While a health services management student at the Fairbanks School of Public Health, Melanie Esquivel, BSHSM’23, secured an internship with Indiana Immunization Coalition. She shares how her internship experience helped her land a full-time role as data team supervisor upon graduation.
Tell us about your experience at Internship Interview Day.
My experience at Internship Interview Day was very insightful and gave me a feel for what to expect when I am job searching after college. I was able to grow my interview skills and also learn how real life interview are conducted. I really enjoyed the interviews with each organization and was then able to learn what I wanted to do in my career.
How did your internship prepare you for your full-time role?
My internship prepared me for my full time role by showing me all of the ground work that it takes to take on a full-time role with IIC. I was able to learn about the vaccines we administer and how important they are in public health. I learned about everyone’s role and how collaborative of an environment it is at IIC. I also learned how to communicate with the public in the state of Indiana on not just how to convey the importance of vaccines to our diverse patient population, but also how to have meaningful conversations with them on vaccine education and how to help them overcome different social determinants of health.
What is an average day for you like in your current role?
An average day in my current role is that I create different manuals, charts and resources for vaccine language translations. These resources and training guides are to help school nurses and other points of contact on entering historical vaccine information into the Children and Hoosiers Immunization Registry Program (C.H.I.R.P). Every Monday we have office hours at our main office and I help lead our registration, and I also do this while at our mobile vaccine clinics. Some days I may be traveling for clinics other days I may be in office working on the data project.
What is a lesson learned at FSPH that you applied to your internship and current position?
I learned many lessons while at FSPH and a class that helped me a lot was the professionalism course as well as my capstone. These two courses helped me navigate on how to communicate with other professionals and how to maintain professionalism in the workplace. I also learned a lot in Public Health 101, which helped me understand many different diseases and the effects that we now see from them in present day, and that knowledge helped me while I was interning to my current role now.
What advice would you give to current FSPH students seeking internships?
My biggest piece of advice would be to network with as many people as possible in public health, go out to the career outings that are offered by FSPH, and lastly to always be open to different healthcare experiences. I think it is important for students to get out of their comfort zone, and to not be stuck on just one specific role, internships are the opportunity for them to grow and figure out what they want to pursue in their future roles.
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