The Organization

As I mentioned in an earlier post I will be interning for Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association or AzHHA for short (pronounced azz-ha!) They are a statewide, nonprofit organization that is"devoted to collectively building better healthcare and health for the patients, people, and communities of Arizona". They form relationships with local hospitals as well as supporting organizations such as Blue Cross Blue Shield and United Blood Services of Arizona to name a few. They are focused on policy advocacy and have a representative who spends extensive time working in the Arizona State Capital to follow healthcare legislation flowing through Arizona. This representative is actually one of my supervisors and works extensively to advocate on behalf of Arizona hospitals and association interests. They send out a daily newsletter about health policy that occurred that day. It is shocking to see how health policy changes every day.

I will be working as part of an intern team with about twelve other individuals. We will be responsible for going out into the community to interview people in various populations about their opinions on healthcare and health. We have a group interview of 6-8 interviews a week. The populations are determined by how likely they are to vote in an upcoming election ranging from: independent/republican women, people over 50, and Latinos/Latinas. We will be going on field trips once a week and than meeting with other group the other days to discuss and analyze our data. The field trips are supposed to be helpful in our journey to learning more about healthcare.

These are my supervisors for the internship, Marcus and Barb. I look forward to working with them.