THESIS Program Description
The Tribal Health Experiential Student Internship Seminar program (THESIS) is an 8-week paid internship program funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The program lead by the Southern Plains Tribal Health Board has been designed to be implemented virtually and is part-time for accepted interns.
The program focuses on engaging Native American serving organizations and developing a mentored-research project closely related to Native American health with the assistance of a mentor. This program believes that early exposure to the tribal public health field can promote a passion and trajectory towards future career pathways for underrepresented minorities in hopes of creating a more diverse public health workforce.
Interns will be immersed in example-based learning, mentored internship projects, and career development through asynchronous and synchronous seminars, webinars, and hands-on trainings to fortify and build skills and capacities to not only enter the public health workforce with confidence but to seek continuing education in public health or related fields. Accepted interns that have completed the internship program will have received a stipend of $3,360, have fulfilled a poster presentation, have an updated resume, gained a mentor as well as gained a multitude of skills that will enable them to readily start working in any public health field.
Our Organization
The Southern Plains Tribal Health Board (SPTHB) is a non-profit organization based in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The Health Board was established in 1972 to provide a unified voice on tribal public health needs and policy for the 43 federally recognized tribes located in the states of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. Board membership includes representatives from the 12 service units in the Indian Health Service (IHS) Oklahoma Area.
The SPTHB’s THESIS (Tribal Health Experiential Student Internship Seminar) program aims to foster a pipeline of Native American public health professionals by recruiting Native students nationally for experiential learning opportunities. The internship demonstrates the importance of resilience rooted in Indigenous cultural traditions and how these can lead to even more effective public health professionals.
Through the service of dedicated Native American public health mentors, interns experience a program that enriches their future professionalism and equips them to champion cultural competency throughout their future careers. Mentors use their subject matter expertise to facilitate trainings, peer-to-peer collaborations, group projects, and professional enrichment sessions. Interns increase their public health knowledge as they are guided by the domains of the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health’s (ASPPH) Undergraduate Public Health Learning Outcomes.
Our Partners
Be a mentor for the next generation of public health leaders!
We’re looking for public health professionals to serve as mentors alongside participants in the THESIS public health internship program. With your background and experience in public health, you have the opportunity to lend your expertise through webinars and discussion groups related to various issues in public health.
We believe that early exposure to meaningful experiences in public health settings creates a passion in young people. As more young people move their careers on a trajectory toward public health, we create a more diverse public health workforce.
