Field Placement: County of Orange Health Care Agency -- Maternal, Child, and Adolescent Health Program
Location: Santa Ana, CA
Preceptor: Pauline Stauder, MS, Program Supervisor
Student Name: Chi Anh Vu
Year: 2003

My internship was in the area of family planning at the County of Orange Maternal, Child, and Adolescents Health (MCAH) program. I worked under the supervision of Pauline Stauder, MCAH’s program supervisor. The MCAH family planning health education unit’s goal is to increase the community’s knowledge about family planning and sexually transmitted disease (STD) prevention through education. The unit works in conjunction with the clinical health services side to promote use of birth control and STD screenings to decrease rates of unintended pregnancies and STDs among high risk population in the county. The populations served include teens, women in domestic violence shelters, migrant and immigrant workers, and inmates in county jails. The intervention involves health educators going out to the community to conduct presentations about use of birth control, STD prevention, and to promote the free reproductive health services available at the county clinics. In addition, the unit also develops health education materials to be distributed to the public at the presentations and health fairs in the community.

My duties as an intern was to develop a curriculum on women’s family planning, a curriculum on child nutrition, a brochure on women’s health, and a power point presentation for a community advisory board meeting. I also assisted the health education staff at health fairs, attended presentations to observe and to help present, and did outreach to local agencies. In addition, I also translated two brochures into Vietnamese and assisted in editing health education materials developed by staff in the MCAH program.

My work at the internship allowed me to gain skills in developing health education curricula and materials. The curricula will be used as training manuals and information source for health education staff in conducting the presentations. It was interesting to do the research on birth control methods and STDs in order to put the curriculum together. I learned a lot about the area of reproductive health. I attended about six presentations and assisted by giving two partial overview presentations. I also attended three health fairs, in which I helped with set up and display of health education materials and interacted with participants. These experiences allowed me to see and understand the population served by the program. I was also able to learn about the work that goes into a health education program, including the process of developing the health education materials, the collaboration efforts with other agencies in the community, and the direct interaction in health education between staff and the participants.

My preceptor was very receptive and flexible, which made for a very pleasant working and learning environment. Likewise, my co-workers were very nice and always open to me tagging along in the field so I can observe their work in the community. Overall, the internship gave me a very good introduction to the field of health education.

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