Concussion Education and Advocacy Internship Program
Apply to our internship program
The application cycle for our Summer 2024 Education & Advocacy Internship is open! The internship runs June 24 – August 16 and is open to undergraduate students. Our program is remote and open to any interested students who can attend our synchronous meetings. For more information, read Apply to Our Internship Program. Our application window closes on May 4.
About our internship program
Our Concussion Education & Advocacy Internship Program is an internationally recognized remote internship that trains students from colleges and universities across the US and Canada. Our program is the only undergraduate professional development program in mild brain injury; we gave a presentation about our novel service-learning program at the 2021 Virtual World Congress on Brain Injury.
In a 2-minute video, intern alums discuss highlights from our internship program.
In a 1:45 video, interns share their experiences and new insights into their future careers.
The summer internship program runs 8 weeks, with 240 hours of service-learning experience, and the winter program runs 3 weeks, with 90 hours of service-learning experience. Each year, we educate up to 30 interns from as many as 10 institutions, including small liberal arts colleges and large public universities. We recruit a diverse group of undergraduates for each cohort and prioritize creating an equitable, inclusive working environment with the interns.
Interns come to us to help them prepare for careers in research, healthcare, and public health, and they leave as informed concussion advocates. We engender their growth in research literacy, science writing and communication, professionalism, and advocacy through our holistic, unique, and in-depth program structure.
We have created a unique, multi-media concussion curriculum that interns study daily. We host weekly guided discussions and a twice-weekly Expert Guest Speaker Series. We pair our interns with professional mentors, who oversee the interns' work to create and update accessible, evidence-based, patient-facing resources for our website and newsletter to benefit concussion patients, clinicians, and advocates. The professionals who volunteer their time to be mentors or guest speakers are leading experts in the field.
These resources are read by 12,000 monthly visitors and 2,800 newsletter subscribers, educating healthcare providers and patients in up-to-date concussion care. Patients use these resources to learn about their injury, discover and understand treatment options, and find providers to help them.
One project for our Winter 2023 internship cohort was to interview alums from earlier internship cohorts to learn how their internship experience has impacted their lives going forward. Click through to see these blog posts, each of which includes a video of the interview and a written transcript.
Our primary goal is to educate the next generation of researchers, healthcare providers, and public health professionals. Medical schools, for example, dedicate approximately one hour to concussion education over four years, so our internship graduates will be far ahead of their graduate student cohorts.
Another goal is that our undergraduate interns return to their campuses as informed advocates for proper concussion care, whether that be with fellow athletes on college teams or friends who get concussions from accidents such as falls or auto accidents. Most colleges lack an integrated policy for concussion management of their students, particularly non-athletes, so it is beneficial for the college health and safety environment to have students on campus who are educated about concussion management. Many of our graduates have reported that they have also provided information to non-college-related friends and family when they have sustained a concussion.
A third goal is to give the undergraduates a positive experience of a professional remote work environment, specifically focusing on developing camaraderie, enjoyment, and respect in remote environments that have become ubiquitous in the past several years but are often dissatisfying and alienating. In addition, we provide mentorship that strengthens interns’ ability to manage their time, work efficiently, and take responsibility for projects in a remote environment with limited supervision.
Our final goal is to support our interns in advancing their careers. We provide letters of reference to intern alums as they apply for other internships and fellowships during their college years and to professional positions when they graduate. We have also provided letters of reference for intern alums’ medical school applications.
Internship Alum Interviews
2023 Guest Speakers
December 2023 Interns
Summer 2023 Interns
December 2022 Interns
2022 Expert Guest Speakers
Summer 2022 Interns
Winter 2021 Interns
2021 Expert Guest Speakers
Summer 2021 Interns
December 2020 Interns
2020 Expert Guest Speakers
Summer 2020 Interns
Summer 2020 Internship Program Management
December 2019 Interns
December 2018 Interns