About MSF USA | Doctors Without Borders

 

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is an independent international organization that provides medical care to the people who need it most. The organization cares for people affected by conflict, disease outbreaks, disasters, and social exclusion in more than 70 countries. MSF offers medical humanitarian assistance solely based on need, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, or politics. Our international project teams include medical, logistical, and administrative staff, most of them hired locally and working with their own communities. Our actions are guided by medical ethics and the principles of independence, impartiality, and neutrality. We also bear witness and speak out about the experiences of our colleagues and patients.    MSF USA is one of 24 sections supporting the global movement, primarily through staff recruitment, fundraising, advocacy, and communications. We welcome candidates who bring a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences to join us in working toward MSF’s social mission.  

Role Overview 

As part of our humanitarian mission, MSF conducts hundreds of research studies every year to help us improve patient care and advocate in an evidence-based way for better global health programs and policies. The MSF Science Portal is an online repository where you can find the outcomes of this work—in peer-reviewed medical publications, MSF Scientific Days conference presentations, and other content.

 

The Research Publication Intern will work with the Project Manager on keeping the platform updated regularly and implement data quality improvements across the front end of the website within the content management system, and to the database directly. Primary, regular duties include data entry, data cleaning/manipulation, and descriptive analysis. The intern will also support other discrete, long-term projects that can range from website development support, dashboard development, research ethics support, and communications planning and support. A diverse student profile will be considered, with an emphasis on coding abilities, experience with relational databases, and knowledge of medical sciences and scholarly publications.

 

This internship will start in June and last 3 months, with the possibility to extend the role for an additional 3 months. This role is part-time at 20 hours/week and is hybrid, with in-office attendance on either Tuesdays or Wednesdays in one of our offices (Oakland, NYC, or DC).

 

Department Accountabilities  

Support for MSF Medical and Humanitarian Programs  

The Programs Department supports the medical humanitarian programs of the MSF Movement in different ways. Each unit contributes to one or more of these responsibilities:  

• Advocacy and Representation in support of Operations – develop strategies to influence public policy debates as well as private bilateral engagements on behalf of MSF. 
• Research, Analysis, and Data Management in support of Operations – direct, perform, or facilitate research to address questions posed by Operations. Track and analyze specific policies and practices of governments, multilateral organizations, and others as requested by Operations.  
• Monitoring of the Policy Environment - engages with Policy issues to ensure information sharing and action based on medical and operational needs of the movement.   
• Stakeholder Engagement - identify, analyze, plan, and implement actions designed to engage with external and internal stakeholders to support medical humanitarian programming.  

Role Specific Outcomes 

Publications support

Create a weekly list of new MSF-authored publications based on reviewing PubMed, Google Scholar alerts, and other data sources, and add them to the Science Portal using its content management system 

Data cleaning support 

Support the Portal team in improving data cleanliness, requiring direct queries to the database and updating data using code to conduct bulk updates or manual cleaning 

Communications and website visibility 

Support communications and raising awareness of the Science Portal, including but not limited to implementing SEO improvements and monitoring website analytics 

 

Additional projects

• The team has various needs across data analytics/visualization, data management, and leadership projects that the intern can work on, depending on their strengths and interests
•  

Complexity and Problem-Solving Skills

• Ability