Internship at Helmholtz Centre Munich

I am doing e.g. quality assurance at the Centre for Epidemiology 2 regarding the Cooperative Health Research in the Augsburg Region.

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Reflections and recommendations

Today was my last day of my internship. I am pretty sad that it is over but at the same time curious to experience what else is out there in the working world. 

After I had some doubts in the beginning of my internship, I am now convinced that working in the research field is very interesting and there is a wide range of possibilities especially when you have access to a great amount of data like the Helmholtz Centre Munich. Most of my work included quality management, which is an important part before starting a research paper etc. . But if you do a longer internship at the right time, you have maybe the chance to do your own project. 

I can only recommend to apply at the Helmholtz Centre for an internship. They are used to have interns, are very friendly, supportive and take care of you. To know German is an advantage but depending on the project it is not always a necessity. 

I am very grateful that I have been interning at Helmholtz Centre Munich and I would definitely do it again. 

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Dear Sonja :) Great interview audio file with your internship host Birgit Linkohr where you pose relevant questions. Could you imagine to work at Helmholtz Centre as a student helper or as a BA Global Nutrition & Health? All the best, Charlotte

Dear Charlotte,

thank you very much. I was really glad that my internship supervisor was so kind to give an interview. 

Yes, I could definitely imagine to work at the Helmholtz Centre in Munich. There are many research possibilities. At the same time it's a great team and I think this is one of the most important aspects when it comes to finding a good work. 

I will talk more about reflections and recommendations in my next post.

Best regards and see you soon,

Sonja

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Health day at work

Yesterday there was a  "Health Day" at the Helmholtz Centre.

As people are spending a lot of time in life at work, many employers have realised that prevention is an important step to limit the days of employees being sick.

The health day had a broad programme including health check-ups for coronary heart- and back health, an interaction board to check concentration and speed, a muesli bar, and two oral presentations.

The first presentation was done by Martin Morgenstern, PhD an evolution psychologist who talked about how to handle and work with stress. It was great how he connected evolution theories with the stress we are exposed to. In the end Mr. Morgenstern did some exercises with us how to act in various stressful situations.

The second presentation was by the “nutrition therapist” Kerstin Lechl. Her background was in business and marketing and she has been working in the health field as a certified nutrition therapist since 13 years. The presentation which was about “Stress and Eating” was quite disappointing. She was not very clear in her statements when it came to the connection of eating much sugar and diabetes. There has been a smaller discussion in the end, where one of my colleagues from my diabetes working group had to make some things more clear.

“No relarionship between sugar and diabetes but abdominal fat and diabetes which may be caused by a diet consisting of much sugar”.

There was also the opportunity to try out the sport programme offered by the Helmholtz Centre, e.g. Yoga, rope skipping,... . Moreover, you could go to psychosocial consulting (stress analysis), occupational safety (ergonomics) and watch a soccer game in the end.

All in all a great idea to increase health awareness around the place of employement.

Nevertheless, it would have been a greater participation if employees get off for the presentations and different activities.

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Visit Original Link

Interview with my internship host Birgit Linkohr, PhD.

She talks about her education, her work at the Helmholtz Centre Munich and her goals. 

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SAS Programming

I got the chance to practice the Statistical Analysis System (SAS) which is a programme for data analysis. From the pictures above you might get an idea of what the programme looks like. My workgroup uses SAS to analyse data from their studies aiming to publish a paper or poster about the results.

One of my colleagues gave me and another intern an exercise. We needed around four days to fulfill different descriptive and analytical tasks.

The last picture shows the results from a Means Procedure. The average age (wtalter) when the people (N = 4127) have been examined is 73. The mean and median of the physical activity score (wtpase) is  117 for 1025 people. The range for age and physical activity score is displayed too.

The hardest part of doing such an analysis is to find the right commands and to write those correctly.  

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Learning Objectives

Before I started my internship I developed learning objectives. 

I have already achieved the following:

Get an insight into the "KORA" epidemiological study by visiting the centre, interviewing the staff, and by reading and understanding protocols and manuals.

Develop a list of new pharmaceutical products for the mineral data bank which includes data about medications and supplements the study participants are treated with.

I have been researching the different ingredients of the pharmaceutical products.

I am still planning to complete the medical and supplement data base. I am halfway through it now. Moreover, I might get the chance to learn how to work with the SAS programme.

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Experiences from my last week

In the past week I have been working on completing the supplement data base but also did some other tasks in between.

I completed the literature data base in EndNote with newest articles from our head of our working group. It was a good possibility to get to know the programme. I have not only completed the articles but also the abstracts from different committees etc. . Most of the literature is published in PubMed.

During my work with the supplement data base I had to calculate how much Magnesium is in Magnesium citrate. This has been a challenge for me as I haven't used my chemistry knowledge for some time. I was pretty happy when I got the result: Magnesium citrate consists of around 16.2%  Magnesium.

I also did some literature research on PubMed to find studies between 2010 and today about diabetes type 2 prevalence and the use of vitamin or mineral supplements.

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Dear Sonja BlochHope you had a good summer.How are you doing with the internship at the Helmholtz Centre? Do you find tasks at your academic level? Are here any Bachelor educated employed in your group?Who is your internship host? How did he/she enter this profession? Interesting internship at the Helmholtz Centre in Munich, you're in for some serious epidemiolgy and prospective cohort study. I have shared one of your great posts about the many elements test person go through. Best Charlotte

Dear Charlotte,

the internship is good. I’m having different tasks which are partly relevant for school and some are just necessary for the quality assurance of the study I am working with. I hope that I’ll develop my personal competences, such as concentration and working thoroughly with data.

As far as I know there are no Bachelor’s employed in my working group. Most of my colleagues have at least a Master’s degree in e.g. Epidemiology or Public Health or they are doing a PHD.

I hope to post an interview about my internship host, Birgit Linkohr.

Thank you very much for sharing my post.

Best regards,

Sonja

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This link leads to one of the many publications of my particular working group.

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Visiting the KORA Study Centre

I visited the KORA study centre in Augsburg on tuesday August 12th. It looks like a large medical office where approx. 9 test persons per day are being tested and examined. 

The people who get invited have been there already two times so they and the examiners are already used to the standardised process which takes about 4.5h per person.

Examination results are not being analysed or further diagnosed. Only if there is a great concern for e.g. heart failure a specialist will be contacted. I was told that it’s sometimes not easy to not say anything to the test person about the results. Nevertheless, in the end the results will be sent to the test person.

I had the possibility to follow one test person around. This person was running through the following stations:

Registration process – The test person receives information about the KORA-study and what happens to her/his data. S/he has to give consent and gets questionnaires. Those contain questions, e.g. about physical and mental well-being. Test person is asked to fill out a food frequency questionnaire and a 24-hour-diet recall online or at the study centre if they don’t have the possibility to do it at home.

Laboratory – Stool, urine, skin, saliva and blood are sampled in the laboratory (the test person has not eaten for at least 12 hours)

Glucose-Tolerance-Test (GTT) – The person gets to drink a sugar solution.

Anthropometrics - Weight, height and waist circumference are measured

Bioelectric Impedance Analysis (BIA) - To estimate the test persons body fat

Electrocardiography (ECG/EKG)

Neurological examination – Reflexes are being tested

Lung function test – Max. respiration, oxygen absorption and respiratory muscles are being examined

Interview – Personal and medical questions about, e.g. salary, risk for diabetes, alcohol consumption, mental condition etc.

Blood pressure measurement – 3 times with a break of 3 minutes in between, first with a device afterwards manually

Interview about supplements which have been taken within the last 7 days

After two hours: Second blood test – To find out the effect of the GTT

If a test person has experienced dizziness —> Additional dizziness test.

From all the test persons 100 will receive an invitation to do a voluntary Magnetic Resonance Tomography (MRT).

It was very interesting to see how standardised measurements are being taken. People are treated friendly and welcoming. The examination process follows strict rules of procedure but the order of the different stations may vary. 

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These pictures shall illustrate some of the impressions I got during my first week. 

My main task is to complete the data bank about supplements which are taken by the study participants. It has been established around 20 years ago including more than 3500 products. I’m researching the missing products and their active substances. Each substance has a code and everything is carefully documented.

The follow-up study I am working for is called KORA-FF4. KORA means that the participants are coming from the Augsburg region (see: Picture 8). FF4 implies that the study focuses on lung diseases and diabetes.  The data, which is being collected from 2013 until September 2014 at the study centre in Augsburg, will be evaluated by the Helmholtz Centre Munich.  The population group of the FF4 is around 2500 people from the age 39 to 87. The group has been chosen randomly by the population register ensuring that there is a balance between people coming from the urban and rural area.

Tomorrow I’ll have the opportunity to visit the study centre in Augsburg and to see all kinds of different measurements, such as anthropometrics, glucose-tolerance-tests (GTT) and interviews. All in all participants are being examined for 4.5 hours. They don’t get any compensation but they can get compensated for their travel expenses or they can get a ride home. Moreover, they are getting free breakfast after the GTT. The main motivation is that you get the opportunity to get examined very detailed and carefully without any costs.   

I’m going to inform you about the examination process in one of my next posts.

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The Helmholtz Centre Munich...

... is a research centre focusing on environmental health. It investigates what kind of influence different factors such as lifestyle and genetic background have on common diseases with a special focus on diabetes mellitus and chronic lung diseases. It consists of 40 departments and has around 2250 employees. 

For over 20 years they centre has conducted a study in the Augsburg region to investigate the effects of environment, behavior and genes.

I am hopefully going to contribute to this study by assuring that the data quality is adequate and by bringing in my theoretical and practical experience gained from my study programme and from my last internship.  

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Module 9 Internship

As you might already know:

I am studying Global Nutrition and Health focussing on Public Health Nutrition and Food Policy at Metropolitan University College Copenhagen. 

From August until October I have the opportunity to do a second internship at a relevant work place. 

On monday I'm going to start my internship at the Helmholtz Centre in Munich.

This picture shows the institute. 

The next post will be about the Helmholtz Centre.