Field Placement: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- Physical Activity and Health Branch (PAHB)
Location: Atlanta, Georgia
Preceptors: Gregory Heath, DSci, and John Librett, PhD
Student Name: Candace Taylor
Year: 2002

My internship was with the Physical Activity and Health Branch (PAHB) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia. It was organized through the Accredited Schools of Public Health and was twelve weeks in duration. I began my internship on June 24th, and finished on September 13th. The title of my project was a Culturally Competent Approach to Physical Activity Programs and although I focused on programs with black priority populations, in some cases, my results could be generalized to other diverse populations.

I was given two advisors for the summer, Gregory Heath, DSci, and John Librett, PhD. In general my advisors served as instructors of the potential direction my project could take, resources and editors of my work.

Initially I performed literature searches and reviews to help me identify the prevalence of cardiovascular disease, and select chronic diseases associated with physical activity among blacks. However, I identified the focus area of my project as being Cultural Competence by interacting with employees of the CDC who were housed in other branches, such as the director of the REACH 2010 project, and by attending the Leadership Summit on Eliminating Racial and Ethnic Disparities, 2002, and by researching information about Cultural Competence on the internet.

To complete my project I obtained Census data to attain demographic information about Black and Native American populations. I reviewed the State-based Physical Activity Program Directory to identify state physical activity programs with African Americans specified as the priority population and Native Americans specified as the priority population. From these two reviews I identified 28 priority states for my study and two states with which to perform a pilot study. The states chosen for the pilot study were chosen based on the fact that they were identified in the Directory as having Native American priority populations, and not in reference to the states with the largest American Indian/Alaskan Native population, according to the Census 2000.

To develop a questionnaire to assess the Cultural Competence of the state physical activity programs I contacted people within the CDC who were identified as either specializing in Cultural Competence or having worked with the topic. I referenced books as well as the internet to identify Culturally Competent evaluative material and adapted an instrument created by HRSA (Health Resources and Service Administration) to develop a questionnaire to interview state physical activity liaisons.

At the conclusion of the summer I contacted 29/50 of the United States and of these states two were the pilot states and 23/29 of the states interviewed were from my priority list (23/28 priority states). Of the 29 states contacted I performed phone interviews with 22/29 states, received email responses to my questionnaire from 4/29 states and received FAX responses from 3/29 states. At the end of my internship I gave a presentation to the Physical Activity and Health Branch on my project and the study's results, and provided a list of recommendations for the branch. I also provided my advisors with a portfolio of my project, which included a general outline of my project (process and results), brainstorming products (logic models), demographic information, graphs, a report, a copy of my presentation and information and references to add to the website about Cultural Competence.

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