For more information contact:

Eric Beers-Director of the Indiana Healthy Weight Initiative

Indiana Public Health Association
ebeers@inpha.org
(w)317-456-7565
Intern Evaluation: Coordinated School Health Intern

Project: To gather best practices and success stories of Hoosier schools implementing the CDCs
Coordinated School Health (CSH) or Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) model in their
schools.

HSAT Mission: Empower Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child efforts across Indiana through
advocacy, collaboration, and information sharing.

IHWI: To enhance the health and quality of life of Hoosiers by promoting good nutrition, regular
physical activity, and a healthy weight through policy, environment, and lifestyle change.

General Responsibilities:

1. Attend and assist in designated HSAT and IHWI meetings/events as requested

o Vince was clear from the beginning about his scheduling restrictions which meant
before the internship we understood he could not attend the HSAT meetings.
However, Vince was able to attend a few different IHWI and School Health related
events including a Top10 Policy Meeting and the Indiana School Health Network
Conference.
2. Work with the HSAT and IHWI leadership to identify Hoosier leaders in school health practices in
certain fields.
o Vince worked well with the HSAT contacts he made. He handled professionally a
scheduling error and was still able to connect with key leaders.
3. With the HSAT/IHWI members, develop qualitative questions designed to get at the roots of
each schools success.
o Vince developed good questions around Coordinated school health. This was
demonstrated in his comprehensive draft questions and during his interview with
Hanna (and Eric) in which he asked excellent questions (often developed on the fly)
of the interviewee
4. Connect with designated school leaders and perform interviews.
o Vince performed a number of interviews very well. The only time there was a
scheduling error Vince handled it very professionally and was still able to reschedule
and complete the interview.
5. Work with HSAT to analyze findings
o Vince developed a series of outlines and blog posts with feedback from Eric that did
a good job of analyzing the findings
6. Identify the policy, systems, and environment changes that made this program successful
o Vinces interviews did a good job of revealing some of the PSE ways that the
programs were being successful.
7. Develop a short presentation designed to influence school leaders to make changes based on
the findings.
o Eric did not ask Vice to work on this portion.
8. Work with HSAT members to identify existing quantitative data sets that schools or partner
organizations have collected that support WSCC.
 For more information contact:
Eric Beers-Director of the Indiana Healthy Weight Initiative
Indiana Public Health Association
ebeers@inpha.org
(w)317-456-7565
o Vince touched on this with a few different partners but this was not an objective
that Eric asked Vince to focus on.
9. Work with schools and partners as appropriate to secure the data or to secure permission to link
to/share the data or findings.
o Vince touched on this with a few different partner but this was not an objective that
Eric asked Vince to focus on.
10. Share the data findings (if appropriate) through HSAT/IHWI social media and other outlets.
o Vinces work will be posted on our website blog and linked to via social media. Eric
will complete this portion after Vince has finished his internship
11. Create an online repository of Indiana specific data (or links to data) that relates to WSCC and
other school efforts.
o Eric did not ask Vince to work on this portion.
Strengths:
Vince wrote strong questions and demonstrated a broad understanding of the issue. His questions were
clearly informed by understanding the topic and the overall objective of what kinds of information that
we were trying to gather. My suggestions were often just that, suggestions. I rarely if ever had to
highlight key missing components and instead only had to help make small tweaks when we reviewed
things together. It was the same for the blog posts that Vince created. They were well written and
effective. Vince worked well without major oversight on my part.

Another important part of Vinces work and a time when he demonstrated his overall public health
mastery was when Vince assisted with policy development research for the Indiana implementation of
the Every Student Succeeds Act. Vince used his expertise and resources to research existing evidence-
based school health programs. These key examples were given directly to HSAT/IHWI partners at the
Indiana Department of Education (IDOE) and helped the HSAT/IHWI develop a strong, evidenced-based
understanding of school health issues and public policy. This work was not specifically indicated in the
internship responsibilities but because Vince understood the key elements of school health efforts and
public health public policy, I knew I could rely on his research to help inform the important feedback we
gave to IDOE.

Areas for Improvement:

Vince should continue to be confident in his ability and understanding of public health issues. There
were times when Id ask Vince to recap for me things he had learned and he would read from his paper
or from the materials. I think that Vince has strong critical thinking skills and understanding and I would
encourage him to speak on some of these things in his own words and through his own understanding.
As an employer Im less interested in the dictionary or technical definitions of concepts rather Im
interested in folks demonstrating in their own words how the concepts/definitions function in real time.
Like I said before, Vince has a strong understanding of the issues and demonstrated this in the
interviews and with his work. To speculate, I chalk this up to being in a student mindset where the
emphasis is on the definition and the right answer rather than the practical application.