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The UCSD Center for Community Health (CCH) hands-on experiential  internship provides learning  opportunities aimed to support the development of future health care leaders through direct involvement with our multidisciplinary team of university administrators, staff, physicians, researchers, educators, community members, and youth. We offer numerous opportunities that support the goal of the CCH to improve and promote wellness in communities where people live, work, learn, play, and worship through policy, environment, and systems.

  • Nicole Villa was a part of the Live Well @ Work team during her CCH internship. One of her main duties was to create the monthly Live Well @ Work newsletter that was sent to the work sites. She also helped out with the healthy vending initiative that was getting started by doing some initial research into how the Center could implement it in the work sites. In addition, Nicole started the bulletin board that was put in the break room and had some healthy workplace tips that were updated each month. Currently, Nicole is working as a project manager at the South Bay Latino Research Center. There, she manage the day-to-day operations of two randomized controlled trials (RCTs) at the center -- one is aimed at decreasing sitting time among Latinas and the other is looking at the effects of avocado consumption. Nicole’s internship at the UCSD Center for Community Health was her first internship in the field of public health, and she feels that it really helped lay the foundation for her future endeavors. She appreciated the opportunity to see some of the things from her grad school classes being put into practice.
  • Madeleine LaVack worked as a Community Health Specialist Intern for the Live Well Community Market Program. In her time at the Center for Community Health, Madeleine aided the team in recruiting 3 new markets, writing blog post for the website, and corresponding with market managers/local growers. She also worked several survey days at a few of our markets, aiming to gauge the interests of the market’s customer base. She also worked hard to keep the garden to market connection alive and well between Linda Vista Community Garden and La Tiendita Linda Vista. She is immensely proud of her work here and is grateful to have been a part of such a positive work environment for the Summer of 2016. Madeleine grew up in San Luis Obispo, CA. With a passion for health and wellness, Madeleine came to San Diego for college at UCSD. She earned her Bachelor’s of Science in Public Health in 2016. Now that she has graduated, she is working at the University of California, San Diego as a Research Associate for the Psychology Department. Her lab is responsible for the coordination and administration of WestEd’s California Healthy Kids Survey to all students in 7th-12th grade in San Dieguito School District. Madeleine also works at a private medical practice with a sports medicine emphasis as a Medical Assistant. She hopes to become a Family Nurse Practitioner.
  • Lindsay Chase worked with the Live Well @ Work team during her time at CCH. She was able to learn about work site wellness and the impact it can make not on only employee health and satisfaction but also on productivity and budget. For the six months she interned, she helped draft some of the CCH newsletters and worked with work site partners on facilitating employee health in the workplace. For one partner, Viejas Casino, she created a fairly extensive "Weight Loss Warriors" Power Point for their employees. Working with another partner, Goodwill Industries, Lindsay assisted their employees in building their health fair exercise activities and acted as a Center representative at their two employee health fairs. She also helped find new potential companies to work with according to new regulations on zip code and quantity of low-income employees. Other projects included formulating county statistics into spreadsheets to show the need for health and wellness in the communities, and updating the office wellness bulletin board every month with self-created pictographs and new nutrition research and studies. After her time at CCH, Lindsay worked as a nutrition assistant and as a diet technician at Sharp Hospital Chula Vista for a little over a year. She recently started her dietetic internship to become a registered dietitian.
  • Emily Greenstadt worked with Kelley Axelson and Aaron Kunst on the Live Well @ Work team. While at CCH, Emily worked on generating content for the monthly newsletter, developing tools for employers, designing the monthly Wellness Board, assisting with Live Well @ Work program meetings, and wrote a blog post about the Love Your Heart event for the Center's website. Currently, she is finishing her second and final year at the Graduate School of Public Health at SDSU. For her thesis topic, she conducted a qualitative research study on sexual health and is also working with a professor to evaluate a sexual health curriculum for 10th graders that will be implemented across high schools in California. She is looking forward to graduating in May. She really enjoyed working with the team at the Center for Community Health--everyone was very passionate, hard-working, and friendly, and she learned a great deal about how to execute employee wellness measures, and how to work with a great team of people!
  • Amina Larbah is a summer research intern at the UCSD Center for Community Health. She was born and raised in Orange County but her family originates from Libya and Morocco. Amina is currently in her second year of completing her medical education at the UC Riverside School of Medicine. She has long held a strong interest in helping underserved communities and recently completed her Master’s of Science in Global Medicine at the USC Keck School of Medicine. In working to fulfill the mission of her medical school to “improve the health of the medically underserved in the region”, Amina has become heavily involved with organizations such as the San Bernardino Free Clinic, Global Health Interest Group, and Pediatrics Interest Group. She currently serves as the clinic’s Patient Education Coordinator, training and delegating a team of volunteers to provide preventive services and information to the clinic’s underserved and immigrant patient population. As the Pediatric Interest Group’s Co-President, Amina is invested in establishing a pediatric resource center and program at another local clinic in the Inland Empire, Riverside Free Clinic, with the hopes of improving health, increasing literacy and academic success among youth in her new community. This summer she hopes to bring her skills, experiences, and background to make a positive impact in the San Diego community along with the Center for Community Health team. She will be working with the Center's Refugee Health Unit on a study assessing the mental health of Somali refugee mothers and their children.
  • Joshua Ramirez was a Youth Advisory Council (YAC) intern at the UC San Diego Center for Community Health while attending San Diego State University. While working with the YAC, Josh was responsible for implementing the Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) model with the youth as an approach to help develop their research skills. Additionally, Josh played a role in preparing the YAC to attend their first Childhood Obesity Conference to have their voices heard and also made a presence in ENACT Day 2018 in Sacramento where the youth learned to advocate and lobby to their respective spokespersons for proposed senate and assembly bills. Currently, Josh is prepping for his dietetic internship at The Ohio State University where he will continue to practice his public speaking, time-management, and curriculum writing skills which he has developed during his internship at the Center. He really enjoyed working at the Center and was especially grateful for the youth that brought so much positive energy and motivation.
  • Princess Labrador is an Aaron Price Fellow and high school intern at the UCSD Center of Community Health under the mentor-ship of Youth Advisory Council (YAC) Program Coordinator Lizzy Cooper. With an aspiring passion for health and community welfare as president of the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital club at Point Loma High School and member of the American Red Cross, she decided to take on this opportunity to learn more about the Public Health sector and to aid the promotion of active and healthy living in the many communities of San Diego. Beginning February 2018, she had first gained new insight on the Socio-Ecological Model of Health and its implementation through a presentation on her health issue of choice, obesity, and how the issue is impacted based on the five levels of the model. From there, she has been continuously working with the inspiring YAC to effectively get their efforts further known in the community, grow an interactive connection with their Twitter audience, coming up with their new logo design, and reviewing the effectiveness of the layout of their webpage. Throughout her time working at the UCSD CCH, her knowledge on the Public Health sector has expanded immensely and has allowed her to gain experience in this particular field through the amazing people she has met, and acquire and improve new and old skills to prepare her for future careers. She is looking forward to continuing to learn more about the field and working even closely with the YAC in their upcoming endeavors.
  • Nicole Trottier interned with the Lactation Supportive Environments program. She is pursuing a Masters of Public Health with a focus in Health Promotion. Nicole has really enjoyed her time as an intern and appreciates that her preceptor allowed her to tackle real projects that make a difference and further the promotion, support, and protection of breastfeeding. During her time as an intern, Nicole has worked on provider highlights, some of the blog posts found on the website, as well as compiling content for Facebook posts. Her work has ranged from putting together training materials, all the way to collecting, cleaning, and helping to analyze data from the Breastfeeding Roundtable Partner Survey. This data is crucial in helping to connect partners for the betterment of breastfeeding around San Diego County. Additionally, she has drafted and collaborated with others to finalize a survey to collect data from higher education professionals in the child development field to help identify content gaps specific to childhood obesity, physical activity, and nutrition and potential for members of the Early Childhood Domain to offer resources and support to fill those gaps. Nicole has learned valuable skills and the importance of collaboration during her time as an intern. Though she formally ended her internship at the end of June 2018, she intends to stay on as a volunteer from time to time to see some of the projects she is helping with to completion. Nicole would like to continue working on promoting, supporting, and protecting breastfeeding utilizing the skills and knowledge she has gathered during time with LSE. She also enjoys teaching and would like to pursue opportunities to pass on her experience and knowledge to others working towards degrees in the health field.
  • Maryam Jawed Ahmed has a Master’s degree in public health, specializing in health promotion from National University and Bachelors in Medicine from Dow University of Health Sciences Karachi, Pakistan. Under the leadership of Shana Wright Bruno, Maryam held an internship position from March 2018 through June 2018 for the Lactation Supportive Environments program. Their current program, Breastfeeding-Friendly San Diego Childcare, has given a significant opportunity for professional and personal growth, and her time in the Center for community health was crucial in building a strong professional base. An inclusive and positive environment instilled confidence in performing various tasks. During her internship, responsibilities included working for the Breastfeeding roundtable partner survey, evaluating data for the Breastfeeding-Friendly San Diego childcare trainings, Breastfeeding practices in diverse population research, mapping for the Breastfeeding-Friendly San Diego childcare sites using the ArcGIS tool, and drafting the partner webpage for the CCH website. Working on projects independently and in collaboration provided a great learning experience and opportunity to improve technical skills, communication skills and writing skills along with paying attention to detail. In the future, Maryam will be working towards becoming a certified health educator and finding a position that inspires her to venture into health care as a public health professional.
  • Sammi Willins interned with the UC San Diego Center for Community Health School Wellness while working on her master’s degree at SDSU Graduate School of Public Health. Sammi was excited to find the School Wellness internship as she had been searching for the ideal practicum where she could apply classroom content, her experience in nutrition, and her undergraduate work in exercise and health sciences. Sammi was actively involved in collecting data on student activity levels in structured physical activities in elementary schools called SOFIT, System for Observing Fitness Instruction Time. She took the lead in developing a process for assessing school organized physical activity. After her internship, Sammi was hired as a part time Community Health Specialist. She continued to take the lead in being the trainer and gold standard for SOFIT assessments. She coordinated a contract with the San Diego Unified School District to implement the IMPACT (Increasing Movement and Physical Activity Class Time) program with several elementary schools. She was not only responsible for scheduling qualified interns to support teachers in implementing IMPACT, but also working with the UC San Diego Intercollegiate Athletics program to schedule student athletes to participate with students and teachers. Sammi worked with School Wellness to help support physical activity and healthy eating policies, systems, and environmental changes to select elementary schools throughout San Diego County. Sammi also completed her master’s capstone project while at the UC San Diego Center for Community Health and she recruited, trained and supervised a group of student interns in their work with elementary schools. Sammi learned a great deal about the implementation of sustainable nutrition education and physical activity programs, school policy, and school systems. Sammi graduated with her Master in Public Health in May of 2018. Sammi really admired the passion and dedication that radiated from all Center staff and interns. She plans to bring all that she has learned with her as she relocates to South Florida. Her time with the Center enhanced her graduate school experience and strengthened her public health career goals.
  • Jannet Valdes Ramirez interned for the Lactation Supportive Environments project during summer 2018. One of her major roles as an intern was to assist in the communication between family childcare providers and the coordinators of the Lactation Environments Project, through her proficiency in English and Spanish bilingual skills. She helped facilitate the certification of the Spanish speaking family childcare provider community by bridging the communication between the childcare providers and the program coordinators. In addition, Jannet helped collect provider information and write Provider Highlights to feature the family childcare providers that make the Lactation Supportive Environments work possible. Jannet greatly enjoyed the experience she obtained from interning for the Lactation Environments Project and is thankful for the support she had from her supervisors. Although this is her first experience working in the public health sector, Jannet is excited to continue her undergraduate studies at the University of California, Davis, with the goal of improving the lives of the community through public policy.
  • Holden is currently an intern with the Youth Advisory Council (YAC). He is in his second and final year as an MPH student in the Health Promotion and Behavioral Sciences track at San Diego State University. He received his BS in Kinesiology from San Francisco State University. His research interests include reducing health disparities among unrepresented communities, social justice issues around physical activity, and innovative technologies to track and promote physical activity. He is currently working on his thesis which aims to understand the relationship between parenting practices and sedentary time spent in children. After graduation, Holden plans to gain new experiences and travel the world before applying to a Ph.D. program. With a Ph.D., Holden hopes to better integrate the fields of kinesiology and public health to strengthen research in physical activity.
  • Camila Martinez Ceren is an intern at the UCSD Center for Community Health under the Lactation Supportive Environments program. She is currently in the process of completing her Bachelor of Science Degree in Public Health and Clinical Psychology at UC San Diego. During her time as an intern, Camila has assisted with Spanish speaking providers in-person to determine individual site needs and provide materials and resources for families and employees, offer recognition for providers who are implementing best practices, prepared related materials such as informational handouts for families and employees, and conduct informal research about breastfeeding in the LGBTQ+ Community in San Diego County. Camila has learned learned a great deal about the importance of lactation along with its policies, practices, disparities, and health benefits which serve of great value to her as her career interests include epidemiology, legislative analysis ,and health policy development and implementation.
  • Rachel recently graduated from San Diego State University with a bachelor’s degree of public health and aspirations to attend medical school in 2019. Her internship at UCSD’s Center for Community Health has been pivotal in her studies and her future career plans. She has put into practice what she has learned so she can improve the wellness of vulnerable individuals in her community by promoting physical activity and nutrition. Working within the Faith-Based Wellness program at the Center for Community Health has involved her directly with improving wellness and lifestyle changes at St. Jude’s Shrine of the West. She and her colleagues coordinate monthly health classes and lead a weekly walking group. The walking group has made significant health changes: one participant went from a diagnosis of pre-diabetic to non-diabetic. Rachel also assists at a second faith site, First Christian Church of National City. She has volunteered at weekly food distributions on church grounds, helped conduct focus groups to learn the health needs of the church, and has helped compile the findings into a church health report. The information was used by church Center for Community Health staff to create the church’s pilot health ministry following the model of a “Healthier Me”, a faith & health program created by a retired Kaiser physician. Rachel has been fortunate to work with these church communities as they actively pursue health and wellness. She has learned through their example that change takes time but is worth the work and the wait. She has learned to be patient not only with herself as she continues to refine her public health skills but also with the process of implementing health programs, such as how to adapt when programs do not unfold as planned, and how to understand people of all faiths, cultures, and backgrounds.
  • Brianna Melendrez is a High Tech High Chula Vista Intern at UCSD Community Health Center who was working closely with Lizzy Cooper the manager of the Youth Advisory Council (YAC) program. As a member of the YAC, Brianna had the opportunity to also look at other parts of public health. Throughout the month of May 2019, Brianna had the chance to closely look at the Social Ecological Model of Health with food insecurity, Health Equity, participate in Plate Waste, and in the Game Leaders program. Brianna is passionate about helping people in need and is interested in going into the medical field. She hopes to major in Neuroscience and become a Neurologist in the close future. This experience has allowed Brianna’s knowledge to expand on public health and the importance it has on people's everyday life. Brianna really enjoyed and is grateful for these opportunities. She is excited to use the exposure to public health in her future education.
  • Thuy Do is an intern at the Lactation Supportive Environments (LSE) program within UCSD Center for Community Health. She is currently pursuing a Master of Public Health with a concentration in Health Management & Policy at San Diego State University. Her passion and interest in supporting families and advocating for inclusivity of breastfeeding within the San Diego community has led her to work with an amazing team under the supervision of Shana M. Wright and Elizabeth Cooper. Some of Thuy’s roles focus on the sustainability of the LSE’s initiative, Breastfeeding-Friendly San Diego, through technical support and assistance, which includes website support, enhancement and management, video media development and production, provider training, recruitment and outreach, local partnership collaboration on program promotion, and community engagement through social media platforms. Thuy is delighted to learn and explore the intricacies of public health management and its impacts on a macro-level, through field work and processes implementation with compassionate members and providers.
  • Anthony Jensen is a Sociology major graduating in June 2020 from UC San Diego. Anthony worked with the Youth Advisory Council (YAC) helping with the website, interviewing members, group discussions, and helping the youth conduct their projects. He describes seeing the youth lead their own projects on bettering their communities as a "very inspirational experience." In the future, Anthony's goal is to receive a Masters in Social Work and eventually become a school social worker. "My passion is working with youth from all backgrounds and helping them reach their full potential in every aspect of life."
  • Jaffet Emmanuel Garcia is an American Political Science major graduating in June 2020 from UC San Diego. Having lived in City Heights from 2008 to 2016, he felt very lucky to be able to interact with the many bright youth that are currently in a similar situation as he was a few years ago. Jaffet worked with Youth Advisory Council (YAC) creating a City Heights background project, interviewing a community leader and current college professor who was also raised in CIty Heights, attending group discussions and engaging in activities with the youth. He became very inspired and hopeful by seeing the youth show how passionate and engaged they become while discussing how to better their communities. Jaffet plans to conclude his undergraduate education and transfer to law school. “City Heights runs in my veins, I had some of my best experiences there and no matter where life takes me I will always look back at the Heights with love”
  • Dominique
  • Ahmed Ali is a Helix Charter High School student who is interning with the Nutrition Pantry Program at the Center for Community Health. Ahmed works with the Youth Advisory Council (YAC) and attends meetings bi-weekly. Ahmed is passionate about food justice and he believes that everyone should have equal access to healthy and nutritious food. Ahmed hopes to make this world better for less fortunate individuals and he strives to help people in need. He hopes to major in law and become a civil rights attorney in the near future. He is excited to intern at the Center for Community Health and hopes to gain beneficial knowledge that will help him in the future.
  • Zaira Garcia is an intern within the Nutrition Pantry Program at the Center for Community Health. She is currently a senior at the University of California San Diego getting her Bachelors of Science in Public Health with a Concentration in Community Health. As someone who was raised by two immigrant parents she understands the importance of health equity. Her goal is to help reduce health inequities and strongly believes that health is and should be a human right. After graduating from UC San Diego in the Spring of 2021, she would like to pursue a caree in public health and plans on preparing herself for graduate school.
  • Aoi Goto is an intern with the Nutrition Pantry Program at UCSD’s Center for Community Health. She was born in Japan and raised here in San Diego. From a young age, she loved food and believed in the importance of nutrition and health. After graduating with a BS degree in Nutrition from New York University, she became a Registered Dietitian and gained work experience in hospital food service management. She returned to school at UCSD to pursue a Master’s degree in Public Health with a concentration in Health Behavior. She is passionate about helping others through the promotion of healthy lifestyle behaviors. After completing graduate school, she hopes to work as a public health professional aiming to reduce health disparities in underserved communities by addressing issues such as food insecurity and childhood obesity.
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