Summer Internship: Network of the National Library of Medicine (NNLM)

By: Maura Saltzman

Greetings from Iowa City!

After my original summer internship plans were affected by COVID, I was grateful to be provided with the opportunity to continue my graduate assistantship through the summer as the Community Engagement Intern for the Network of the National Library of Medicine (NNLM) All of Us Community Engagement Center (CEC) – we like acronyms! My preceptor is Dr. Rima Afifi, who is also a professor and the Director for Graduate Studies for the Department of Community and Behavioral Health in the College of Public Health.

The NNLM CEC oversees the Community Engagement Network (CEN), which was established through a partnership between the National Institutes of Health (NIH) All of Us Research Program and the National Library of Medicine. The CEN consists of eight regional medical libraries and thousands of member libraries whose collective mission is to improve access to biomedical information, support communities with consumer health information, and raise awareness of All of Us to accelerate precision medicine breakthroughs and improve individualized healthcare.

The CEC is located within the NNLM Greater Midwest Region office in the University of Iowa Hardin Library for the Health Sciences. We began working from home in mid-March and will continue to do so through December (tentatively). My internship is unique in that I have the opportunity to work with an interdisciplinary team of public health professionals, healthcare providers, researchers, and librarians from across the country. The data collection component of the All of Us Research Program is mostly on hold, so we have been focused on providing virtual opportunities for individuals to improve their health literacy and personal health awareness via webinars, social media content, and online classes. Currently, I am updating and creating content for our Community Engagement Toolkit and will soon be leading the development of an on-demand course about reducing health disparities in communities who are underrepresented in biomedical research.

In my free time, I’ve been hiking, riding my bike, playing my guitar and ukulele, and appreciating the opportunities to safely see my family and friends!

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