Internship Sites

South Park Latino Neighbors Partnership

Noel Chrisman, PhD, MPH
Professor, UW School of Nursing
(206) 685-0804
noelj@u.washington.edu

Latino families and other families of color in the Puget Sound area have strong ties among themselves and a tradition of adapting to diversity.  However, poverty and cultural differences impede their abilities to maintain levels of health comparable to the white middle class. South Park is an extremely heterogeneous neighborhood in South Seattle in which a large number of Latino families reside.  The internship in South Park allows for extensive experience in hands-on community assessment with the opportunity to navigate through multiple community based organizations including a food bank, clinic, community center, retirement home, teen programs, environmental agencies and many other programs.  Consequently there are multitudes of differing experiences available ranging from highly structured research to community organizing.  

Two CHN graduate students worked in South Park in 2010-2011.  After the initial quarter to become acquainted with the community and to meet partners, they began working with Dagmar Cronn, the President of the Neighborhood Association.  Their focus was on implementing an exercise program in conjunction with existing nutrition programs.  2009-2010 saw two teams in South Park.  One created ‘Girls Night Out’ a fun monthly evening for adolescent girls that has been adopted as a regular event at the Community Center.  The other team worked at South Park Manor, a facility formerly run by the Seattle Housing Authority and now owned by Sea Mar.  Their project can be viewed on a School of Nursing Newsletter from that period.

The two major opportunities for 2011-2012 (if the assessment process promotes these choices) are in nutrition/exercise and environmental justice.  There is a growing set of projects related to nutrition: the food bank, the meals at the senior center, Juanita’s breakfast program, and now a Community Kitchen at the Community Center. This is a great chance to watch the growth of a system at the grass roots level.  Second is the cleanup process of the Duwamish River Superfund Site.  This is a chance to work with the Environmental Coalition of South Seattle (ECOSS), a long standing environmental justice agency in the neighborhood.  There are, of course, many other opportunities for first year (grass roots change) and second year (policy and system change) students.

CHN graduate students will use interview and participant-observation techniques to gain an understanding of the community, supplemented by student reports reaching back to the inception of the Partnership in 1995.  Key partners include Sea Mar Community Health Centers, South Park Community Recreation Center, Concord Elementary School, the South Park Area Redevelopment Committee (SPARC), the Environmental Coalition of South Seattle (ECOSS), the Providence-Regina House Foodbank, the South Park Senior Center and the School of Nursing. We also work with the South Park Service Providers Network.

For more information, check out the South Park Community Partnership website .

In addition, take a look at the July 11th edition of the Pacific Northwest Magazine about South Park.