The HDR UK Black Internship Programme provides talented Black students and graduates with opportunities to gain experience in health data research and explore potential careers in the field.
Over the summer, Esther Awofadeju joined the UK MS Register through the programme, gaining hands-on experience working with real-world health data and investigating the relationship between multiple sclerosis and mental health outcomes. Esther’s internship allowed her to develop her data analysis and research skills, work with experienced researchers and communicate her findings. It also helped her explore how her interest in psychology and mental health could translate into a career in health data research.
Esther is the fourth intern to be hosted by the UK MS Register through the HDR UK Black Internship Programme over the past three years, following two interns in 2024 and one in 2025.
In this blog, Esther reflects on her internship, what she learned and how the experience has shaped her ambitions for the future.
Esther’s project during her internship has focused on investigating the relationship between multiple sclerosis and mental health outcomes, exploring how mental health experiences may be linked to different aspects of MS. Her work contributes to the Register’s ongoing commitment to improving understanding of the factors that affect the lives and wellbeing of people living with MS.
To mark the end of the internship, Esther attended the HDR UK closing ceremony in London. Read on to find out how the day unfolded:
“The closing ceremony was a really meaningful way to end my internship with the UK MS Register through HDR UK and 10,000 Black Interns. Looking back, one of the things I valued most about the experience was having the opportunity to work with real-world health data and explore the psychological impact of Multiple Sclerosis. My project focused on mental health in people living with MS, looking at factors such as age, gender and physical disability and how these may relate to anxiety, depression and psychological wellbeing over time. Alongside developing my research and data analysis skills, I gained experience using R, interpreting findings, writing a research report and presenting my work through a research poster.”
“The closing ceremony gave me the chance to step back and recognise just how much I had grown throughout the internship. It was also a reminder that research is not always about the final result you can see – there is so much learning, uncertainty, problem-solving and hard work that happens behind the scenes. One message from the day that particularly stayed with me was that “what matters most is what happens in the dark.” I found this especially powerful because so much of my internship involved learning things I had never done before, making mistakes, figuring things out and continuing even when I wasn’t completely confident in what I was doing. Those moments may not have been visible, but they were where a lot of my growth happened. The experience has strengthened my interest in mental health research and shown me how research and data can help us better understand people’s experiences of illness – something I hope to carry forward into my future career in psychology.”