Field Placement: California Family Health Council, Inc. -- Planning and Policy Division
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Preceptor: Jennifer Sigafoos
Student Name: Amanda Babcock
Year: 2002

This summer, I worked in the Planning and Policy Division of California Family Health Council, Inc. under the supervision of Jennifer Sigafoos Moore, the Senior Policy Analyst. I obtained this position through the Title X Internship program, which places interns in reproductive health agencies in several western states.

I spent the majority of time this summer on three projects: researching and writing policy alerts; researching, writing, and laying out the bimonthly Policy Report; and organizing a public policy forum on new methods of birth control. At the beginning of the summer, Jennifer gave me a list of bills to track in the state and federal legislatures. I was also responsible for tracking the process of several judicial nominees to the federal bench. Whenever there was any action on either the bills or the nominees, I would write a policy alert, which was sent to it to reproductive health agencies throughout the state. These alerts were usually one page in length and requested an action step such as contacting legislators.

The Policy Report was a new project that I started in order to provide a more detailed description of upcoming legislation and judicial nominees. Since the policy alerts had to be brief, I had to limit the amount of background information I included about a topic. For the Policy Report, I would take many of the topics in the Policy Alerts and provide more background information about them. I learned how to use Quark in order to layout each Policy Report.

Lastly, I organized a public policy forum on new methods of contraception. Specifically, I identified and contacted speakers and tracked the reservations for the forum.

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