Field Placement: Family Health International
Location: Nepal
Preceptor: Satish Raj Pandey & Jacqueline McPherson
Student Name: Alani Price
Year: 2008

I am fortunate to have received the opportunity to perform my required internship/field studies experience at Family Health International’s Nepal Country Office. I brought to this internship a familiarity and interest in Nepali culture and language from previous trips here for studies and research. My ten-week internship began in June 2008. My scope of work at FHI allowed me to work on a broad range of activities related to public health work on HIV and AIDS in Nepal, including contributing to various types of project documentation, planning and attending meetings and events, and performing a pilot capacity analysis and needs assessment.

I performed extensive edits on the Standard Operating Procedures for the Implementation of Positive Prevention Programs, which are guidelines for FHI implementing agencies (IAs) to set up and run projects with and for people living with HIV/AIDS. With the team leader of Surveillance, Research, and Monitoring I attended a field visit to monitor several Integrated Bio-Behavioral Survey sites where data collection was taking place with female sex workers, one of the most at-risk populations in Nepal. From these observations I suggested edits and additions to the existing monitoring checklist. For the Third National AIDS Conference in July, I supported the Organizing Committee with tasks from spreadsheet management to registration tables. My final activity at FHI was to complete a pilot capacity analysis and needs assessment with an implementing agency. I interviewed different levels of staff from an IA working with drug users as a target population, and then utilized the qualitative data gathered to identify capacity building needs; I then documented these needs in report format.

My time at FHI Nepal has been an invaluable learning experience on many levels: I have gained an understanding of how an INGO in a developing country manages a large-scale public health project, as well as vastly increasing my knowledge about HIV and AIDS from testing to stigma to managing opportunistic infections. I return to UCLA with a concrete idea of public health in the “real world,” and what I may contribute to this field in the future. 

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