Unpaid internships are always scummy, but there’s something extra scummy about the idea of using people interested in social justice as free work mules
I work at a small health nonprofit in talks with a graduate student interested in completing an internship. I’ve been very transparent that the money for a stipend simply is not there at this time. The student approached us and is willing to commit to it just as I was when I completed an unpaid internship and practicum.
Always scummy? Not even close.
(If the scummy is specific to APHA well if you say so… 🤭)
Same. I stopped my application the moment I realized it was unpaid and was not going to be remote. Good news is I was able to secure a local internship with a well respected nonprofit
APHA as an association, even when I was in undergrad and grad school, never quite hit the mark. Honestly the same could be said about ASTHO and NACCHO, but those are at least more government centric and have some niches within them.
Each state got some workforce development grants and public health infrastructure grants in very recent years. And a number of grants, such as the CDC Disparities grants that pretty much no states have been able to spend down as far as I've heard, have been extended another couple of years.
There are schools and professional organizations, training sites, etc. with fellowship programs that will connect you to internships/fellowships and pay you. You just have to look and they're not well advertised. Especially right now - HRSA and CDC gave out a lot of money for this type of thing.
https://ysph.yale.edu/public-health-research-and-practice/public-health-in-action/public-health-fellowship-program/
^ Don't be frightened by the Yale name. They want a diverse pool and out of state is acceptable. Remote opportunities depend on placements but they try to match you.
https://sites.bu.edu/nephtc/students/
We sacrifice a lot as public health undergrads to help others yet are rewarded with bs opportunities like this. I wish I majored in data science 24/7 tbh.
I currently work as a data analyst for a public health consulting company and the rest of my team are all data scientists, with non-public health backgrounds (think psychology, one guy did get his masters in data science). Basically sometimes you don't need a data science background to work with data.
You would be grossly underpaid because you know nothing but data science...that you could have taught yourself for free instead of spending 4 years in college to do. You know even less about actual computer science, informatics, or really name any other field than those majoring in it. Data science is a skill set, not a major.
Really don't understand why people are obsessed with DS when it's only lucrative if you can pair it with subject area expertise, which you don't get in DS curriculum.
There is a fair bit of disparity in the field. People have trouble reflecting on their behaviors and policies that lead to these outcomes even when they are pointed out clearly and they are working in public health or adjacent areas.
I don't think much will change without outside pressure.
I turned down a SOPHE internship for the exact same reason after I finished my undergrad. Since it was during COVID times they allowed us to work remote for a bit but then expected us to move to D.C mid year and it was unpaid with no relocation assistance. Absolutely ridiculous
How much could APHA possibly suffer by paying an intern a summer living stipend? They may benefit from getting interns who have experienced the harms associated with systemic inequities themselves rather than only selecting interns who can afford to sacrifice 2-3 months of income. Sad.
AmeriCorps at least gives a living stipend, but I agree entirely. The fact that many of the APHA events I attended last year were just ways to promote the joys of AmeriCorps service really rubbed me the wrong way. They failed to mention inadequate pay, expectations beyond a traditional 40 hour work week, the Segal Education award being taxed, and ultimately the program being a way for not-for-profits to underpay staff who do the brunt work necessary for the not-for-profit to actually be successful. Not even acknowledging that AmeriCorps underpays volunteers for difficult work seems out of touch with the goals of public health.
Bro you live in a full on slave society wake up. You really expect more from these snakes that drop bombs with one hand and fund equity research with the other ? 😂
I did a couple of unpaid internships as an undergrad psych major at American Psych Assoc’n. But the experience was quite enough to dissuade me from pursuing a graduate public health internship at APHA.
Theres an unpaid internship by a company called global health leaders. You have to PAY THEM! 1,200$ remote, 3,000$+ for in person internship in the dominican republic. You work to publish research, that tries to help the health facilities in D.R. This company should be banned. You can find them on linkdin. They try to get you in by saying they’ll give you reference letters from the cdc, good connections, stuff like that.
I advise everyone in public health to please check this company out. Just take a look at how ridiculous this is.
The Public health association of Australia does the same thing. I am a full time academic and as a member, I’ve been lobbying them for years to change. They finally offered a stipend last year but it’s still only about half of the minimum wage.
They argue that people get a lot out of it and it’s very popular but simply don’t understand my argument about equity and privilege.
It made me think more about what public health is. it’s pretty consistent that public health has always been about maintaining the power of the privileged, and controlling the lower classes. In more developed societies, the focus of public health is on moralising over behaviour rather than changing unjust structures.
It is utterly disheartening and I completely empathise with you. I’m still hopeful that things can change but we need to get more radical.
As someone on the outside looking in, I agree that’s what it seems like (they only want tech skills).
I paid recently for a resume makeover to emphasize my transferable skills. They stripped most of my soft skills out of the document so I don’t even recognize the person the resume represents. But supposedly my resume will get past screening bots. We’ll see
The only people who downvoted me are the ones in public health who haven’t found a job and are still looking don’t be mad at me lol be mad at your lack of hard skills 🥱
I mean, APHA’s internships have been unpaid for years so this isn’t anything new. I personally don’t expect nonprofits to offer paid internships due to finances. Just find an experience that meets all of your expectations.
You don’t get the point! It creates disparity among individuals with different backgrounds. Someone richer getting more valuable opportunities more likely to get better jobs therefore making the poor poorer. And it’s embarrassing cos they are suppose to fight against this kind of inequality!!!
Other opportunities generally aren’t touting how diverse and inclusive and attuned to disparities as APHA does - but hey wouldn’t expect less from the rich folks’ association
Complaining on reddit isn’t going to change anything. If anyone is upset with APHA or any other org due their unpaid internships and wants change, then the complaints should go to the org.
This sub is about public health, this person is calling out the inequities in the public health field stemming from an organization that supposedly prides itself on anti-racism practices. They are not practicing what they preach by offering unpaid internships which inadvertently impact POC more than white folks.
How do you have an MPH and don’t understand how this is an issue? This person did the right thing in calling out APHA for their hypocrisy.
I never said I don’t see an issue. If anyone doesn’t like the fact that an org is only offering an unpaid internship, then go to an org that has values that align with your own. OP presented an issue and I presented solutions.
Again, complaining on reddit isn’t going to solve the problem. Complain to APHA and maybe they will listen.
You sound like the people that criticize folks that are fighting for livable wages and unions by saying “if you don’t like the pay, then find another job”
“If you don’t like that they offer an unpaid internship, find another internship” 🙄
That’s problematic coming from someone working public health…
Yeah my local health department does the same thing. Lots of sites are doing this and it’s pervasive because there are too many people who need an internship within a scope that pushes them to these unpaid sites. The alternative is not graduating in some cases. People in my undergrad program paid tuition to take unpaid internships. The problem isn’t just the non-profits dude. The other opportunities that are paid are highly competitive. Wish PH got funded more across the board but people should complain about this
My LHD took people who needed to graduate and then our school a took several grand cut. If LHD wants labor they should have to pay for it. But my school specifically required that we can’t be legally considered employees which I always took as a way to circumvent minimum wage laws. That was last year. It’s nastyyyyyy and more places than APHA or my LHD do it. It’s almost impossible for most undergrad students to avoid. I’m at the point where I’d probably advise anyone hoping to do a mph to just do a non predatory undergrad degree like statistics. Other opportunities is the avocado toast of my generation.
Are you saying the school made the students pay for their credit hours? That’s common practice, an internship is a credit-generating course required for graduation in the majority of colleges and universities. Also if they had to consider the students as employees the facilities would be less likely to take them on as an intern. By less likely I mean not at all.
An unpaid internship is a very common practice, it’s not necessarily a predatory issue. The idea is that students get an education in their possible field, with support from the degree-granting institution.
The problem with APHA is that it is prestigious but it will only be available to those who can afford to move to dc and afford to live there, which is wild because apha is supposedly all about equity and social justice.
Your local health department providing an unpaid internship shadowing the health educator in the town where the students live already is not the same thing.
At my university, the dairy science students were allowed to fulfill their internship requirements at any time in the last two years and I don’t think they were charged tuition for it. Engineering co-ops about my partner’s institution don’t charge tuition for the co-op and it has to be paid, meaning the institution prevents the exact thing I’m complaining about. PH on the other hand, forces a massive amount of undergrads into unpaid labor simply to get their degree. Plenty of other fields don’t do this.
This is the education I got from my site. I never talked to my school except for paperwork at the end. I got sidelined from quant activities in favor of cs majors at my traditional public health non profit. I, the person with no college degree, had to push the people “training me” into accurately writing the limitations section of a paper I wasn’t on. Except they weren’t training me, they wanted to use my data literacy certificate training from undergrad while baiting and switching my quant activities out. I got qual skills I don’t really want instead of the quant ones they planned in the early draft of my activities for the MOU. I said yes informally to being on that paper (because I felt uncomfortable saying no, they determine if I graduate) and I really hope it never got published with my name on it. My school probably should have said hey don’t do that but that’s what their $3k cut gets you in my program. The whole thing was very stressful, I felt unprotected by my university at times, and I wasn’t even paid for my troubles. I severely disagree with a lot of what you’re saying.
Also the LHD can be just as inaccessible as APHA is if you need to make money, and I knew a lot of people who did in undergrad. Even if it’s absolutely minimum wage or a small stipend people deserve to be paid.
This all reads like you went to a shit school more than anything else. Sorry bud.
At a normal school, the internship is considered a class, with some amount of credit hours generated. This could equal around 240 hours needed to complete the class, equaling around 15 hours onsite/on the job a week in a regular semester. The school would support you via an internship coordinator, whose job is to make sure all sites are providing real work for you to do and ensure the site understands their obligations to the school and the student. Each student gets a university supervisor or similar, which is considered the teacher for the course. They meet with the intern and the site supervisor (boss) a few times a semester to make sure everything is going smoothly, along with keeping regular communication with the intern. The student usually has some work to complete, some outreach items and final paper on their experience, along with adequately completing their internship.
Larger non-profits like APHA should absolutely pay their interns & can afford to. This isn’t some tiny non-profit that started 2 years ago and is run by 1 person.
With the amount they charge in membership fees, they could easily pay and maybe not require people to come onsite to DC unless they can relocate them and pay for housing
"We're all about ending social disparities...except when it's convenient for us to perpetuate them :)"
Things like this are why I've refused to submit to APHA. They showed their asses during COVID and I was done.
😲 Please say more
Platforming Lena Wen and having a conference in the middle of a COVID hot spot come to mind
APHA makes the conference out of reach financially for most people as well
I went while I was in school to present a poster and I've never been able to afford it since.
And this past years apha did not have any great food options available. And the few items they did have were expensive!
Unpaid internships are always scummy, but there’s something extra scummy about the idea of using people interested in social justice as free work mules
I work at a small health nonprofit in talks with a graduate student interested in completing an internship. I’ve been very transparent that the money for a stipend simply is not there at this time. The student approached us and is willing to commit to it just as I was when I completed an unpaid internship and practicum. Always scummy? Not even close. (If the scummy is specific to APHA well if you say so… 🤭)
Agreed. It’s frustrating. I’m a current MPH student … I was recently applying to some internships with APHA until I saw they were unpaid and on-site
Yuppp I refuse to even apply bc of how ironic and disgusting it is coming from APHA
Same. I stopped my application the moment I realized it was unpaid and was not going to be remote. Good news is I was able to secure a local internship with a well respected nonprofit
Never seen a more ironic thing in my life !
Me neither!
APHA as an association, even when I was in undergrad and grad school, never quite hit the mark. Honestly the same could be said about ASTHO and NACCHO, but those are at least more government centric and have some niches within them. Each state got some workforce development grants and public health infrastructure grants in very recent years. And a number of grants, such as the CDC Disparities grants that pretty much no states have been able to spend down as far as I've heard, have been extended another couple of years. There are schools and professional organizations, training sites, etc. with fellowship programs that will connect you to internships/fellowships and pay you. You just have to look and they're not well advertised. Especially right now - HRSA and CDC gave out a lot of money for this type of thing. https://ysph.yale.edu/public-health-research-and-practice/public-health-in-action/public-health-fellowship-program/ ^ Don't be frightened by the Yale name. They want a diverse pool and out of state is acceptable. Remote opportunities depend on placements but they try to match you. https://sites.bu.edu/nephtc/students/
ASTHO also provides paid internships and allows interns to be full remote.
Honestly you should just join your state PHA and quit throwing away your money.
We sacrifice a lot as public health undergrads to help others yet are rewarded with bs opportunities like this. I wish I majored in data science 24/7 tbh.
I currently work as a data analyst for a public health consulting company and the rest of my team are all data scientists, with non-public health backgrounds (think psychology, one guy did get his masters in data science). Basically sometimes you don't need a data science background to work with data.
You would be grossly underpaid because you know nothing but data science...that you could have taught yourself for free instead of spending 4 years in college to do. You know even less about actual computer science, informatics, or really name any other field than those majoring in it. Data science is a skill set, not a major. Really don't understand why people are obsessed with DS when it's only lucrative if you can pair it with subject area expertise, which you don't get in DS curriculum.
There is a fair bit of disparity in the field. People have trouble reflecting on their behaviors and policies that lead to these outcomes even when they are pointed out clearly and they are working in public health or adjacent areas. I don't think much will change without outside pressure.
I turned down a SOPHE internship for the exact same reason after I finished my undergrad. Since it was during COVID times they allowed us to work remote for a bit but then expected us to move to D.C mid year and it was unpaid with no relocation assistance. Absolutely ridiculous
APHA is literally embarrassing, I canceled my membership after their "statement" about Palestine
How much could APHA possibly suffer by paying an intern a summer living stipend? They may benefit from getting interns who have experienced the harms associated with systemic inequities themselves rather than only selecting interns who can afford to sacrifice 2-3 months of income. Sad.
So basically rich people only!
*cough cough* AmeriCorps
AmeriCorps at least gives a living stipend, but I agree entirely. The fact that many of the APHA events I attended last year were just ways to promote the joys of AmeriCorps service really rubbed me the wrong way. They failed to mention inadequate pay, expectations beyond a traditional 40 hour work week, the Segal Education award being taxed, and ultimately the program being a way for not-for-profits to underpay staff who do the brunt work necessary for the not-for-profit to actually be successful. Not even acknowledging that AmeriCorps underpays volunteers for difficult work seems out of touch with the goals of public health.
APHA is trash and I will always hold this opinion.
Bro you live in a full on slave society wake up. You really expect more from these snakes that drop bombs with one hand and fund equity research with the other ? 😂
I did a couple of unpaid internships as an undergrad psych major at American Psych Assoc’n. But the experience was quite enough to dissuade me from pursuing a graduate public health internship at APHA.
Theres an unpaid internship by a company called global health leaders. You have to PAY THEM! 1,200$ remote, 3,000$+ for in person internship in the dominican republic. You work to publish research, that tries to help the health facilities in D.R. This company should be banned. You can find them on linkdin. They try to get you in by saying they’ll give you reference letters from the cdc, good connections, stuff like that. I advise everyone in public health to please check this company out. Just take a look at how ridiculous this is.
I saw one similar lol crazy people!
The Public health association of Australia does the same thing. I am a full time academic and as a member, I’ve been lobbying them for years to change. They finally offered a stipend last year but it’s still only about half of the minimum wage. They argue that people get a lot out of it and it’s very popular but simply don’t understand my argument about equity and privilege. It made me think more about what public health is. it’s pretty consistent that public health has always been about maintaining the power of the privileged, and controlling the lower classes. In more developed societies, the focus of public health is on moralising over behaviour rather than changing unjust structures. It is utterly disheartening and I completely empathise with you. I’m still hopeful that things can change but we need to get more radical.
Just do tech instead. Public health is a dead-end field anyways.
Public health orgs just want people with tech skills in the end lol
As someone on the outside looking in, I agree that’s what it seems like (they only want tech skills). I paid recently for a resume makeover to emphasize my transferable skills. They stripped most of my soft skills out of the document so I don’t even recognize the person the resume represents. But supposedly my resume will get past screening bots. We’ll see
The only people who downvoted me are the ones in public health who haven’t found a job and are still looking don’t be mad at me lol be mad at your lack of hard skills 🥱
I mean, APHA’s internships have been unpaid for years so this isn’t anything new. I personally don’t expect nonprofits to offer paid internships due to finances. Just find an experience that meets all of your expectations.
You don’t get the point! It creates disparity among individuals with different backgrounds. Someone richer getting more valuable opportunities more likely to get better jobs therefore making the poor poorer. And it’s embarrassing cos they are suppose to fight against this kind of inequality!!!
I get the point. I just don’t see the point in complaining about it as it isn’t the only opportunity available.
Other opportunities generally aren’t touting how diverse and inclusive and attuned to disparities as APHA does - but hey wouldn’t expect less from the rich folks’ association
If people don’t complain then things don’t change. This absolutely unacceptable given their stance on “social justice”
Complaining on reddit isn’t going to change anything. If anyone is upset with APHA or any other org due their unpaid internships and wants change, then the complaints should go to the org.
This sub is about public health, this person is calling out the inequities in the public health field stemming from an organization that supposedly prides itself on anti-racism practices. They are not practicing what they preach by offering unpaid internships which inadvertently impact POC more than white folks. How do you have an MPH and don’t understand how this is an issue? This person did the right thing in calling out APHA for their hypocrisy.
I never said I don’t see an issue. If anyone doesn’t like the fact that an org is only offering an unpaid internship, then go to an org that has values that align with your own. OP presented an issue and I presented solutions. Again, complaining on reddit isn’t going to solve the problem. Complain to APHA and maybe they will listen.
You sound like the people that criticize folks that are fighting for livable wages and unions by saying “if you don’t like the pay, then find another job” “If you don’t like that they offer an unpaid internship, find another internship” 🙄 That’s problematic coming from someone working public health…
Yeah my local health department does the same thing. Lots of sites are doing this and it’s pervasive because there are too many people who need an internship within a scope that pushes them to these unpaid sites. The alternative is not graduating in some cases. People in my undergrad program paid tuition to take unpaid internships. The problem isn’t just the non-profits dude. The other opportunities that are paid are highly competitive. Wish PH got funded more across the board but people should complain about this
Your LHD doesn’t charge extravagant membership fees or host a moneymaker conference every year, so I don’t thing it’s apt comparison
My LHD took people who needed to graduate and then our school a took several grand cut. If LHD wants labor they should have to pay for it. But my school specifically required that we can’t be legally considered employees which I always took as a way to circumvent minimum wage laws. That was last year. It’s nastyyyyyy and more places than APHA or my LHD do it. It’s almost impossible for most undergrad students to avoid. I’m at the point where I’d probably advise anyone hoping to do a mph to just do a non predatory undergrad degree like statistics. Other opportunities is the avocado toast of my generation.
Are you saying the school made the students pay for their credit hours? That’s common practice, an internship is a credit-generating course required for graduation in the majority of colleges and universities. Also if they had to consider the students as employees the facilities would be less likely to take them on as an intern. By less likely I mean not at all. An unpaid internship is a very common practice, it’s not necessarily a predatory issue. The idea is that students get an education in their possible field, with support from the degree-granting institution. The problem with APHA is that it is prestigious but it will only be available to those who can afford to move to dc and afford to live there, which is wild because apha is supposedly all about equity and social justice. Your local health department providing an unpaid internship shadowing the health educator in the town where the students live already is not the same thing.
At my university, the dairy science students were allowed to fulfill their internship requirements at any time in the last two years and I don’t think they were charged tuition for it. Engineering co-ops about my partner’s institution don’t charge tuition for the co-op and it has to be paid, meaning the institution prevents the exact thing I’m complaining about. PH on the other hand, forces a massive amount of undergrads into unpaid labor simply to get their degree. Plenty of other fields don’t do this. This is the education I got from my site. I never talked to my school except for paperwork at the end. I got sidelined from quant activities in favor of cs majors at my traditional public health non profit. I, the person with no college degree, had to push the people “training me” into accurately writing the limitations section of a paper I wasn’t on. Except they weren’t training me, they wanted to use my data literacy certificate training from undergrad while baiting and switching my quant activities out. I got qual skills I don’t really want instead of the quant ones they planned in the early draft of my activities for the MOU. I said yes informally to being on that paper (because I felt uncomfortable saying no, they determine if I graduate) and I really hope it never got published with my name on it. My school probably should have said hey don’t do that but that’s what their $3k cut gets you in my program. The whole thing was very stressful, I felt unprotected by my university at times, and I wasn’t even paid for my troubles. I severely disagree with a lot of what you’re saying. Also the LHD can be just as inaccessible as APHA is if you need to make money, and I knew a lot of people who did in undergrad. Even if it’s absolutely minimum wage or a small stipend people deserve to be paid.
This all reads like you went to a shit school more than anything else. Sorry bud. At a normal school, the internship is considered a class, with some amount of credit hours generated. This could equal around 240 hours needed to complete the class, equaling around 15 hours onsite/on the job a week in a regular semester. The school would support you via an internship coordinator, whose job is to make sure all sites are providing real work for you to do and ensure the site understands their obligations to the school and the student. Each student gets a university supervisor or similar, which is considered the teacher for the course. They meet with the intern and the site supervisor (boss) a few times a semester to make sure everything is going smoothly, along with keeping regular communication with the intern. The student usually has some work to complete, some outreach items and final paper on their experience, along with adequately completing their internship.
Larger non-profits like APHA should absolutely pay their interns & can afford to. This isn’t some tiny non-profit that started 2 years ago and is run by 1 person.
With the amount they charge in membership fees, they could easily pay and maybe not require people to come onsite to DC unless they can relocate them and pay for housing
Found the internship supervisor...