A public health undergrad finds her way in the Dominican Republic
Hanbin Yu’s summer internship let her research health literacy in another country
Last summer, Hanbin Yu, a UC Berkeley public health and political economy double major in her senior year, interned for International Health Alliance (IHA), an organization offering medical internships that give students a chance to experience clinical work. After five intense weeks of training, Yu spent a week in the Dominican Republic, providing clinical care to people in rural areas and collecting data for a research project comparing health literacy—the ability to access, understand, and act on health information—in the Dominican Republic with that in the United States.
We asked her about her experience with IHA and how that fit into her studies here at UC Berkeley.
How did this internship fit into your studies at UC Berkeley?
I decided to major in public health my sophomore year. In the fall of my junior year, I took Sociology 139, Selected Topics in Social Inequality: Health & Wealth with Professor Szonja Ivester. This class was the shift, where I realized that I wanted to pursue this more. I had done research at a pharmaceutical lab and interned for congress in South Korea, but I hadn’t really worked in public health. I thought I would try and see if I absolutely like public health.
What was your day-to-day like while in the Dominican Republic?
We would travel to rural areas, set up a camp base in an empty building, and then treat whoever came in. Local doctors would spread the word that we were giving medical care. As interns, we carried out intake and a basic medical checkup and then shadowed local doctors and pharmacists as they consulted with patients. Once patients received their medical care, we surveyed them as part of our research project to determine whether they know where and how to get health care, a key part of health literacy. There were both clinical and research interns, and I was on the research side, so I didn’t expect to be part of the clinical checkups. But I was actually able to experience both the research aspect and the clinical aspect.
What did you find from your research?
We compared our survey results with data from the United States to see how health literacy compared between the two countries. It was really surprising because it was not significantly lower compared to the States. We were thinking that there were two reasons behind this. One, we somehow really messed up on the translation, but we thought that this chance was pretty slim. Two, we thought that maybe they do have enough health literacy to know they needed [medical] care, but that they refused to do so because of their fear of getting deported. (Most of the patients that we surveyed and treated were Haitian illegal immigrants that crossed the border without any documentation.)
What challenges did you face?
Most patients that we took in were undocumented immigrants from Haiti. There were a lot of language barriers with these patients; most spoke Haitian Creole, and not a lot spoke Spanish. We needed a lot of translators.
What did you learn from the internship?
I learned how to construct research from start to finish. I hadn’t ever done something like that without a lot of supervision. Also, I’m used to doing bio research or wet labs, so this was a whole new type of research for me.
Are you working on anything now that the internship has affected or influenced?
I’m doing my capstone this semester in the course PH130 Advanced Health Policy with Dr. Robin Flagg. I want to get into more of the health policy aspect of public health. Health policy was always really big to me, but from that internship, I learned just how important it is. The U.S. is still lacking a lot of policy for undocumented people and people who don’t have insurance in general. I just really hate these people not getting help.
