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Humanitarian Research Lab
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INFORMATION FOR

Internships in Humanitarian Settings

YSPH students share their experiences.

The research lab welcomes undergraduate and graduate students with an interest in international humanitarian affairs to join our team as research interns. Interns lead meaningful projects integral to the lab such as completing literature reviews, published pieces, data analysis. Students also gain the opportunity to learn from and work alongside leading professionals from international organizations.

Hanna Peterson, MSF

Hanna Peterson is a second year MPH student in the Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases department at Yale School of Public Health (YSPH). She completed her summer internship with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in the Luxembourg Operational Research unit (LuxOR). During her internship, Hanna developed a standardized protocol for researching the etiology of causative pathogens of UTIs and their resistance profile. This standardized protocol was designed to guide MSF workers, such as epidemiologists and clinicians, through the process of developing and conducting an etiology study. The protocol will enable MSF workers to develop empirical antibiotherapies based on local antibiograms, which will help limit the overuse and misuse of antibiotics.

Joseph Williams, GAVI/COVAX & Downs Fellowship

Joseph Williams is a second year MPH student in the Chronic Disease Epidemiology department at Yale School of Public Health (YSPH). He was selected as a Leadership in Global Health Fellow and completed his summer internship with GAVI/COVAX. The Leadership in Global Health Fellowship prepares future global health professionals via a comprehensive, multi-faceted program that includes participation in a leadership seminar, ethics training, and placement in a high-impact internships. As an Immunization Financing and Sustainability COVAX Fellow, Joesph was part of Gavi's COVID-19 response efforts. He worked to engage vaccine manufacturers globally for the procurement of suitable vaccines for Gavi supported countries, and assisted in the strategy and development of Self Financing Participants (SFP) 2.0. SFP 2.0 was an effort to equitably secure vaccines for High- and Middle-Income countries without the means or leverage to procure vaccines independently. This role gave Joe the experience of working with a dynamic team furthering global health initiatives.

Joe was also selected as a Downs Fellow, which has provided opportunities to over 500 students to live, learn, work, and do research in low-and middle-income countries. In leu of Covid-19, the criteria for Downs projects expanded to include US marginalized populations. Joseph was awarded the fellowship to study the impact Covid-19 has had on the mental health of refugee and asylum seeker children in the New Haven area. He has been working with a New Haven-based non-profit, Elena's Light, to employ a community participatory research design that will engage community leaders in best strategies to assess the burden of Covid-19 has had.

Rachel Lobe-Costonis, MSF

Rachel Lobe-Costonis is a second year MPH student in the Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases department at Yale School of Public Health (YSPH). She spent her YSPH internship with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in the Luxembourg Operational Research (LuxOR) arm of Operational Center Brussels (OCB). In her internship, Rachel supported the Embu, Kenya project team through the Kenya MSF mission focused on decentralization of non-communicable disease management and integration into primary health programs in humanitarian settings. She completed a Policy and Practice Analysis, an important component of MSF operational research, to identify how the results and findings of research can be most impactful with the greatest reach to inform program design and evidence-based best practices. She also worked on a scoping review of models of care for NCDs in humanitarian settings focused on decentralization and task shifting models.

Working with HRL

Are you interested in working with us or joining the Humanitarian Research Lab? Click here to contact us.

Please include a casual statement of interest, a copy of your CV/Resume, and preferred contact information in the body of the email.

We are honored and excited that you may be interested in working with the HRL, but do not always have positions open. In that case, we may come back to your work and experience as new positions open.