Simone Schriger, Ph.D. Candidate in Psychology, Los Angeles, CA
This summer, I traveled to Gaborone, Botswana to complete a summer research internship based at the Multidisciplinary Tumor (MDT) Clinic at Princess Marina Hospital. This clinic – developed through the Botswana-UPenn Partnership (BUP), a longstanding collaboration between the University of Pennsylvania, University of Botswana, and Government of Botswana – provides comprehensive cancer care for patients with cervical cancer. Although the CDC estimates that over 90% of cervical cancers are preventable with effective vaccination against HPV, cervical cancer remains the most common cancer in people with cervixes in Botswana. Despite a national effort to provide school-based HPV immunization, there has been no improvement in rates of cervical cancer, suggesting that HPV vaccination alone is insufficient in reducing mortality rates. During my internship, I sought to contribute to an ongoing project aimed at better understanding the gaps in cervical cancer prevention, screening, diagnosis, and treatment among individuals in Botswana. Further, I sought to gain greater understanding of the practice of clinical psychology within Botswana, including familiarizing myself with the country’s mental health infrastructure and learning about pressing mental health challenges.
My time in Gaborone was spent in a variety of settings and roles both within and outside of the MDT clinic. Given my background in implementation science research and my longstanding interest in ethical global health partnership, spending time within the MDT clinic and with BUP staff were of great interest. I shadowed physicians within the weekly MDT clinic to gain better understanding of the clinic’s patient population and their mental health needs, carrying out the preliminary stages of a mental health needs assessment. During weekly clinic, I spoke with patients about their psychological struggles and the types of services and supports that they would find most useful. I also held a listening session with clinic nursing staff where we discussed challenges associated with their roles and the mental health burdens associated with caring for cancer patients in the clinic. This listening session resulted in identification of several actionable next steps, including a forthcoming survey of mental health needs within the clinic staff. Beyond the scope of the MDT clinic, I also had the opportunity to meet psychologists within the broader Princess Marina Hospital and at the University of Botswana, learning more about mental health infrastructure within Botswana, higher education in psychology within the country, and some of the current challenges within the field of clinical psychology. Additionally, I contributed to an ongoing systematic needs assessment aimed at improving adoption, implementation, and maintenance of cervical cancer prevention, screening, and diagnosis within a network of clinics.
This internship allowed me to gain invaluable hands-on experience at the intersection of clinical psychology and global health and to carry out research within the context of a longstanding partnership built on principles of equity and sustainability. Through this experience, I gained understanding of some of the most prominent mental health challenges in Botswana and added to my understanding of the commonalities in implementation challenges that exist across continents. Despite my interest in global mental health and my experience in global health research prior to graduate school, as a graduate student, it was logistically difficult to engage meaningfully in research outside of the US. This was a rare opportunity to bolster my implementation research skills in resource-limited settings. I am very grateful to GAPSA for supporting this meaningful and formative experience that was highly aligned with both personal and professional values. The knowledge I gained during this internship will be instrumental in guiding my next steps; this experience informed my decision to pursue training in a primary care setting during my upcoming clinical internship (i.e., the final year of my PhD training). During this upcoming year, I hope to develop skills that will be useful in future work within the MDT clinic and in Botswana more broadly, where I plan to engage in future collaborations aimed at improving mental health care in Botswana.
This is part of a series of posts by recipients of the 2024 GAPSA Summer Internship Funding Program that is coordinated by Penn Career Services. We’ve asked funding recipients to reflect on their summer experiences and talk about the industries in which they spent their summer. You can read the entire series here.
