Soon, the PPA team will be saying goodbye to Maren Miriam Spolum, our recent graduate intern. It was wonderful to have her here for the semester. With her experience and expertise, she was a welcome part of the staff. Before she leaves, we wanted to put the spotlight on her and have our readers get to know her. Before becoming a PhD candidate in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Equity at the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health, she was a was the lab manager and project director of a USDA-funded six-year research study of food access and food security across the state of Michigan. The project was housed within the Multicultural Environmental Leadership Development Initiative (MELDI) lab at the University of Michigan School for Environment & Sustainability. It included project teams from MSU, GVSU. UM-Flint, LSSU and UW-Madison! Get to know her below.
The time has gone by fast and your internship is ending soon. How has the experience been for you?
I can’t believe it’s already mid-November, the time has flown by! The internship at PPA has been great! One of the things that I really appreciate about policy work is the ability to contribute to timely policy topics that have a material impact on peoples’ lives. All three of the project I’ve gotten to join address critical health and affordability concerns that are at top of mind right now in this country—rural health needs, child care costs, and health education initiatives.
What has it been like working with the PPA staff?
One of the things I love about policy work is how interdisciplinary it is, given the range of issues folks work on. I’ve really enjoyed getting to learn from people across my projects with different skill sets and training and focuses. I also love team based, collaborative work. The dissertation process can be really isolating, so getting to join in on these project teams at PPA has been such a wonderful reprieve from that.
What drew you to the internship program?
I’ve worked with a number of different research groups engaging in policy work from different angles—community based participatory research projects trying to influence existing policy landscapes; health impact assessments trying to influence proposed polices before implementation—for example, but I’d never done any evaluation work. So I wanted to get experience learning about different types of evaluation, and thankfully PPA has that to offer in spades.
What would you tell other graduate students who might be considering the Rackham-PPA internship program?
If you’re considering it, do it—it’s a great learning opportunity. Also don’t underestimate the value of the skill set you are developing; take the opportunity to apply it outside of academia and see what that teaches you.
You are working on an issue brief, can you tell me a little bit about it?
Yes—states have received large settlement funds to address the opioid epidemic that has caused so much pain and suffering across the country. I’m looking at the situation in Michigan. Combing through surveys of people with lived experience with substance use disorder and the organizations serving those folks, who have described what the needs are across the state, and where the funds should go. I’m then working to compare their recommendations to data indicating where the settlement funds have been spent so far. I’m hoping this gives people an overview of the current state of affairs; I also hope that it could help inform evaluation work that PPA may take on in the future.
You have an incredible resume. What are your hopes after graduation?
I’d love to land a postdoctoral fellowship so I can publish the different chapters of my dissertation, and engage in further study of research questions that came up in my dissertation process. I’m applying to a number of fellowships right now, so keep your fingers crossed for me! But stepping back, our health is an embodied reflection of the resources and care we’ve been able to receive in life, and the distribution of those resources is related to issues of politics, policy and power. Health inequities in our society are socially patterned, and I’m committed to thinking about how we redistribute power in order to improve population health. Thankfully there are many places where that kind of work can happen, so I’m excited to plug in after graduation!
Graduate work and an internship, you must be busy all of the time. When you get some free time, what do you enjoy doing during those breaks?
Hah, free time… what is that again?! I am spending an unhealthy amount of time in front of my computer right now but I am grateful to have a young and very active border collie mix named Junie who loves to be outside exploring the world. So I spend as much time as possible away from screens and running around with her in nature when I’m not working. Michigan is such a beautiful place, I’m hoping to continue to explore it as my time here winds down… I’ve also never done any winter camping, so this might be the year!