{"id":5247,"date":"2026-08-27T17:45:58","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T17:45:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/summerinternships\/?p=5247"},"modified":"2026-08-27T17:45:58","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T17:45:58","slug":"ripke-28-allen-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/summerinternships\/2026\/08\/27\/ripke-28-allen-county\/","title":{"rendered":"Ripke ’28 | Allen County"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

I spent this past summer working in Fort Wayne at the Allen County Department of Health. This internship was offered to me through the GHI, and it caught my attention because I would get an opportunity to analyze data and learn about public health. Through this internship I gained lots of insight on public health. I got to see firsthand how the government works to serve the public, and all the moving parts that are involved within that. Although I do not plan to work in government public health, I am instead interested in pursuing a career in dentistry. Regardless of the difference, I improved upon many skills that would be useful in the future, such as communication, working with diverse populations, learning about health care disparity, and focusing on preventative care. My time at the health department was primarily focused on a project where I was compiling data from overdose deaths in Allen County in 2025. Interestingly, this position at the health department has been held by Wabash students for about the last five years. Something different this summer than in years past, was my supervisor adding something she called Department of Health 101. This offered a more in depth understanding of public health and gave myself and the other interns the opportunity to meet with each of the division supervisors at the health department. Along with that we got to take visits to the different buildings of the health department to see their facilities and what services they offer. The main facilities I visited being vector control where they mostly work on mosquito and rodent control, and the other being the medical annex where they provide free immunizations and vaccines. I also was able to attend an Overdose Fatality Review meeting and two Suicide Fatality Review meetings. These meetings were very informative as a diverse group of healthcare providers took a deep dive into cases in order to offer recommendations that work to prevent deaths in the future. Additionally, I had access to the Coroner\u2019s reports on last year\u2019s overdose deaths. I would make note of different demographic and toxicology data from police reports, recent hospital documents, and toxicology reports. From this information I created graphs and figures which I interpreted and made inferences and recommendations to present to the health department at the end of the summer. These references will hopefully be used in the future by the overdose fatality review team to help prevent overdoses in the county and beyond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lastly, I am very grateful to have had this experience and am thankful that it was funded by Wabash College. I would like to thank Jill Rogers for presenting me with this internship, as well as my amazing supervisor Jana Sanders for teaching me so much this summer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I spent this past summer working in Fort Wayne at the Allen County Department of Health. This internship was offered to me through the GHI, and it caught my attention because I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":195,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[127,88],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2026-summer-internships","category-global-health"],"w_featured_image_url":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/summerinternships\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2026\/08\/image-19-1024x705.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/summerinternships\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/summerinternships\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/summerinternships\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/summerinternships\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/195"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/summerinternships\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5247"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/summerinternships\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5250,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/summerinternships\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5247\/revisions\/5250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/summerinternships\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/summerinternships\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/summerinternships\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}