Public Health Collections Assistant

Under the guidance of the Archivist of the Harvard. T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the student intern will establish physical and intellectual control over the Deborah Prothrow-Stith papers, 1983-2009 (inclusive). Deborah Prothrow-Stith (born 1954), B.A., 1975, Spelman College, Atlanta, Georgia; M.D., 1979, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, formerly served as the Henry Pickering Walcott Professor of Public Health Practice in the Department of Health Policy and Management and Director of the Division of Public Health Practice (DPHP) at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), now known as the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, in Boston, Massachusetts. She served two years as Massachusetts Commissioner of Public Health before joining HSPH as Assistant Dean for Government and Community Programs in 1990. She then served as founding director of the DPHP and Associate Dean for Diversity. Prothrow-Stith advocates for the treatment of violence as a public health issue, a view she helped popularize in her 1991 book Deadly Consequences. She specializes in community-based violence prevention and has authored several youth curricula.

Activities will include creating a folder-level inventory, rehousing and physically stabilizing vulnerable materials, and updating the DACS-compliant biography and scope & content notes. This is an opportunity for a student to gain practical experience in preparing a new acquisition for future processing. A public health/science/medical background is not necessary, though a general curiosity and interest in the history of public health and medicine will make for a successful internship.