Projects Portfolio

While completing my degree I was given many opportunities to work on many hypothetical projects, service learning projects, internships, and a practicum within the world of public and community health and peer health education.

Service Learning Project: Missoula City-County Health Department’s Prevention Division

Through collaboration with various community entities at the Missoula City-County Health Department and in Missoula County, I helped set the developmental framework for a teen council on substance use. I was able to use and strengthen knowledge surrounding program planning, surveying, peer health education, interviewing, harm reduction, public and community health standards, professional research, health and analytical writing, etc.

Internship: Missoula City-County Health Department’s Eat Smart Program

During my internship with the Missoula City-County Health Department’s Eat Smart program my responsibilities included creating health messages for around the local Women Infants and Children (WIC) office, conducting various research on health and wellness, childhood nutrition, and body mass index (BMI) measurements and readings at local schools. I was also responsible for helping conduct evaluations of local school nutrition and health promotion programs, health advertisement, etc. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit Montana I continued my internship virtually and created a presentation on the Health at Every Size (HAES) movement to be used by various individuals and programs around Missoula.

Peer Health Practicum: The University of Montana’s Curry Health Center

I was able to complete my peer health practicum with the Curry Health Center (CHC) on the University of Montana campus. During my time with CHC I helped create educational health materials and videos to be shared with other college students, organizations and classes surrounding nutrition, stress, relaxation, community, mental health, sexuality, etc. I also had the opportunity to develop and edit a Moodle course and material for an upcoming course on wellness.

Service Learning: Health Needs Assessment – Missoula, Mt. Refugee Population

During one of my program planning courses I was tasked with planning a program and conducting a needs assessment for a specific population in Missoula, MT. The group that I was a part of chose to focus on the refugee population. This course was happening when the COVID-19 pandemic hit Missoula and was unfortunately completed almost entirely online. The refugee population is one that is already hard to get in contact with due to privacy requirements, and having to avoid in-person contact definitely made it harder and unique. Our group conducted interviews with different community organizations and refugees. Due to the fact that most of our needs assessment had to be conducted virtually I spent a lot of time conducting research and trying to fill in the gaps.