YOUR ASSOCIATION
NEHA NEWS
Newly Revised National Environmental Health Internship Program Provides More Opportunities to Prepare Future Environmental Health Workforce By Adrienne Gothard (agothard@neha.org) and Jesse C. Bliss (jbliss@neha.org) The environmental public health workforce is critical to ensure the health and safety of our nation. Local health departments employ approximately 14,500 full-time environmental public health work- ers across the nation, which is the second largest segment of the public health workforce after nursing and excluding administra- tive support. Environmental public health professionals are critical to public health as they strive daily to deliver essential services to ensure the safety of the water we drink, the food we eat, the air we breathe, and the neighborhoods we work and play in, to name a few. Maintaining a pipeline of empowered, educated, and prepared individuals for this workforce is vital to the provision of essential services and protects our communities from the health risks asso- ciated with environmental hazards, threats, and diseases (National Association of County and City Health Ocials, 2020). The National Environmental Public Health Internship Program (NEPHIP) is the National Environmental Health Association’s (NEHA) premier development program for the environmental pub- lic health workforce. The program oers 400-hr paid internship opportunities for undergraduate and graduate environmental health students with qualified state, tribal, local, and territorial (STLT) environmental public health agencies. Through the program, interns can meet internship or practicum degree requirements, earn credit hours for required coursework, bolster their academic scholarship, and strengthen their work experience. Host health departments are provided dedicated intern support to start, pilot, and/or reinvigorate projects or programs and oer fresh and diverse perspectives. This workforce initiative supports our goals to develop quali- fied applicant pipelines to help meet current and future workforce needs for environmental health professionals across the nation. The program also encourages students to consider careers in gov- ernmental environmental public health following graduation. According to a 2019 study, approximately one quarter of the envi- ronmental health professionals surveyed plan to retire within the next 5 years (Gerding et al., 2019). This finding shows the need to prepare environmental health students with real-world skills and experiences to help fill this gap. NEHA originally developed the NEPHIP internship in 2015, with funding support from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). To date, the program has supported more than 195 internships in 110 health departments across 38 states and territories. In 2022, we significantly expanded and revised the program to include new fall and spring cohorts, which now pro- vide year-round student internship opportunities. The enhanced program now supports more environmental health students than
ever, with up to 50 internship placements available per year. We recognize the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion within the environmental health workforce. These principles guide our marketing considerations and the intern selection criteria for the program, which work to promote equity, diversity, and broad geo- graphic representation among our cohorts. The summer 2022 session supported 41 internships, nearly dou- ble the size of any previous cohort. Although internships for this session remained primarily virtual due to the ongoing pandemic, interns and host health departments made the most of their experi- ences and successfully completed projects in a variety of areas such as mosquito surveillance, food safety, lead exposure prevention, and recreational and drinking water safety. In addition to exploring the many environmental health pro- grammatic areas, interns were encouraged to explore how climate change, health equity, and environmental justice concerns were associated with the environmental health hazard or issue being addressed by their projects. For example, one summer 2022 proj- ect sought to understand and identify potential food safety bur- dens or disparities experienced across dierent neighborhoods by comparing food safety violations and enteric disease cases with socioeconomic variables like race and education using ArcGIS. In reflecting on the experience, the intern stated, “I feel like I have learned a lot and I’m really excited that the work I completed [dur- ing the internship] can be used even after I’m long gone.” A National Environmental Public Health Internship Program (NEPHIP) intern placed traps for mosquito surveillance. Although the summer 2022 NEPHIP internship was virtual, the internship host mentor was able to send traps to the intern for mosquito surveillance in the intern’s town of residence for the internship. Photo courtesy of the NEPHIP intern.
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Volume 85 • Number 7
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