CHI Community Internships | Office for Business & Community Economic Development

PLEASE NOTE: OBCED restructures department to invest in Supplier Diversity

Due to the restructure of OBCED, certain programs within the Community Health Initiative (CHI) will be phased out. As of the end of this academic year (June 2022) we will no longer run the student consulting projects and there will be NO CHI Summer Internships.

Read more about these changes here.

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Through funding support provided by Medica, the Office for Business & Community Economic Development (OBCED) will now offer the Community Health Initiative (CHI). The goal of this initiative is two-fold; to provide resources that help community-based nonprofit organizations or small businesses that work in the areas impacting public health, social services, medicine, medical technology, or to help these organizations build capacity and improve their overall performance and effectiveness in communities of color; and secondly to provide University of Minnesota students with valuable applied learning experiences by linking them to opportunities in communities that face public health disparities and other socio-economic issues.

About the Community Internships

Funded by the CHI Program, this Community Internship will assist those nonprofits and businesses that focus directly on addressing public health issues or health disparities in underserved, socially and economically challenged communities.

The CHI Community Internships are offered in the summer (late May - August).

Internship proposals may cover topical areas of Public Health, Community Health Education, Social Work, Population Health Coordination, Nursing Care/Management, Health/Medical Research, Feasibility Study, Program Evaluation and Measurement, Program Development and Community Outreach.

Students participating in the Community Internships are full-time graduate students enrolled in the University of Minnesota, School of Public Health, School of Social Work, School of Medicine and Nursing. Students may use these internships to fulfill field and applied learning experience degree requirements.

The CHI Program Manager receives applications from qualifying organizations and students, then matches them based on skill set, work and volunteer experience, classroom knowledge, etc.

The student and organization may also come already matched with a joint internship project, but each must submit their own application and request to work with each other.