Practicum Highlight: Le Shipulski, MPH'25

Researching Postpartum Mental Health: Le Shipulski’s Practicum Work on Pelvic Organ Prolapse and Care Satisfaction

Le Shipulski is a graduate research assistant in the Biomedical Data Science department at the Geisel School of Medicine. Under the guidance of Dr. Renata W. Yen, their research focuses on pelvic and mental health following childbirth. The study primarily investigates the mental health impacts of pelvic organ prolapse, a physiological condition where one or more pelvic organs shift out of their anatomical position, most often due to childbirth.

As an MPH candidate in Dartmouth’s Online/Hybrid Master of Public Health program, Le recently completed a practicum project in which they developed a survey to assess the mental health and information needs of postpartum individuals living with pelvic organ prolapse. This common condition affects up to 30-40% of women, with varying degrees of pelvic organ support loss after childbirth.

For this project, Le designed and translated the survey into Spanish to gain a better understanding of the experiences and health needs of individuals living with prolapse. The survey targeted individuals aged 18-45 who had given birth in the last decade. Le took the lead in participant recruitment, data collection, and preparing the dataset for quantitative analysis. “One of the most valuable aspects of this project was learning to code,” reflects Le, who developed over 1,500 lines of code in STATA to clean the survey data set and run analyses. Preliminary findings, which explored the correlation between anxiety levels and satisfaction with postnatal care, were presented at Geisel’s 2024 APE Poster Fair.

Le credits the MPH survey methods coursework as a crucial component of their success in developing an accessible pelvic organ prolapse survey. “Designing the survey while taking the course showed me how iterative the survey development process truly is. I applied the course's teachings by incorporating transitional language between sections—especially before sensitive questions—to foster trust and encourage honest and meaningful responses from participants.”

Le is currently finalizing tables and figures for a quantitative analysis paper that is intended for publication. “Dr. Yen’s guidance throughout this project has taught me new ways of interpreting and presenting data, as well as technical computing skills that I will continue to refine throughout my career.”

Written by: Mia Soucy

POSTED 2/21/2025 AT 10:01 AM IN #practicum #studentspotlight #hybridmph #mph