-05, the CEP-1 aims to: 1) Establish a Public Health Internship Hub (PHIH) with NNDOH, managed by a NARCH-supported Internship Coordinator (NDOH requested this position be managed within Diné College) to work with NARCH leadership in the implementation of Aims 2 and 3, the planning and coordination of the PHIH; 2) Enhance NNDOH Program Managers’ capacity to mentor interns by creating mentorship plans that integrate the Navajo traditional concept of kinship and support the application of academic skills of interns at the high school, bachelor’s and master’s levels; 3) Pilot a central Public Health Internship Hub (PHIH) to provide interns with the institutional knowledge about NNDOH operations, hands-on experience with public health programs, and various skills, to prepare the interns to be competitive NNDOH applicants.