Project Manager Intern
Company
Kaiser Permanente is one of the biggest health care companies in the nation that exists to provide high-quality, affordable health care services and to improve the health of their members and the communities they serve.
Position
A part of the 2019 KPNW Intern Cohort, I was hired as a Project Manager in the Clinical Quality & Population Health Department.
My role focused on improving the patient experience and attendance ratio within our local clinics in the Kaiser Northwest region. Although I worked with all asthma and diabetes patients, my main focus was to decrease deficiencies within the Latino community. These tasks include, calling and interacting with Spanish speaking patients, managing programs and projects that increased Latino health resources and actively engaging in building and maintaining relationships with the local Latino community in Portland.
Building Trust
For our group project, I was able to work with 6 other Kaiser interns in order to create different strategies on how to decrease health deficiencies within the Latino population. Below is our presentation which we were able to present to Ruth Williams-Brinkley, the President of KPNW.
Cultural Competent Communication
One of the biggest problems Kaiser faces is getting underrepresented community members to come into the clinics. After speaking with local patients and hearing their feedback, we realized that most of the times our clinics aren’t accessible to folks who speak another language other than English. With that being said, we created to 2 videos that help raise awareness to this issue both internally and externally.
We Want You Here
With our “We Want You Here” video, our goal is to let our underrepresented community know that we are here for them. This external video was filmed in multiples languages in order to reach multiple audiences while sharing one common purpose.
How would you feel?
One of the internal findings in our project was the “not my problem” culture within Kaiser. With the creation of our “How would you feel?” video, our goal was to create conversation within our internal employees to put themselves in our patients shoes when providing high quality care.
Reflection
My time at Kaiser Permanente was one that I will never forget. I got to build strong relationships with interns from across the nation and was able to learn about the healthcare system. As a project manager I got to work and interact with different employees nationwide as we tackled health disparities in the northwest region. However, one of my biggest learning experiences was my ability to transfer my soft and technical skills to a completely different role. Although I was a project manager, I was able to use my media and community engagement skills into managing asthma and diabetes pilot programs. I had absolutely no previous experience within public health, but within 11 weeks managed to learn how to work in a fast paced corporate environment. This experience gave me confidence in pursuing roles outside of my comfort zone and intersecting my previous skills into future opportunities.
