Internship Location: Madison WI
Organization Type: Nonprofit
Policy Areas: Health; Medicaid
My internship with the Medicaid Evaluation, Research, and Technical Assistance (MERTA) at the Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP) was amazing. I learned so much through my research concerning current Medicaid developments, and I learned invaluable information about the field of Medicaid and healthcare policy from my coworkers that I wouldn’t have been able to get in the classroom. I would definitely recommend this internship to other students because the IRP is very flexible with your schedule, and everyone who works there is helpful and compassionate. They want to see you succeed. My particular internship was a little more lowkey, and I mainly did virtual work reading news article on recent Medicaid developments or concerning topics of relevance to MERTA, and I summarized it in a weekly newsletter. There were many more opportunities offered to me in this internship, but I didn’t take advantage of all of these because I actually ended up learning through this experience that I don’t think I want to do health policy. This has NOTHING to do with the IRP and more so with my personal journey. The IRP was very willing to work with me where I was at, and I’m sure that there would be plentiful opportunities for anyone who wanted to dive more deeply into the field!