My name is Hailey Mozzachio and I am an upcoming senior at Tulane University. I am a Digital Media Production and Theatre performance double major and Psychology minor. This summer I am doing an internship at Tulane’s Campus Health Center.
I am currently a research fellow for Tulane’s Center for Academic Equity, and I was working on analyzing the current state of LGBTQ population’ health on campus after experiencing discrimination for my sexual orientation at the Tulane Health center. I went to speak to Dr. Tims about my current research, and he offered to help me further by assisting and monitoring my research with these populations on Tulane’s campus and helping to improve the Tulane health center as it pertains to LGBTQ issues.
For this internship, I will be working with a diverse group of researchers to make a survey made to assess LGBTQ and/or POC student’s experiences at the health center. The results of these surveys will then be a part of Tulane IQC, or to collect the data as part of Campus Health’s ongoing continuous quality improvement project. The research cohort and I will also be working on finding and vetting more comprehensive trainings designed for Health center staff about treating LGBTQ and/or POC students.
My five learning objectives are to increase my skills in analyzing data by analyzing the results of the survey with help from a professional, learn to work within a bureaucracy such as the Health center and be the best advocate for LGBTQ and/or POC people that I can be within this system, learn how to be intersectional in my work by knowing when to consult with others in communities that I am not a part of and giving credit and control where it is due, learn more about the specific needs of the LGBTQ and/or POC community as it pertains to mental and physical health on Tulane’s campus, and to increase my skills in gathering both quantitative and qualitative research, being especially careful and sensitive when working with marg communities.
These objectives are going to be a challenge, but I feel that it is absolutely essential for me to accomplish these goals this summer in order to be the most effective and inclusive activist that I can be. This internship applies to NCI’s mission statement in many ways, one of the most significant ways being to preserve, document, produce, and disseminate knowledge about women. This internship has a heavy focus on the experience of many LGBTQ and/or POC women and will provide a data set for these populations.
This will be important because it will document these students’ experiences and make it more difficult for our experiences to be erased. My internship also has many amazing leadership positions for women, including myself as well as for 3 of the other researchers in my cohort who are all women of color and one is a queer woman of color. The internship this summer will teach us how to be the best advocate that we can be for women of all experiences, and especially for women who are marginalized.
This internship will also supply the Health center with much-needed LGBTQ and POC female voices in a career field that is mainly dominated by white men. To prepare for this internship, the research cohort, Dr. Paula Booke, and Dr. Scott Tims are going to have a meeting to further discuss and parse out the research we will be doing this summer.
I have started applying for other grants through The Center for Academic Equity for supplementary income for myself and the research cohort. I have also created some basic outlines for LGBTQ and POC health inequities to get a basic knowledge of why this research is very important in today’s society, particularly in America. I have also created a preliminary survey for LGBTQ populations on Qualtrics and the research cohort and I will continue to work on that and a survey specifically for people of color this summer.
We have also identified some LGBTQ and POC inclusive trainings and institutions, such as CrescentCare and Brotherhood INC to possibly implement into the training of Tulane Campus Health staff. I am so excited and honored to be working with such amazing, brilliant, and kind people this summer on a project that I am very passionate about.
My research cohort, which includes Lexi Frame, Impana Murthy, Kennon Stewart, and Jasmine Davidson, provides a wealth of knowledge and information that will truly make this research powerful and impactful. I am also so happy to have support from amazing faculty here at Tulane, such as Dr. Paula Booke, Dr. Scott Tims, and Dr. Julie Henriquez. I am looking forward to taking the steps necessary for all students at Tulane to receive comfortable, comprehensive health care and to not be hindered by discrimination against their marginalized identity(s).