Public Health Immersion in the Amazon

A unique opportunity to analyze the relationship between Western and traditional medicine in the local context and learn about the fields of medicine and public health in the most biodiverse place in the world - the Amazon rainforest.

Interns work in the Napo province which has disproportionate access to healthcare and a lack of educational resources for disease prevention. Public health interns have the option to support staff at a local hospital, rural health clinic, or a public health organization in the non-profit and/or governmental sector.

We accept medical/nursing students and healthcare professionals looking to get more experience in their fields or specializations. We also accept public and global health students and professionals.

Potential internship activities include:

• Shadow doctors, nurses, pharmacists, dentists, and other health professionals. Option to focus on a particular area if available.
• Practice medical skills such as taking vital signs, measuring height and weight, and taking temperatures
• Assist with medical home visits and brigades in local communities
• Support on-going public health projects [examples of past interns’ projects include hygiene and nutrition talks with school-age children, interactive health games with children, creating brochures and pamphlets with preventative health information for parents, GIS map of vaccination records, and an inventory of local agricultural products and their nutritional facts]
• Opportunity to design your own public health project based on immediate needs of the placement organization and supervisor approval.
• Opportunity to learn about traditional indigenous medicine by connecting to local healers and plant experts within our network.
• Learn about ethnobotany and medicinal plants, observe healing and rituals, and learn about Kichwa and other Indigenous cultures.

Interns live with host families, allowing them to forge meaningful connections with locals during their time in the Amazon. Most host families live in rural communities close to the forest, and many have their own agroforestry farms and invite interns to join them when they cultivate and harvest.