Care Continuity Initiative Internship

Public Health (MPH) and Macro Social Work (MSW) tracks. Fully remote within Michigan, academic credit, rolling start dates.

Michigan Wellbeing is building a nonprofit outpatient behavioral health clinic to get ahead of a Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan policy change that could interrupt mental health care for hundreds of thousands of people across the state. We're looking for students to join the team doing that work to work on an important and upcoming access-to-care problem. We host students on two tracks, an MPH internship and an MSW macro field placement, and students from either program are welcome to apply. If you're in a different program and this work appeals to you, feel free to reach out if this internship speaks to you

Why this Care Continuity Initiative Team exists

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan is changing how it pays for care delivered by limited-licensed clinicians, and beginning in March 2027 limited-licensed clinicians will no longer be able to bill Blue Cross through incident-to billing in office-based practices. Blue Cross insures more than five million people in Michigan, so the change could interrupt care for a very large number of clients while also affecting thousands of early-career clinicians who are earning the hours they need for full licensure, with consequences for how many providers this state has a few years from now.

Our response is to form a nonprofit outpatient clinic, a new organization launching alongside our existing practice with its own board and its own funding, built for sliding-scale and accessible care, where those clinicians and their clients can keep working together. Outpatient clinics that hold facility designation remain billable under the new policy, which is what makes this approach work and important to get started sooner rather than later. The Care Continuity Initiative Team is doing the groundwork the new organization needs before it can open its doors: program planning, policy analysis, community outreach, funding research, and the accreditation and regulatory preparation an outpatient facility requires.

The MPH Internship Track

Public health interns will take on the analytic and planning work a clinic requires before it can open. The analytic side centers on a policy brief examining the Blue Cross change, who it affects, and what it means for access and the clinical workforce in Michigan, written for an audience that includes funders, partner organizations, and potentially legislators. That work runs alongside a community needs assessment for the populations the clinic intends to serve, which means defining the service area, pulling and interpreting existing data, and identifying where the gaps sit, and it leads into a program evaluation framework establishing what the clinic will measure and how it will know whether it’s mission and goals are aligned with meeting community needs. The funding piece involves prospect research and a landscape analysis identifying the foundations, health funders, and public sources supporting behavioral health access work in Michigan, followed by drafting funding and grant proposals.

We shape the internship around your interests and your program's requirements, so someone with a health policy focus may spend most of the placement on the brief and the workforce analysis, while someone oriented toward program development may build out the evaluation plan and the service design. If your program requires an Applied Practice Experience or a comparable capstone, we structure the placement to produce the deliverables that requirement aks for and complete the documentation your school needs. Approval for this track usually runs through your school's careers or practice office rather than a field education office, and interns commit 10 to 16 hours per week scheduled around classes.

The Macro MSW Internship Track

Macro social work interns would be involved on the organizational development side of starting a nonprofit. The internship track maps onto CSWE macro competencies and can be adjusted to meet other academic learning objectives too. You'd gain experience in policy practice by analyzing the upcoming Blue Cross change and research the effect on the community, including mental health facilities, clients, clinicians, and limited-licensed clinicians accruing hours toward full licensure, and turn that analysis into materials a our team can use. On the organizing and engagement side, you'd conduct outreach to the community partners, universities, and clinician networks, and help design how the clinic will bring community voice into its mission, goals, and governance. The agency development work covers program design, funding research and grant proposals, and the governance and policy documentation a new nonprofit has to build from scratch. We map these projects to your program's competency framework, your individual academic and professional goals, and to your field placement agreements at the start.

This track is a field placement, which carries requirements the MPH track doesn't. It includes a LMSW field instructor and Task Supervisor which we provide, Approval runs through your field office at your program's discretion, so if we aren't yet an approved site for your school, reach out to your program’s office. Some programs also limit fully remote placements or cap how many hours can be completed remotely, so it's worth asking your field director about that early. Hours are flexible and follow whatever your program requires for your placement year.

Accreditation work, on both tracks

Much of what this team does is preparing the clinic for accreditation and payer facility designation. Opening an outpatient behavioral health facility means earning accreditation through a nationally recognized body and meeting the staffing, service, and documentation standards that facility designation requires, and interns on both tracks contribute to that directly by researching accreditation standards, drafting the policies a survey reviews, building the quality improvement and outcome measurement framework surveyors expect to see, and organizing the governance documentation the application requires. This is the kind of work most will encounter well into a career rather than during graduate school, and so this provides valuable experience that will follow you throughout your professional journey.

What you'd learn

The placement gives you practice in the skills your coursework introduces, applied to real-life situations where the outcome of this work will have an effect on the community at large. You'd read an upcoming insurance policy change and turn it into a brief a team member can act on, design and carry out a needs assessment, research funders and write grant proposals, build an evaluation plan or program design, and be a part of a nonprofit organization’s formation, accreditation, and payer designation. MSW students come away with competency-level experience in policy practice and community organizing that maps onto their program's evaluation framework.

Supervision and program requirements

You'd meet weekly for individual supervision with our Clinic Director and join a weekly team meeting, with our clinical team, which includes a fully licensed LMSW, available as your projects run into clinical and workforce questions. Meetings are held on Eastern time during business hours, so you'll need some weekday availability for them, while the rest of the work can be done on your own schedule. We complete learning agreements, mid-point evaluations, and final evaluations for your school as well.

The placement is hosted by Michigan Wellbeing, a private group practice, while the nonprofit is being formed. Once the nonprofit is incorporated, the placement may move under it, and we'd coordinate that transition with your school so nothing about your credit or your hours is disrupted.

Who this is for

The placement is open to MPH students and to MSW students on a macro, community practice, or leadership track at any Michigan university. Neither track requires a clinical or mental health background, since the policy and program lens is what this work calls for. This internship is also open to other students and community members that have a passion for this type of work, or would like to gain experience in the areas we’ve described.

The strongest fit is someone who writes well, can turn research into something a decision-maker can use, works comfortably without close oversight, and is drawn to the stage where an organization's direction is still being decided. Experience with policy briefs, literature reviews, grant writing, or survey design carries over directly, and if you haven't done any of that yet but want to learn it, that's a reasonable starting point and we'll teach you.

Timing, credit, and funding

Start dates are rolling and flexible, and placements typically run through the academic year with the option to continue. We're in conversation with University of Michigan School of Public Health, Michigan State, Wayne State, and Eastern Michigan about hosting students for school credit and internship placement, both on the public health side and with field education offices for MSW placements. If your school isn't among those, we're happy to go through its approval process with you.

The placement is unpaid and structured for academic credit. Many schools offer internal funding for internship and field experiences, so it's worth asking your careers or field office what's available and when the deadlines fall. We can host international students eligible through CPT or an equivalent authorization, and your international student office can confirm what that involves.

As the nonprofit develops, it may create paid positions. We can't promise when that will happen, but the people who helped build the organization would be the first we'd talk to.

For faculty, field directors, and careers staff

If you're evaluating this placement for a student or considering us as a site, please reach out directly. We can provide supervisor credentials, a site description, learning objectives mapped to your program's competencies, insurance information, or anything else your approval process requires.

How to apply

Send a resume and a short cover letter to George Khamis, Clinic Director, at george.khamis@miwellbeing.org, and tell us which track you're applying for. We'd like to hear what draws you to behavioral health access, what experience you have with research, writing, or analysis, and how this fits where you're headed. If you're working against a placement deadline, tell us and we'll work around it. We review applications as they come in, and the process is one or two conversations by video, usually within two weeks, with a decision shortly after.

Accommodations and equal opportunity

If you need a reasonable accommodation at any point in the application or interview process, let us know at george.khamis@miwellbeing.org and we'll arrange it.

Michigan Wellbeing provides equal opportunity to all applicants regardless of race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, citizenship status, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, or veteran status, at every stage of recruiting and selection.