Asian Health Literacy Association

So what exactly am I doing?

I wish I could answer this question to my friends back at home who message me on Facebook to see how I’m adjusting in the internship. I honestly don’t know what my job description is exactly. But- here’s what I do know:

1. I am an intern for Professor Peter Chang under the Asian Health Literacy Association (AHLA) at Taipei Hospital (check it out- I’m on the website!http://www.ahla-asia.org/main.php?fid=02&com_id=07)

2. In the last couple of days, we’ve met countless doctors, nurses and health administrators who have been extremely welcoming

3. Our AHLA staff is full of enthusiastic people that love to chat and laugh

4. The internship is what we want to make it

We’ve been having introductions to AHLA (http://www.ahla-asia.org), the staff team, hospital tours and really just settling in. Me and the other interns have more or less been tasked to understand what AHLA is all about .We’ve been told that we will primarily be helping with the Health Literacy Video Competition, AHLA 3rd Annual Health Literacy Conference and the Health Literacy Study that will be conducted at our hospital. I’m not going to lie though- I’m the type of person who wants to get right to work! We only have a couple months to make a difference and I want to utilize the entire time as much as possible. I guess I am getting restless because I’m hoping to start surveying patients but I know I need to be patient. Our professor’s graduate student is working on editing the European Health Literacy Survey with Peter to fit with the Taiwanese population. Regardless- I am still having a blast meeting everyone at the workplace. The only barrier is that all the employees speak mandarin and Taiwanese to us and it is difficult to remember to switch my language. Who knows- give me a few more days to become localized!

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