Mattea Parker

Mattea Parker, born and raised in Dayton, Ohio is currently a rising senior at Tuskegee University majoring in Psychology.  This summer as part of the Global Mental Health Programs internship, Mattea had the honor of working with Dr. Ali Giusto on an ongoing qualitative implementation project in Kenya, leading the coordination of it.

For the duration of the summer, Mattea’s work consisted of project management tasks such tracking and organizing all data from key informant interviews and focus groups, ensuring an updated and organized database, communicating with Kenyan collaborators about completed tasks and tasks to be complete, and creating procedural documents. Mattea was also responsible for ongoing notes and processes which helped keep track of action items week to week, ensuring the flow of the ongoing project. Through learning these project management skills, Mattea was able to create and continuously build the SOP for the project. In addition, Mattea also had the opportunity to sit in on meetings for a second project which concerned analyzing transcripts and understanding pathways and drivers of change in the pilot. By sitting in these meetings, Mattea was able to gain exposure to cross referencing and data analysis, which allowed her to assist the team in using an ethnographic, grounded-theory approach to review transcripts and identify emerging themes related to clinical change patterns, masculinity, and competence among lay providers.

Mattea holds immense gratitude for this program and the resources and lessons it has given her. She believes this experience has been extremely beneficial to her future goals and she will always hold it close as she continues to pursue her passion as a clinician.