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306803
Educating and Empowering Youth under the National Partnership for Action to End Health Disparities: Lessons Learned and Opportunities for Improvement
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
Onyemaechi Nweke, DrPH, MPH
,
Office of Minority Health/Office of the Secretary, Rockville, MD
Kien Lee, PhD
,
Community Science, Inc., Gaithersburg, MD
Several objectives of the National Partnership for Action to End Health Disparities (NPA) aim to educate youth about health disparities, increase their capacity to participate in efforts to reduce health disparities, improve their living conditions, and increase the diversity of the health care workforce to mention a few. To attain these objectives, the NPA created the “youth NPA” (yNPA) initiative. In 2013, the HHS Office of Minority Health implemented a summer practicum program to educate and empower graduate public health students – our nation’s emerging public health leaders- to engage in regional activities to end health disparities. The internship program recruited and placed graduate public health students in Regional Health Equity Councils (RHECs), which are regional NPA partners. Overall, interns participated in a wide variety of data collection and analyses activities, and developed policy products such as a health equity report card and regional blueprints for action. Participants in the 2013 summer program were evaluated to assess the impact of the internships on their knowledge, technical skills, career goals and direction with respect to health disparities, and experiences related to health disparities. The evaluation showed positive changes in assessed domains for the interns and also highlighted the need for more practicum opportunities to strengthen and broaden leadership on health disparities. The purpose of this presentation is to provide an overview of the program, discuss the methods used to evaluate the program, discuss the results, share challenges, and highlight opportunities to expand the NPA’s efforts to implement the NPA’s youth-focused objectives.
Learning Areas:
Planning of health education strategies, interventions, and programs
Learning Objectives:
List the youth and leadership objectives of the National Partnership for Action to End Health Disparities (NPA) and suggested models for implementation.
Describe one model implemented to engage youth in health disparities work.
Evaluate components of the internship program that worked well, and those that require strengthening.
Keyword(s): Workforce Development, Health Disparities/Inequities
Presenting author's disclosure statement:Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I designed and led the evaluation of the yNPA internship program.
Any relevant financial relationships? No
I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines,
and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed
in my presentation.
