Field Placement: Childrens' Hospital and Regional Medical Center -- Center for Children with Special Needs
Location: Seattle, Washington
Preceptor: Sherrin Churchill
Student Name: Katherine Mortland
Year: 2002

The internship that I worked on this summer was at Childrens' Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle, Washington and funded through the Maternal and Child Health Bureau. I worked at a center within the hospital called the Center for Children with Special Needs, which is a research and policy development center focused on children with health problems. The Center maintains an annual contract with the Washington State Health Department in which staff at the Center conduct data analysis then in turn present these findings to professionals at the state level which ultimately influences program development and health status monitoring.

The data that I worked with was the infant death file, which consisted of all the birth and death certificates for all those infants born and passed away before the age of one year in the entire state of Washington for the years of 1993-1997. Before I began to look at the data, I conducted an extensive literature review which summarized the problems of infant mortality and infant chronic disease. I concentrated on research done in the area of health disparities, which showed differential mortality rates and rates of chronic disease prevalence between different race groups. This information served as the basis for the background/significance section of my final report to the Washington State Health Department.

Looking at the data, I divided infant mortality into two categories: those dying from non-chronic causes such as infectious disease or injuries/accidents, vs. those dying from chronic conditions such as cardiovascular problems or chronic respiratory disease. I described the demographics of these two groups and compared them to each other in terms of variables such as race, age at death, and rural/urban location for example. I outlined these differences while also explaining the problems inherent in analyzing administrative data such as from birth and death certificates.

Next I ran some basic statistical analyses on the data, specifically t tests, chi squared tests, and logistic and multiple regressions. I found significant differences between the two groups, chronic and non chronic, in terms of racial/ethnic differences, age of mother, zipcode, etc and outlined these differences in the results section of my paper. I compiled a final report of my findings in a report, then presented this report in Power Point format to several Washington State health professionals. My report was an exploratory study that my preceptor will continue to work on, detailing health disparities in the state of Washington in the arena of childhood chronic disease.

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