Internships in Nontraditional Health Care Settings: A Pilot Program

This paper reports on efforts to establish master's-level internships in nontraditional health care settings. With the encouragement of the Medical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association, seven students were placed in the following settings: workplace wellness programs, a center for independent living for the physically handicapped an educational program for unwed adolescent fathers, a health policy organization, a communitybased AIDS intervention program, and the Life Sciences Directorate at the Johnson Space Center. The project addressed the following issues: the advent of new problems in health care, such as those resulting from AIDS; the increase in health care work accomplished in nonmedical settings; the increased importance of credentialism in sociology; and the increasingly blurred line between research and practice in the sociology of health. Suggestions are made for the application of findings to the management of undergraduate internships.