Public Health Internship in Yunnan Province, China - March/April 2010

  China

• Kunming: 
Kunming
• Rural Areas: 
Rural Areas

Term: Spring 
Durations of Program: 1-2 weeks and 2-4 weeks
Typical Duration of Program: 2-4 weeks
Dates: March 28, 2010 - April 11, 2010

Description: The March/April 2010 internship is a part of our work in Lancang State in Yunnan Province, located in South China.

This internship is an opportunity to gain hands on experience with public health and medical care in the developing world. Our interns will work with and assist the ChinaCal team as we travel into the Puer State in Lancang County, a remote area of southwest Yunnan, performing research, screening for heart disease, treating cardiac ailments, and offering free general medical care to villagers who otherwise lack access to adequate health care. Interns will not only have the opportunity to travel to places where few Westerners have ever been, but they will get a chance to see from the ground level how a public health and primary care system operates in the developing world.

Highlights: Puer has an important location in China's southwestern boundary, neighboring Laos, Vietnam and Burma and sharing a 486 kilometers border with these countries. It lies at the southwest edge of the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau. It has medium sized mountains that comprise 90% of its land area. Weather is mild and humid without strong winds. March is the dry season. Puer has many ethnic minorities, such as Lahu, Hani, Wa and Yi. In addition, Puer is the hometown of the well-known Puer Tea, and Puer people have diversified ways of handling tea, such as bamboo tube tea, cold tea dish, earth-pot tea and baked tea.

We will meet first with local administrative and medical leadership and use standard epidemiologic methodology to select a research sample of the adult population for study. We will then visit two or three villages where we will run daily research clinics to survey this random sample for blood pressure and ultrasound measurements of left ventricular size. Each afternoon and each market day will be devoted to adult and pediatric hypertension and cardiac clinics.

Interns will get a hands-on, first person perspective on health care systems in the developing world. No classroom can give you the experience and insight into real world medicine that our internships provide. You will have the unique chance to immerse yourself in exposure to health care in the developing world.

Qualifications: We require only that our interns have an interest in medicine in the developing world and that they are able to maintain a positive attitude in sometimes less-than-ideal living and working conditions. Candidates with backgrounds in clinical research and medicine will be given preference, but it is not a requirement.

Cost in US$: 1400 (tax deductible)

Experience Required: yes

Preference is given to candidates with Mandarin abilities, but it is not a requirement. Our teams from ChinaCal are American and Chinese and are bilingual for English and Mandarin.

Typical Volunteer: Our previous interns and volunteers have been undergraduate, postgraduate, and medical students from around the world. Backgrounds vary from anthropological, international relations, public health, clinical medicine, and epidemiological.

Age Range: 18-65

This Program is open to Worldwide Participants.

Participants Travel to China Independently

Typically Participants Work in Groups of 4 intern positions are available

Application Process Involves:

• Other
• Phone Interview

Post-Program Services Include:

• Job and Internship Network

China California Heart Watch's Mission Statement: We, the China California Heart Watch, are a non-profit corporation working to further understanding and provide relief to the problems associated with hypertension and heart disease in rural western China. Based in Kunming, Yunnan's provincial seat, we work throughout the rural areas of Yunnan Province. We provide free training to village doctors in the diagnosis and treatment of hypertension and heart disease, we do research in some of the most remote villages in all of Yunnan, and we provide free, expert cardiac care at health clinics we host when on research trips. Hypertension is now one of the leading causes of death in China. Additionally, the prevalence of hypertension in rural areas is now reaching the same level as that in urban centers. China's rapidly developing economy and infrastructure is focused on the urban, industrial areas, often leaving behind a vacuum in rural areas in regards to the public health system. We attempt to mitigate the effects of this vacuum by providing free training and primary care to village doctors and citizens.

Year Founded: 2006