AmeriCorps Service Members

Serve Your Community. Find Your Passion.

Become an Iowa Public Health AmeriCorps service member and find your place in Iowa’s public health community network. Develop your professional skills, connect with public health practitioners, and gain experience in your future career path.

Why Choose Iowa Public Health AmeriCorps?

The Iowa Public Health AmeriCorps (IAPHA) allows students, young professionals, and other community members the opportunity to develop career skills in public health and community health fields, while contributing to vital health projects across the state of Iowa and providing support for public health practitioners. IAPHA members will have the opportunity to connect with potential mentors, gain professional experience, and participate in high quality professional development trainings, while exploring possible future career paths in prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery initiatives.

Iowa Public Health AmeriCorps is an opportunity to explore your interests and find your professional calling in community-engaged health fields.

Become a Public Health Iowa AmeriCorps Member

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What Does It Take to Become a Member?

Member Eligibility

To become an Iowa Public Health AmeriCorps member, applicants must be over the age of 17 and be a U.S. citizen, U.S national, or permanent resident. As a member, you will also be required to serve primarily in-person at the host organization where you are placed, so you will need to live in or be able to get to that location regularly for the duration of your service term.

Members are not required to be University of Iowa students or have any affiliation with the University of Iowa. In addition to current Iowa students, we welcome students from other universities across the state of Iowa, as well as recent graduates, professionals looking for a career change, and community members looking to give back.

Member Placements

Iowa Public Health AmeriCorps works with host site organizations from across the state of Iowa to identify meaningful and fulfilling projects for our members to engage in projects that will both help you grow as a future health professional and will have an impact to the organization and community where you are placed.

Host sites will change from year to year, depending on needs within each individual community. Host sites may be county or state health agencies, community groups, hospitals, non-profits, or other organization types. The availability of a specific host site and primary focus of each project will depend on the needs of that particular organization in any given year.

Service term lengths are determined by a minimum number of required hours over a pre-designated number of months. The amount of time you will be expected to devoted to your service each week will look different depending on the host site.

Sample Term Length with Hours per Week Equivalents:

  • A Minimum time member may serve 300 hours over 10 weeks, equaling 30 hours/week.
  • A Quarter time member may serve 450 hours over the academic year (30 weeks), equaling 15 hours/week.
  • A Half time member may serve 900 hours over 6 months, equaling 40 hours/week.
member Service Term typeMinimum number of hours
Three quarter time (TQT)1200 hours
Half time (HT)900 hours
Quarter time (QT)450 hours
Minimum time (MT)300 hours

Member Service Benefits

All service members receive:

  • a modest living allowance
  • Skills-based and professional development training
  • Forbearance for federally-backed student loans
  • Segal AmeriCorps Education Award (For use on future educational expenses or to pay back qualified student loans. The value is dependent on length of service.)
  • Access to Employers of National Service network for future job searches

Depending on your host site and project type, some members may also receive:

  • Certification and/or trainings in specialty areas (eg. OSHA, FEMA, etc.)
  • Individualized professional mentorship

The living allowance and education award amounts are determined based on length of service.

Hours of serviceTotal living
allowance
education awardTotal compensationhourly rate equivalent
1200 Hours (TQT)$13,800$5,176$18,976$15.81/hr
900 Hours (HT)$9,630$3,697$13,327$14.81/hr
450 Hours (QT)$4,455$1,956$6,411$14.25/hr
300 Hours (MT)$2,775$1,565$4,340$14.47/hr

*Amounts listed are approximate and subject to change annually.

Application Deadlines

Opportunities to apply will be posted throughout the year, depending on which organization is hosting and what their requested start date is. The majority of service opportunities will be posted in April for the summer term and August for the academic term. Some host organizations with short-term projects may have opportunities available to apply for during fall, winter, or spring.

It is important to check each opportunity listing for specific application deadlines.

What Do Members Do?

At Iowa Public Health AmeriCorps, our goal is to support the network of vital public health support agencies across our state, while also ensuring that the next generation of public health practitioners are able to gain real-world, first-hand experience to prepare them for the next step on their professional journey. Public health is everywhere and we work with direct delivery public health agencies, as well as organizations working in social determinants of health and other health-adjacent and community-focused industries. Our host sites may work in a variety of industries, such as government, emergency management, education, mental health, community health, food access and nutrition, maternal and child health, rural health, sustainability, agriculture, occupational safety, and more.

The following is a small sample of the types of projects our members may be involved in.

  • Health policy review and development
  • Program implementation and evaluation
  • Community health needs assessment
  • Disaster preparedness and planning
  • Communication and outreach
  • Health education
  • Data analysis and reporting
  • Disease investigation and contact tracing
  • Volunteer coordination
  • Research assistance
  • Community resource development
  • Stakeholder and relationship building

Ready to Apply?

Explore our current available opportunities and start gaining professional public health skills.