Internship at Clemson Extension Office

Internship at Clemson Extension OfficeBarron HicklinSenior-Health Science

missionThe Accountable Communities program aims to expand beyond the basic patient centered medical home to create a platform for community lead innovation by connecting and utilizing all community resources to have a collective impact. strength of GHS behind itTaking healthcare to the community for better access to caretakes the concept of medical homes and community resource coordination one step further by fostering collaborations born of shared responsibility among clinical and community sector participants to impact overall community health as well as individual healthCommitted to transforming the health & well being of the communityProgram hopes to reduce ED visits and train a new workforce that can impact the future

Internship SiteThe Clemson Extension Office has many different roles. All of the people that work in the Extension Office hold various titles. These titles range from the Accountable Communities Coordinator, 4H Agent, Area Food Safety and Nutrition Agent, Area Horticulture Agent, and many more. We have had the opportunity to work with several of these positions and experience various aspects of the Greenville County Extension Office.

Our supervisor Shana has been an excellent supervisor and preceptor. She is always willing to help us with whatever we need and always has a smile on her face. Were looking forward to spending the next year with her.

Greenville county squareMost of our time has been spent at the Clemson Extension Office. We travel to Greenville Memorial Hospital and other surrounding hospitals on occasion, but our office is located at the County Square.

Internship SitePutting knowledge to work

The Greenville County Square is located in downtown Greenville and provides many different services for the surrounding community. One of the many offices located in the County Square is the Clemson Extension Office. This is where we report every morning.

The Interns OfficeWe were given our own office space as well as new chairs and a center work table. Everyone made us feel right at home in our new space.

Canning with MarieWeve gotten to experience many different roles beyond the scope of our internship description. Clemson Extension is made up of so many different positions and we have had the opportunity to take part in all of it. One of the first days we worked with Marie, the Area Food Safety and Nutrition Agent, and she taught us how to make homemade strawberry jam. She also taught us the proper way to safely can the jam.

Butterfly festivalAfter we completed our first week of work, we were asked to help with the Butterfly Festival at Roper Mountain in Greenville. Clemson Extension was one of the main participants here, and every agent in the office presented something unique at the festival. Our role involved helping Patricia, the 4H agent, run the mobile unit. We helped young children make butterflies out of coffee filters and clothes pins and we also helped handle some of the insects on display. We all enjoyed this experience.

Pictures from the festival

Handling one of the Bess Beetles at the Festival

Danielle and I got to try the different types of honey provided.

Shadowing weekThe second week of our internship was fun and exhilarating. We had the privilege to shadow some community health workers, paramedics, and social workers. My favorite day was shadowing Darin and Roger. Darin Thomas is a social worker with Greenville Health Systems and Roger is a paramedic with GHS as well. The day started early and ended around 6:30 in the evening and there was never a dull moment throughout our day. I got to ride along with them while they visited patients and we even visited Greenville Memorial Hospital.

Expanded Food and nutrition education programThe Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program, or EFNEP, is another program that we helped with. We joined Carol Salley when she presented her nutrition lesson to Miracle Hill Childrens Home and also New Foundations Home for Children. These are children who were part of a situation that required the enlistment of DSS or DJJ. We helped Carol provide a healthy snack to these children and young adults and remind them of what a healthy plate looks like.

Nutrition Lesson at maudlin Montessori school At the end of our fifth week interning, we taught a nutrition lesson to the children at Mauldin Montessori School. Danielle, Logan, and I came up with summer snack recipes that involved fruits, vegetables, and other healthy items to give the kids ideas of some things they might have not tried before. I showed the children how to make Fruit Pizza. This involves a triangular piece of watermelon (to look like a slice of pizza), and toppings such as strawberries, blueberries, and kiwi. I was surprised to learn that many of the children did not care for the watermelon but were pleased with the other fruits we had to offer.

Recipes for nutrition lesson

Community Health Worker TrainingMost recently, we have been participating in Community Health Worker training. The training is a total of three weeks, but we have a fieldwork week in between each week of training. Darin Thomas is teaching the course to us, however he asked each of us to present one of the chapters with a PowerPoint presentation. We followed the outline in the book in order to teach the class the essentials of each of our chapters.

I presented Chapter 11 on Home Visiting

Fieldwork for CHW trainingDuring our off weeks, Darin assigns us different tasks to complete to better understand what it is like for our clients to try and access the healthcare systems, healthy food, and resources such as health insurance. Someone who uses the SNAP program, previously known as food stamps, has about $4.50 a day to spend. We had to come up with 3 relatively healthy meals using only that budget. We also had to find a store within walking distance of neighborhoods, because transportation is a large issue with this population.

Kids cooking campA kids cooking camp was held July 20th-22nd at the Extension Office in the conference room. Margaret Condrasky, a professor at Clemson, asked us to help her out with the camp for the second half of the week. We had about 20 kids from ages 9-14 who enrolled in the camp. We helped them make healthy recipes to eat and also shared some nutritional information about the five food groups. Everyone was very engaged and wanted to be involved throughout the whole process.