#UMNMCH student Grace Armon (MPH 2025) describes her Applied Experience (APEX) with the Title V MCH Internship Program through the National MCH Workforce Development Center. Her internship with the South Dakota Title V Division focused on analyzing community needs assessments. Grace’s background in geography and passion for place effects on health equipped her with the skills to apply demographic and geographic analysis to MCH populations.

Path to the UMN MPH in MCH Program

I did my undergrad at Macalester College, where I majored in Geography with concentrations in Urban Studies and Community and Global Health. In the fall of 2019, I took a Medical Geography class and was fascinated by the idea that the place you live affects your health, which continues to be my main focus within the field. Between undergrad and starting the maternal and child health (MCH) Program, I lived in Germany and worked for a rural telehealth agency, which cemented my interest in the intersection of geography and public health. Upon starting the MCH MPH Program, we discussed Title V at length in our Foundations of MCH Leadership class. After learning about the Title V internship program, I knew it would be a great opportunity to learn about how MCH looks in different states.

Getting Matched

The Title V MCH Services Block Grant provides federal funding to states to improve health of MCH populations. The Title V MCH Internship Program is run through the National MCH Workforce Development Center at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and is open to undergraduate and graduate students in MCH training programs. The remote internship runs for ten weeks during the summer and is designed for public health students to meet their applied practice requirement. Different state health departments propose projects requiring interns, and applicants rank which projects they want to work on. Out of 20 Title V interns in our cohort, Kelly Gill and I were the only two UMN MCH students chosen. I was matched with the South Dakota Department of Health Office of Child and Family Services to assist with the Title V Needs Assessment. This was also the only project that involved using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software for mapping health data, so it was great to see that there were opportunities that fit my interests. 

The Role of the Intern

My co-Title V intern, Maura, and I worked under Fabricia Latterell, an MCH epidemiologist with the South Dakota Department of Health. Our job was to assist with analyzing data from the online community needs assessment survey, which was part of the South Dakota Title V Needs Assessment. The survey questions we focused on asked what residents of South Dakota see as the most pressing health concerns for infants, children, adolescents, and women in their community. Possible concerns included access to food, childcare, health insurance, transportation, jobs, positive role models, and more. Maura and I used SAS and Microsoft Excel to stratify variables by race/ethnicity, sex, age, tribal membership, and county before creating bar graphs and tables of response rates for each answer choice. My favorite part was uploading our data into ArcGIS, a spatial data mapping and analysis program, to visualize responses by county, and overlaying our data with tribal land, maternity care deserts, and poverty to see if any patterns emerged. Our work culminated in data briefs, where we summarized our findings for infants, children, adolescents, and women, in addition to a final presentation about our work to the South Dakota Title V team and our Title V internship cohort.

The Landscape of MCH in South Dakota

Something that I found surprising was how different the perspective of the community was from what we as public health workers perceived to be the most pressing community health needs in South Dakota. In geography and public health, we often think of access to transportation as a huge barrier, but it was much less of a concern for the communities surveyed. In our presentation to the South Dakota Title V team, we reported that access to childcare was perceived as the most pressing health concern for infants, children, and women in communities. Even Title V National Performance Measures don’t include childcare. This showed me the importance of treating the community as the experts, and how to think more critically about my role in public health.

Wisdom from Bridgette

The great thing about public health is that it’s so interdisciplinary and people come from all different backgrounds. Sometimes people ask why I switched to public health from geography or express their doubt that the two fields actually go together, but once I explain my work, they see the connection. Especially as someone who doesn’t have a clinical background, an MPH can seem daunting on paper. I remember feeling really overwhelmed and unqualified a couple of weeks into my first semester. I called my friend, Bridgette, who told me that the field needs my unique knowledge and experiences just as much as it needs everyone else’s. So I will pass on her advice to prospective students and anyone feeling like there’s someone out there who would do a better job than they would.

Sources

Health Resources & Services Administration (2024). National Performance Measures HRSA Maternal and Child Health. Retrieved from https://mchb.tvisdata.hrsa.gov/PrioritiesAndMeasures/NationalPerformanceMeasures 

Health Resources & Services Administration (2024). Title V Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Services Block Grant. HRSA Maternal and Child Health. Retrieved from https://mchb.hrsa.gov/programs-impact/title-v-maternal-child-health-mch-services-block-grant 

National MCH Workforce Development Center (2025). About. Retrieved from https://mchwdc.unc.edu/about/ 

National MCH Workforce Development Center (2025). Title V MCH Internship Program. Retrieved from https://mchwdc.unc.edu/title-v-mch-internship-program-students/  

Grace Armon is a second-year MCH MPH student.Grace received her BA from Macalester College.

Interested in learning more about getting a degree in MCH? Visit our MCH Program page for more information.

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