PHASE is a non-paid, for-credit internship program sponsored in partnership with the Maryland Department of Health & Mental Hygiene (DHMH), the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH), and the Mid-Atlantic Public Health Training Center (MAPHTC).It enables public health graduate students to gain insight on how a degree in public health can be applied to practice-based careers, outside academia. Internships are developed so that students synthesize and integrate knowledge acquired in course work and other learning experiences and apply theory and principles in a situation that approximates some aspect of professional practice.

The primary goal of PHASE is to provide students with 'real-world' exposures and opportunities for hands-on experiences that are otherwise missing from the academic curriculum.