MPH Internship Overview

The student’s internship instructor and internship coordinator are listed in the MPH Internship Syllabus and Contact Us page.

All students working to complete an MPH degree are required to complete an internship as part of their degree curriculum. NO WAIVERS!

Students are eligible to complete the MPH internship after the completion of all of their core public health courses. Usually, this means that students must wait until their 3rd semester to complete the internship. The internship must be completed in a single academic semester. See the MPH Internship Timeline for more information.

Internship sites may include governmental, non-governmental, non-profit, industrial and for-profit settings or appropriate university-affiliated settings. To be appropriate for the MPH internship, university-affiliated settings must be primarily focused on community engagement, typically with external partners. University health promotion or wellness centers may be appropriate. Applied practice activities should allow students the opportunity to address a critical public health issue in the community and should not be primarily administrative or research in nature. The internship instructor will review all proposals and reserves the right to request the student change their products or select a different internship organization if the internship activities and/or products do not meet the requirements of the MPH Internship Program at the UAB School of Public Health.

Ultimately, it is the student’s responsibility to secure an internship. Students should start looking for internships at least 2-3 months prior to the semester in which they intend to complete their internship. Internship opportunities are posted in the Get a Handle Student Newsletter and Handshake, UAB Career Center’s job/internship search platform. Students are also encouraged to view a sampling of Past Internship Sites to see where other students have interned in the past. Students can also identify their own internship opportunity as long as it satisfies the MPH Internship Requirements.  Students should not wait until the last 2-3 weeks before the semester begins to start thinking about where to complete the internship.  

• All core MPH courses must be completed to be eligible to complete the internship.
• Background check before registering for their internship (read through the instructions here). If a student is a UAB employee (student employment is not included), or if the student is an online international student who will complete their internship outside of the US, they are not required to complete the background check. Students completing their internship remotely are required to submit a background check order. Online students (domestic) are required to submit a background check order. The registration hold for the internship course is removed from the student’s account once the background check order has been submitted, and the SOPH administrator have securely viewed your results online with their unique username and password. For questions about completing the background check, please contact Castle Branch directly. For all other questions, please contact Amanda Bosque (abosque@uab.edu), Graduate Admissions & Scholarships Manager.
• To complete the Professional Passport Students must 1) Complete the  Interprofessional (IP) Practice Modules and components, 2) Submit two (2) Enrichment Activities, and 3) review all other content (Modules 1 – 8). Please note, the completion of IP Activities require registration and participation in extracurricular events scheduled during the semester. Do not wait until the last minute to complete the IP Activities. See the MPH Professional Passport in Canvas for more details. If you do not see the Professional Passport in your Canvas courses, please contact Tessa Graham (tessaegr@uab.edu). Exceptions to complete the IP activity concurrently with the internship may be granted on a case-by-case basis, but this exception must be granted before the student starts their MPH internship. If granted this exception, the student will be required to complete the IP Activity by the end of the semester in which they complete their internship. An “incomplete” for their internship will be issued until all Professional Passport Requirements are fulfilled.

• The focus of the internship MUST be public health practice. Internships which are solely academic research, shadowing, clinical, and clerical/administrative internships are not appropriate. 
• The internship must allow the student to demonstrate the attainment of five (5) MPH Foundational Competencies. Students can align their internship to additional Departmental Competencies.
• Students demonstrate competency attainment through the development of work products.  Each student must submit at least two (2) work products for each of the five (5) competencies selected. Products are tangible work items developed by the student during their internship. Activities that student take part in during the internship are represented through their products submission, but activities do not meet the definition of products. Products must be approved by the preceptor and internship instructor prior to the start of the internship. Products should be beneficial to both the student and the internship organization.
• The student must complete a minimum of 180 contact hours with the organization during the semester in which they register for the internship, however, the student’s preceptor can require the student to complete additional hours. All hours must be completed in a single semester. 
• The student must be registered in BlazerNet for PUH 688/688Q, a 3-credit hours course, under their internship advisor before beginning the internship.
• In order to register for the internship, the student must complete the MPH Internship Proposal Form and have this form approved electronically by their internship instructor and preceptor through the APEx portal. 
• Students cannot start the internship prior to the first day of class and must have all hours completed by the last day of class for that semester. 
• All forms are tracked using the APEx portal; all deliverables are submitted in APEx portal.