Upon starting my internship at Palm Health Foundation, I was quickly included in various meetings like those for the foundation’s Rapid Response Team. This team received COVID-19-related stories from 1,000+ individuals in the community using a software called SenseMaker, identified those in need of immediate assistance, and reached out with resources ranging from food to mental health. Ultimately, I took on the role of reading the submitted stories, selecting the most urgent ones, and forwarding them to other members of the Rapid Response Team. Helping this team was truly a full circle experience, as I would later have the opportunity to hear other team members report back on how they helped these individuals.
 

Beyond the Rapid Response Team, my work with the SenseMaker software allowed me to contribute at varying levels to many of Palm Health Foundation’s other projects, which illuminated the foundation’s broad scope of work. From helping design a SenseMaker tool for the nonprofit Siblings of Murdered Siblings to converting and updating the collective SenseMaker framework used for the Healthier Together Communities’ mini grants, I had the opportunity to see the many shapes and sizes public health approaches can take.
 

Lastly, I worked with Director of Grants & Evaluation Andy McAusland in the beginning phases of a new community-based research project Palm Health Foundation is conducting in the Glades. This project will use SenseMaker to collect stories from residents of the Glades community and let them determine for themselves the most important health-related areas for local research institutions to investigate. My experience on this project was one of the many that reaffirmed my decision to intern with the foundation because this project was used as an opportunity to engage directly with residents of the Glades community. We hired and trained local residents to serve as facilitators for this project and enabled them to use their unique personal experiences to guide the formation of our SenseMaker prompt and tool. Just as Palm Health does in its numerous other initiatives and projects, we encouraged the community to take action to help itself. After all, who knows the specific issues faced by a community better than members of that community?
 

Leaving this internship, I feel like I now possess a much clearer perspective on approaching health inequities. This is a skill that will prove immensely valuable in my future role as a physician because there is no “one size fits all” solution to the health inequities that persist in countless communities, including my own here in Palm Beach County. I am incredibly grateful to have had the opportunity to spend my gap year interning with Palm Health Foundation and am thankful for all the great people I met and worked with this year. I would particularly like to thank Andy for all the time and attention he devoted this year so that I would get the most I possibly could out of this experience. Interning with Palm Health Foundation was such a collaborative and supportive experience and I look forward to using all that I have learned in my future career.