Planned Parenthood

As a part of my internship through UMD Health Services, I was given the opportunity to complete some of my hours at Planned Parenthood since sexual health is my passion. Through Planned Parenthood my main projects were the Teen Resource Center, Educating, and The Teen Council. Interning through Planned Parenthood has taught me about so many great local resources for the underprivileged and at risk community and has furthered my knowledge extensively.

Teen Resource Center
The Teen Resource (TRC) Center of Duluth is a place where Teens (or anyone looking for resources) can go and get educational material on safer sex practices. It is also the home of the education department of Duluth's Planned Parenthood. Through the TRC, we hold events that try to encourage teens to come in and make use of the area. Some of the events that I helped create were Environmental Toxins night, Movie nights, Get Yourself Tested night, and National Teen Pregnancy Month events. I staffed the Teen Resource Center every Wednesday from 2:00-6:00 which is when the TRC was "open". This was a time that anyone could come in and get resources or help with sexual health topics. This was also a time when Teen Council members could come and get extra help with educational materials, or just come in to hang out.

Educational Components
Another part of my interning at Planned Parenthood was the educational component. I was given the opportunity to teach for the TRC multiple times throughout the semester. I taught a week long course to Middle Schoolers on Sexuality and Body Image, I created educational classes for young girls who are in the Girl Power program here in Duluth, I created a class for students going to receive their CNA license in Esko, and taught throughout local high schools on different safer sex practices such as birth control, STI's, abstinence, etc... Getting to teach in all of these different settings was great for me, as before this I had only ever taught at a college aged level. I now feel so much more confident being able to walk into any aged classroom and teaching them what the need to know at the appropriate levels.

Teen Council
The last main part of my interning at Planned Parenthood was working with the Teen Council. The Teen Council is a group of 10 high schoolers' who come together and do advocacy and educational components for Planned Parenthood. They go through extensive training, go to workshops and retreats, help us teach in the local schools and organizations, and do a lot of activities for the TRC. I got to help out with a lot of the Teen Council meetings on Monday nights. In addition to the meetings, I helped out with Youth Lobby Day in the Twin Cities, took students to a grant workshop in Virginia, MN, and helped out with Take Back the Night. Getting to know the teens was an amazing experience for me, and has furthered my thinking that I want to work with teens in the future.

Final Hours

Responsibility 1: 1 Hour Total
Responsibility 2: 77.5 Hours Total
Responsibility 3: 106 Hours Total
Responsibility 4: 6 Hours Total
Responsibility 5: 2 Hours Total
Responsibility 6: 52.5 Hours Total
Responsibility 7: 18.5 Hours Total
Other: 133 Hours Total

Total: 396.5 Hours

Off The Record: I "officially" finished my internship about 2 months earlier than expected, so I discontinued making time sheets due to time. Without time sheets I completed about 213 more hours total for a grand total of interning hours of: 693.5 hours total this year.

Overall Experience at UMD Health Services

Mission Statement

To provide students the opportunity to develop healthy personal lifestyles, help ensure their retention at UMD, and contribute to the overall excellence of their total educational experience. We will accomplish this mission by providing quality health care, counseling, and education that focuses on their physical, emotional, social, and intellectual well being, and to be actively involved with all health issues that affect the University and community.

Biggest Challenge For Me:
One of the biggest challenges for me throughout this internship has been learning how to cope with the changing hours each week. One week I'd only intern for 9 hours and the next I would intern close to 40 or 50 hours. This was a challenge for me because it was hard to plan my schedule for other activities that I was involved in. I could have prepared for this better by knowing ahead of time that this would happen and better schedule my days.


If I Could Change One Thing:
If i could change one thing about interning at UMD Health Services it would be to allow myself to let others help me. I have a huge tendency to want to do everything myself; because of this, there were a lot of times over the past year that I was in way over my head with interning hours and responsibilities but I didn't ever want to ask for help. I thought that with my labels as assistant advisor for the Peer Health Educators and the Student Health Advisory Committee, it was my duty to get a lot of things done, and I should have asked for help with these things.


How This Internship Impacted My Career:
This internship has allowed me to keep my continued beliefs that I am in the correct field. The part of my internship that was spent at Planned Parenthood was definitely an amazing fit for me, as sexual health is m passion. Also, having more of a leadership role in the Peer Health Educators gave me the confidence that I needed to go out and educate in a much larger manner. I know that I still want to go into sexual health education, with possibly some background in social work.

Serves as a Health Education Resource Person

Artifacts and Purposes

Competency A: Use health-related information resources.
Sub-competency 4: Access health information resources.

I tabled for the UMD Health Services Open House. During this, I handed out information for both the Student Health Advisory Committee and the Peer Health Education tables, giving information and resources on what students had questions about, both in general about Health Services or anything involving human sexuality.

I tabled for the Student Health Advisory Committee. We had information on the H1N1 virus, as well as the Breathefree@ UMD campaign. I helped answer many questions that students had reguarding these two activities. We handed out free one time use thermometeres, masks and hand sanetizers.

I looked up videos on HIV/AIDS from the Roe Foundation, and watched them to see if any of them would pertain to the Peer Health Educators and be useful in future training sessions as an educational source.

I attended professional presentations such as the "J-Spot" by Jay Friedman. I was there representing the Peer Health Educators to keep our information accurate and up to date.

Competency C: Select resource materials for dissemination.
Sub-Competency 1: Evaluate applicability of resource materials for a given audience.

Created an educational table in the entrance of Health Services that will covered a new topic every two weeks revolving health education.

Sub-Competency 2: Assemble educational material of value to the health of individuals and community groups.

I prepared for and tabled for the Spring Activities Fair. I had to choose carefully what educational materials to have at our table for prospective members of the Student Health Advisory Committee and the Peer Health Educators to look at.

I tabled for National Eating Disorders Awareness week. I chose and prepared what information and activities we would like to have available for education and outreach, and promoted the week long events that were taking place.

I tabled for the Peer Health Educators and had Spring Break Safety tips. Here we handed out condoms, tips, and condom pals for a place to hold condoms other than ones wallet for safer keeping.

Tabled for Breathefree@UMD week. During this educational week, members of the Student Health Advisory Committee, Student Association, and The American Lung Association worked together to promote the new enforcement strategies that the UMD Breathefree Task Force came up with during a semester long project. We created and played games, had prize giveaways, educational materials, and supporter training sign ups.

Sub-Competency 3: Assemble educational material of value to the health of individuals and community groups.

I worked on putting together a hand out on sexual health resources that are available on and off campus in the Duluth area to hand out to UMD students.

Responsibility 7

Communicate and Advocate for Health and Health Education

Artifacts and Purposes

Competency A: Analyze and respond to current and future needs in health education
Sub-Competency 1: Analyze factors (e.g., social, cultural, demographic, political) that influence decision-makers.

Participated in the Great American Smokeout which is a national day dedicated to try to encourage individuals to quit smoking. I sat at resource tables, went
around campus advertising that it was going on, Handed out Subs for Cigarettes,
conducted interviews with the Statesman, and led the volunteer station.

Because I was so active in the breathefree initiative through the Student Health Advisory Committee, I was asked to become a member of the UMD Smoking Ban Task Force which was led by the Vice-Chancellor of Academic Affairs. This group met weekly to discuss possibly changing the policy, and to discuss enforcement strategies.


Competency D: Influence health policy to promote health
Sub-Competency 1: Identify the significance and implications of health care providers’ message to consumers.

The Student Association on campus is an organization that listens to waht the student's of UMD want to see. One of the things that students wanted to see was a change to the current UMD smoking policy. The Student Association held a forum in which I attended and participated to get a feel for the overall student, staff and faculties feelings for the policy.

On Wednesday, March 24th I traveled to the Minnesota Capital with the Teen Council members from Planned Parenthood for Youth Lobby Day. This youth lobby day was focused around Responsible Sex Education. During this day, we went through advocacy training, had a rally in the Capital, and then got to actually speak with our district house representatives and senate representatives. This was a great experience for me, and something that I hope to continue to do.

Responsibility 5

Administer Health Education Strategies, Interventions, and Programs

Artifacts and Purposes

Competency A: Exercise organizational leadership
Sub-competency 1: Conduct Strategic Planning

As part of planning the UMD Annual Student Health Fair, I created a letter to send out with the parking passes to certain organizations. Through this I had to look up information regarding each organization and exercise organization in doing so.

Sub-competency 2: Analyze the organization's culture in relationship to program goal's.
Sub-competency 3: Promote cooperation and feedback among personnel related to the program.

I helped create a list of talking points and supporting discussions about why the smoking ban at UMD came into play and why it should be kept throughout the midst of negativity towards it. The talking points had statistics, dates, and recommendations that the Student Health Advisory Committee had come up with throughout the years. This was created to support Student Associations Smoking Policy Forum that was held.

Competency C: Manage human resources
Sub-competency 1: Develop Volunteer Opportunities

Sent out letters to student groups on campus asking for their time, talents and help with different projects throughout the year. Did this by talking to presidents of organizations, writing letters, and sending e-mails.

Responsibility 4

Conduct Evaluation and Research Related to Health Education

Artifacts and Purposes

Competency C:Carry out evaluation and research plans
Sub-Competency 1:Develop valid and reliable evaluation instruments.

I developed a new evaluation for the Peer Health Educators presentations that will hopefully effectively determine how successful the parts of our presentation are in displaying our sexual health topics.


I developed the evaluations that will be used for both the students and the exhibitors at the 2009 Annual Student Health Fair. These evaluations will be used to see what people liked and did not like from the Health Fair. This will give next year's intern something to go off of when planning.

Competency E: Interpret results from evaluation and research
Sub-competency 1: Analyze evaluation data

To make it easier for the intern next year to see the results of the evaluations, I went through them and compiled all of the answers. This gave me an opportunity to analyze the materials and reflect on what i would have done differently if I had the chance to do it again.

A month after the Student Health Fair, I emailed participants a survey monkey evaluation asking them what they had learned and used since the health fair took place.