2026 R&E summer intern group photo

If you are looking for a hands-on internship experience in a research program that directly influences clinical practice and care delivery, the Department of Research & Evaluation’s Summer Internship Program might be right for you.

This program can provide you with an educational and hands-on experience that will accelerate your professional development. You will also learn a great deal about Kaiser Permanente, a uniquely integrated health care delivery system and one of America’s leading health care organizations.

Program highlights include:

  • The full integration of interns into scientific teams.
  • Project assignments with specific expected deliverables, deadlines, and resources at hand to complete projects.
  • Projects designed to meet Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH) practicum requirements.
  • In-depth exposure to the Kaiser Permanente research world, including research administration.
  • Networking opportunities with Kaiser Permanente Southern California’s executive leadership and staff.

Intern projects

Each intern works on distinct projects that significantly contribute to the advancement and success of our research efforts. Here are a few recent projects:

A post-marketing observational surveillance and safety study

Objectives:

  • To understand and execute the processes involved in introducing a non-formulary vaccine into an integrated health care system for research purposes.
  • To compare the occurrence of acute myocardial infarction in recipients of HEPLISAV-B with recipients of another hepatitis B vaccine.

Testing an algorithm to detect second breast cancer events in early-stage breast cancer

Objectives:

  • To work with Kaiser Permanente Southern California oncologists to assess outcomes for patients with high and low use of early-stage breast surveillance services (such as carcinogenic antigen lab tests).
  • To determine rates of documented breast cancer recurrence using a validated algorithm.

Language concordance in patient-physician pairs

Objectives:

  • To determine if patients in emergency department with chest pain received recommended care based on whether the physician fluently spoke the same language as the patient.
  • To improve outcomes after emergency department evaluation for patients with acute coronary syndrome.

Reducing unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions

Objectives:

  • To evaluate the effectiveness of an acute sinusitis intervention study.
  • To determine if a best-practice alert within Kaiser Permanente’s electronic health record system reduced unnecessary prescription of antibiotics

 

Learn more about our program
For more details about our summer internships, please contact us at RE-internships@kp.org.

Testimonials

"Kaiser Permanente’s R&E Summer Internship Program was an invaluable experience that allowed me to apply my machine learning and engineering skills to real-world clinical Natural Language Processing (NLP) challenges. I worked on prototyping a modular Large Language Model (LLM) pipeline for clinical NLP, gaining hands-on experience with data preprocessing, model inference, and evaluation while exploring how recent advances in LLM research can be translated into practical health care applications. I also explored smaller language models as a more cost-effective and efficient approach to developing standardized, reusable tools that researchers can run locally within secure environments. The experience deepened my understanding of applied AI in health care and strengthened my ability to develop practical tools for clinical research. I would highly recommend this program to students interested in health care research, data science, and applied AI."
- Thai Tran, summer 2026 intern
"During the summer of 2026, I had the opportunity to participate in Kaiser Permanente’s R&E Summer Internship. As a PhD student in epidemiology whose previous experience had primarily been in academia, this internship gave me valuable exposure to research within a large, integrated health system, where extensive data resources help inform patient care. My project focused on evaluating the safety of salpingectomy during general surgery to assess its feasibility as a preventive strategy. This experience broadened my understanding of how epidemiologic research can address clinical questions and inform health care decisions. I would highly recommend this internship to students interested in applying their research skills in a health care setting and exploring opportunities beyond academia. It was a valuable opportunity for me to grow as a researcher and see how my training could contribute to improving patient care."
- Elizabeth Quino, MPH, summer 2026 intern