It is with great enthusiasm that I submit my application for the State Policy Fellowship. I am a recent graduate from the National Urban Fellows (NUF) program, where I obtained my Masters of Public Administration (MPA). The NUF program recruits women and people of color to obtain their MPA in 14 months and dedicate their careers to the public or nonprofit sector. I bring a diversity of experiences from candidate and issue-based political campaigns to policy analysis and research to non-profit sector work.
The State Policy Fellowship will allow me to marry my interest and commitment to addressing disparities in health outcomes with research and policy. Specifically, I am drawn to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ and the Washington
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My racial identity drove me toward working with communities of color, where I quickly became interested in public policy and community organizing.
Before graduate school, I received a crash course in community health clinics through International Community Health Services (ICHS). ICHS is a federally qualified community health center that offers “affordable health care to Seattle and King County’s Asian, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander communities, and the broader community. ICHS provides primary medical and dental care, health support services, and health education in seven locations (ICHS, 2016).” ICHS is where my passion for health policy ignited.
Thanks to my experience in the community health care clinic system and my graduate fellowship placement at the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), in Washington, DC, I found a passion for health and health policy. PCORI is a nonprofit organization charged with bringing health care professionals and patients together in cooperative research ventures to find the best treatments for diseases ranging from diabetes to depression. I created a baseline research and engagement report on the engagement of purchasers and payers in the PCORI’s $3 billion dollar-funded portfolio. This became the first ever-baseline