Field Placements
During the first half of their second year in the program, MSPH students participate in a supervised field placement in domestic and/or international settings. The field placement provides the opportunity to integrate formal classroom teaching with practical experience in the student's chosen field. The minimum requirement is two terms (4 months) full-time work (at least 680 hours).
PFRH Field Placements 2022-2025
Daisy Zapata, MSPH ’25
For my field placement, I am working as an asylum seeker advocate at Asylee Women Enterprise (AWE). AWE is a nonprofit organization that works with partners, including Johns Hopkins, to support asylum seekers, survivors of human trafficking, and other forced migrants as they rebuild their lives in Maryland. I have been able to support clients with holistic case management support and connect them to health care and community resources.
Recent PFRH Field Placement Sites
Below is a small sample of the many organizations, schools, clinical divisions, and companies where PFRH MSPH students have completed their field placements.
Clinical
Boston Children's Hospital: Gynecology
Boston, MA
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine: OB/GYN Gynecologic Oncology
Baltimore, MD
Massachusetts General Hospital: Division of General Academic Pediatrics
Boston, MA
Planned Parenthood Maryland, Education and Outreach Department
Baltimore, MD
Research
Center for AIDS Research at Johns Hopkins University, Implementation Science Hub
Baltimore, MD
International Center for Reproductive Health, Kenya, William H. Gates Sr. Institute for Population and Reproductive Health, Johns Hopkins University
Nairobi, Kenya
O'Neill Institute, Georgetown Law
Washington, D.C.
PMA Ethiopia, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
PRISMA
San Isidro, Lima, Peru
Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH), University of California San Francisco
Oakland, CA
University of Western Australia, School of Population and Global Health
Perth, Australia
Nonprofit Organizations
AMOS Health and Hope
Managua, Nicaragua
Days for Girls
Mount Vernon, WA
Global Child Nutrition Foundation (GCNF)
Seattle, WA
National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association, Policy and Communications
Washington, D.C.
Puerto Rican Action Board: Family Services, Parents as Teachers
East Brunswick, NJ
Sehgal Foundation
Gurugram, Haryana, India
United States of Care
Washington, D.C.
Government
New Jersey Department of Health, Health Improvement Planning
Trenton, NJ
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), Center for Mental Health Services
Rockville, MD
Virginia Department of Health, MCH/Title V
Richmond, VA
West Palm Beach VA Healthcare System
West Palm Beach, FL
For-Profit Organizations
Atom Strategic Consulting
Morristown, NJ
CAF - Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean
Quito, Ecuador
SafetyNEST
San Francisco, CA
Shae Nicholson, MSPH ’25
I am honored to be a Global Health Established Field Placement awardee and a Bloomberg Center for Public Innovation Summer Scholar in Fortaleza, Brazil. I am collaborating with the city government’s Research and Planning Institute (Ipplan) to implement a survey assessing the nutrition and diet quality of youth ages 15 to 29 participating in city programs. The findings will guide a policy proposal aimed at enhancing dietary quality among the city's youth.
680
Hours of supervised, real-world experience MSPH students gain in their field placement
31
U.S. cities where MSPH students held field placements 2022-2025
20
Countries where MSPH students held field placements 2022-2025
67
Organizations where MSPH students completed a field placement 2022-2027
Aris Stovall, MSPH ’25
For my field placement, I am working as a research assistant for Dr. Noelene Jeffers. My main project builds upon a Doula-Healthcare Convening we conducted in April that aimed to uncover barriers and facilitators to integrating Doulas into the healthcare setting. Currently, I am working on coding the transcripts from that session and developing a codebook with the team. The goal is to create a survey based on the identified themes and send it back to the convening participants to gain a consensus on research priorities to make doula-healthcare partnerships a reality.
Annaliese Collins, MSPH ’25
I will be working at the SPARC Women’s Center, which stands for Sex workers Promoting Action, Risk reduction, and Community mobilization. SPARC seeks to support women, agender, and gender-nonbinary individuals who may be engaging in any sort of street-based, survival activities. This could include selling or using drugs or engaging in sex work. I will be providing support in the clinic and on mobile outreach shifts by serving participants through harm reduction supply distribution, outreach, and engagement. I will be developing an engagement strategy, which will be used to gain feedback from participants who utilize SPARC’s services.