A partnership between Augusta University (AU) and the Georgia Department of Public Health’s East Central Health District 6 is offering AU students practical experience while contributing to public health initiatives across 13 mostly rural counties in Georgia. The internship program, which began in January 2025, has involved students from AU’s School of Public Health in data analysis projects aimed at informing local health strategies.
Students Josiah Barnes, Hannah Copp, and Jasmine Jones have supported the district office by compiling and analyzing health data. Their work provides insight into community health trends and helps guide resource allocation for the department. The partnership is open to students from various AU colleges, giving them a firsthand look at how public health agencies operate, especially in underserved areas.
“Internships are a critical and very practical component of our MPH program, offering students the opportunity to apply their training in real-world settings, preparing them for careers in public health and helping them network within our community to find that post-graduation job,” said Teresa M. Waters, PhD, dean of AU’s School of Public Health. “These internships also build a critical bridge between AU and DPH, providing invaluable feedback on our educational programs and helping us identify additional collaborative opportunities to meet the needs of our community.”
Jasmine Jones noted the importance of using county-level data: “We learned the value of key county-level data, but it’s not always as widely available or accessible as state-level data. We also compared county-level data to both state-level and national-level data so the DPH team can examine different health trends and patterns.”
Lee Donohue, MD, district health director for District 6 and former faculty member at Augusta University’s Medical College of Georgia, highlighted the impact of student contributions: “We’ve always loved interacting with local college students, and the work Josiah, Hannah and Jasmine did will influence where our department focuses our resources to impact public health. We’ll be taking the data they compiled out to the counties we serve in this district. It’s so much more meaningful to see the data extrapolated down to your own ZIP code and neighborhood. The leaders in the communities we serve want to see what their health metrics look like and how they compare to others in our district and state.”
Christine O’Meara served as preceptor for these interns during their respective semesters. She emphasized mutual benefits: “It’s a win-win because the students need experience in different disciplines, including data synthesis, and we are then able to use the data they have collected, analyzed and interpreted to help with grant proposals and program planning. We have already used data from the spring, and we are excited to share these new databases moving forward. The students are building data analysis and communication skills, and we’re able to put their findings to practical use —whether that’s in grant proposals or informing our county health departments’ staff and boards.”
The students worked with datasets such as County Health Rankings & Roadmaps 2025—managed by University of Wisconsin with support from Robert Wood Johnson Foundation—as well as information from sources like Georgia Rural Health Innovation Center and Centers for Disease Control.
Hannah Copp described some challenges faced during research: “A lot of our counties are very small, and some key indicators data we wanted to assess is lacking or incomplete. That meant investigating other resources, so we learned how to navigate multiple resources available to us and put together a more comprehensive dataset to present.”
Jie Chen, PhD, associate dean for Academic & Student Affairs at AU’s School of Public Health said: “Internships provide our MPH students with applied practice experiences, and such experiences gained by these students at DPH District 6 this year served both our students and the community well. It is a great testament of how our public health education program is well integrated with practices in the public health domain and how our students achieved these important competencies in the public health education.”
The project included creating visual reports comparing local trends with state averages; these materials will be shared with county leaders for planning purposes.
Looking ahead, Christine O’Meara hopes future internships will expand beyond current projects into areas such as nonprofit infrastructure development—helping rural counties identify potential funding sources through employer-based charitable giving programs.
“This is such a great synergy for us in public health to work with universities in the area and really improve what we can offer for the community together,” Donohue said. “Having these younger voices where they can say ‘I can make an impact with my group,’ that’ll hopefully start changing trends. I hope this experience will inspire them for whatever directions their careers go, and I hope they have great vibrant careers.”
