Global Health Blog

Every single one of my experiences abroad took me further into the world of global health – Global Health Alumni Interview with Julia Harris (2007, WCAS)
May 16, 2012 by Guest Bloggers
Name: Julia Harris (2007, WCAS)
Major: Anthropology (Human Biology)
Minor: Global Health

What did you do after graduation and where are you now?

Julia during her 3rd year clerkship at Soroka University Medical Center in Beer Sheva, Israel

I graduated in 2007 with a degree in Anthropology (Human Biology) and a minor in Global Health. I was pre-med, but I was not sure exactly what I wanted to do. I took the MCAT after my junior year and managed to get out a few med school applications right before I graduated. I knew that if I didn’t do the apps while in an academic environment I would never apply. What was more important to me at the time was to attempt to really work in some capacity in the global health world. So, I went to Brazil. I was born there and have a Brazilian passport, so I was able to get an internship at the National School of Public Health. I had an amazing experience. I split my time between research and shadowing a doctor who was doing a residency in public health. Public health is not a residency option in many countries; in American terms it’s a bit like family medicine mixed with an MPH. The public health residents ran a clinic located in the School of Public Health which serviced the low income communities who live in favelas surrounding the campus. In working at this clinic I had the opportunity to see the implementation of a primary care focused public health care system from multiple angles. I saw the process from policy making, to home visits and even clinical medicine. It was a phenomenal experience that really tied together the knowledge base I gained in undergrad and made me realize I really wanted to be a physician. I felt my inadequacies. I wanted a distinct skill set that could allow me to better serve the population and I decided I could do this best through the pursuit of an MD. It’s a great day when you suddenly know what you want to do, even if you know it’s going to take a lifetime to get there.

I was accepted to the Medical School for International Health while I was living in Brazil. This school is a 4-year American style medical school located in the deserts of southern Israel and was established in association with Columbia University. I graduate on May 23^rd, 2012 and will be working as resident physician in Obstetrics and Gynecology in Philadelphia at Drexel University’s Hahnemann Hospital.

Just a quick plug, cause I love my med school and it really is the perfect place to go if you want to go into medicine and global health all at once. My med school integrates a global health perspective into its curriculum and allowed me the opportunity to go to other countries such as India and Ethiopia to work in hospitals in a variety of interesting settings. Additionally, the day to day life here in Beer Sheva, Israel is quite diverse. The population served by our tertiary care center (where we study) is 50% Arabic speaking, predominately Bedouin. The other 50% is made up of immigrants from Russia and Ethiopia, refugees from Sudan and of course the Jewish population.

Which IPD program did you choose for your studies abroad and how has it influenced you?

While at Northwestern I studied abroad a few times, all along the lines of global health. I went on the Northwestern global health program to Mexico City the summer after freshman year. This really opened the doors for me. I was exposed to public health research, I shadowed doctors in a clinical setting, and I lived on my own in a foreign country for the first time. I had such an awesome time and realized that I could really pursue global health as an undergrad. This experience inspired me to continue to go abroad. In the summer after sophomore year I went to Buenos Aires to study Spanish and do a research internship at a public hospital. Then I went to South Africa on a global health SIT trip for the fall semester. During this trip I got involved in HIV/AIDS education and decided to return to South Africa to do my senior thesis. I was lucky enough to get an Undergraduate Research Grant (URG) which made the whole trip possible. Northwestern has so many opportunities for students who are interested in global health, as long as you are personally motivated people will get behind you and help you run after whatever dream you have (within reason).

Every single one of my experiences abroad took me further into the world of global health. There are so many lessons to learn from cultural sensitivity (trust me I have committed every faux pas) to one’s own limitations in language, in academics, and personal boundaries. Every time I put myself out of my comfort zone I learned so much about myself. I became totally addicted to the thrill of landing somewhere completely new and having to figure it out. I also loved learning about a country through its health care system. Working in the health care field allows you a certain intimacy with people that perhaps we do not deserve. For instance as a physician I have been able to enter peoples’ lives, peoples’ homes and through them I have been exposed to such amazing cultures, languages and life lessons. However, I must say as a disclaimer two very important things. Firstly, I have learned that one does not need to leave the US to accomplish what I just described. It is completely possible to experience a diversity of cultures in the US. There are people lacking access to health care and good health care policies everywhere in the world. The second disclaimer I have to offer is that despite my training I am not sure I am the person to bring health to the world. No matter how culturally sensitive you attempt to be, walking into a clinic somewhere in a developing country you will never have all of the skills to truly understand the culture of those you are treating. That being said I do think that global health leads to an amazing and fulfilling life and career no matter how you approach it, I just think that one has to be realistic. It’s great to want to change the world and help people but know your limitations and be humble. I will relate a small story to express what exactly I mean to say.

What’s one life lesson that you have learned since you started working?

Julia taking blood pressure of a woman in a rural town in central India called Bhidi, where she was running a clinic during her 4th year elective

I had the opportunity to do an elective in rural India during my last year of medical school. I was shocked by what I saw. I felt that the Hippocratic Oath was being ignored left and right because the best medicine, which I had learned to administer was not being practiced. The innumerate barriers that existed to giving what I believed to be appropriate eventually revealed themselves. One day a man was brought in bleeding from a motor vehicle accident. My med school colleague and I were the only ones trained in CPR and we did our best while surrounded by a crowd of screaming villagers to save this patient. We then jumped in a van “ambulance” and continued our CPR while standing and travelling over 120 kilometers per hour towards the nearest tertiary care center. We were not successful. I was so angry about the lack of CPR training and the prevalence of such situations that necessitated it. Then I realized that the cost of training a nation in a technique that is overwhelmingly not successful and often results in a patient with great medical needs may not be financially beneficial. If I were the minister of health in India I may decide that investing in CPR is not my biggest priority or an efficient investment of the limited funds available.

Do you have any advice or suggestions for current global health students on how to get involved or how to choose their career path in global health?

I have loved the great majority of my international life for the past 9 years but there are ethical debates every day that I have with myself. I attempt to abide by the Hippocratic Oath and do no harm to those I have the privilege of treating or working with. However, despite my plethora of global health training I will on occasion do wrong. I will give patients treatments that do not mesh with their cultural or religious beliefs or I will accidently say things that offend and alienate my patients or colleagues. If you choose to work in global health I think it is best to remember that you are a guest in someone else’s world and it is your duty to learn from your hosts in addition to lending a hand.

If you want a career in global health you have to make it happen. Spend time finding a place, a project or a community that really inspires you and go. There are always people who need or want volunteers but if you want to really make a career in global health it involves a long term commitment, stepping out of your comfort zone and finding the right people who can open doors for you. It is always best to find an expat or an English-speaking person who has made his/her life as a foreigner successfully integrated into wherever it is you are trying to go. The right contact can be everything. OK that’s all I got, the rest is just a little bit of luck and a lot of perseverance.
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Category: Brazil, India, Israel | Tags: Beer Sheva, Brazil, clinical medicine, Drexel University’s Hahnemann Hospital, Hippocratic Oath, HIV/Aids, home visits, Israel, Medical School for International Health, National School of Public Health, policy making, Public Health in Mexico, Undergraduate Research Grant, URG | Comments (0)
Can We Craft a Livable Future? – Reflections From the Unite For Sight Conference
May 7, 2012 by Laura Ruch
Recently, I visited Connecticut for the first time to attend the annual Unite for Sight Global Health and Innovation Conference at Yale University. If you cannot already tell by the title, the conference covered an extremely broad range of topics – maternal and child health, design and architecture, social media and marketing, health policy, photography, and on and on. By the end of the weekend, I felt rather overwhelmed by the sheer scope of the ideas that I had been presented with. However, one session particularly stood out to me, perhaps because it touched on an issue I have limited knowledge of, yet one that plays a role in many of the most pressing matters of today’s world. It undoubtedly has broad implications for global health. The session discussed “hunger and food,” and admittedly, I chose it over the others because it was the final session of the weekend, and I just wanted to hear about something that was “basic” and “easy to address,” given my exhaustion level. But despite the often-mentioned fact that the world already produces enough food to feed everyone – if only distribution could be evened out – food and hunger issues remain complex, and food production practices, particularly in this country, have a lot of scary consequences for the wider world.

My favorite speaker of the three in the session was Dr. Robert Lawrence, a professor of environmental health sciences, health policy, and international health and director of the Center for a Livable Future at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. He really got me to step back and ask, “Why does food production so often have negative impacts on the environment and on our health? Can this be changed?” I’d say the answers to those two questions are 1) because people have simplified the process – prioritizing product yield and ease of production over protecting consumers and the environment as a whole. Also, governmental policy has over and over promoted harmful food production practices. And 2) Yes, this can absolutely be changed.

Here’s a list of some sobering facts related to food, health and the environment that I learned at the conference as well as some follow up reading:

1. Most of the world’s poor are farmers, and most of them are hungry farmers. About 1.3 billion people are small farmers (World Farmers Organization), cultivating less than five acres of land. Farming is by no means a lucrative profession, in wealthy countries and poor countries alike. Farmers depend on an immobile landscape, and the globalization of food has prioritized large-scale producers of cheap, ‘efficient’ food. Farmers have been repeatedly encouraged to engage in harmful practices in order to make a decent income.

2. Pastures now occupy 70% of previous forested land in the Amazon in Brazil, and feed crops cover a large part of the remainder (Livestock’s Long Shadow: environmental issues and options). The majority of that land farms soybeans, which are not a traditional crop in South America, and are mostly used to meet the demand for soy from China. To get an even broader picture, about half of the land on earth is devoted to farming today.

3. The loss of species is estimated to be running 50 to 500 times higher than background rates found in the fossil record (Livestock’s Long Shadow: environmental issues and options). To me, this is simply terrifying. As someone who studies biology, I’m well aware of the often hidden benefits and dependencies species have on each other. When a handful of species disappears, the whole ecosystem suffers, and often in a way that can’t be foreseen. A lot of today’s food production, particularly meat production (and production of livestock feed) uses practices that directly contribute to this species loss, including deforestation, land degradation, pollution, climate change, overfishing… you get the picture.

4. Global demand of meat and cereal production will largely increase as populations increase in the developing world (the Soil Association). Despite a predicted future decline in the rate of growth of consumption of meat, it will not be enough to offset demand from population growth, and overall there will be a large increase in production. That means that the environmental impact per unit of livestock production must be reduced by a similar proportion, just to avoid increasing the level of damage beyond its present level.

5. Agriculture is the largest user of water, accounting for 70% of total freshwater use (Stockholm International Water Institute). Already more than one billion people do not have sufficient access to clean water. Under a “business as usual” scenario (Rosegrant et al., 2002), global water withdrawal will increase by 22% in 2025.

6. Policy makers are slow to respond to harmful practices. Environmental laws and programs are usually put in place only after significant damage has already occurred. The focus continues to be placed on protection and restoration, rather than on the more cost-effective approaches of prevention and mitigation. Perhaps this is partially because policy makers don’t realize how important these issues are to the public. I think that my peers, or just people outside of the political realm in general, tend to overlook the power of their political voice. Simple things such as writing a letter to a representative can have a big impact (another thing I learned at the conference).

7. These issues are about more than just hunger and the environment – they are issues of security as well. By increasing the scarcity of natural resources such as land and water, environmental degradation increases the likelihood of violent conflict, particularly when there is a lack of governing institutions… A Pentagon report (Schwartz and Randall, 2003) suggested that global warming could prove a greater risk to the world than terrorism and could lead to catastrophic droughts, famines, and riots (Yet I wonder how much money has the Pentagon spent since 2003 on fighting terrorism versus address global warming…).

8. The livestock sector is responsible for an estimated 51% of greenhouse gas emissions measured in CO2 equivalents. This is a higher share than transport (Worldwatch Institute). Virtually every step in the production of livestock contributes to climate change and/or air pollution. These include the livestock respiration, burning fossil fuel to produce mineral fertilizer, methane release from fertilizer and manure breakdown, land degradation, and fossil fuel use during feed and animal production, not to mention production and transport of processed and refrigerated animal products.

9. Animal foods, as they are produced today, pose a risk to human health. Directly, they can lead to infectious disease. Animal foods are susceptible to pathogens (E. coli, for example) and they often still have chemical residues by the time they make it to a dinner plate. About 75% of recent emerging diseases are zoonotic (passed from animals to humans), according to the CDC. In an indirect way, animal foods (although this is true for other foods as well) increase human exposure to infectious disease due to climate change. Diseases such as malaria, dengue fever, and schistosomiasis are on the rise as the planet warms.

10. Meat is often times deceptively cheap. Much of the cost of meat goes into externalities – soil degradation, water use, and greenhouse gas production. How much would a McDonald’s hamburger cost if the pricing of land, water, and use of waste sinks were taken into account? What if there were no subsidies that directly encouraged livestock producers to engage in environmentally damaging activities?

11. “The food system is run by people who know nothing about health, and the health system is run by people who know nothing about food,” says Ken Lee of Lotus Foods (see below). We cannot keep pretending that the obesity epidemic and the increasing incidence of heart disease, diabetes, etc. in this country and most others can be solved solely through behavior change at the consumer level. It will require changes at the source of the issue — in food production as well and in the policies that govern food production, pricing, and distribution.

Despite the seemingly onerous task of addressing any of the above issues, there are already many individuals involved in the effort to make food production healthier for people and the environment as well as more sustainable. Here are three examples of cool organizations and what they are doing to change the face of agriculture:

1. Lotus Foods: Ken Lee, co-founder and co-owner of Lotus Foods, introduced his company’s business model, which uses sustainable agriculture practices. Lotus provides exotic rice varieties to small family farms in remote regions of the world, including Bhutan, Bangladesh, China, and the US. Since these heirloom rice varieties are very unique, the global marketplace for them is large, particularly given the superior quality, taste, texture, aroma, color, and nutritional value of some of the rice species. Lotus farmers use a methodology known as “System of Rice Intensification (SRI) or “One Crop per Drop”, pioneered by Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture, and Development (CIIFAD) in the mid-1990s. This method of farming reduces the amount of seed, water, chemicals, land, and labor needed to produce a given quantity of rice, and it produces healthier soil, and therefore healthier rice, at a lower cost. Read about SRI here. I really love the way that Lotus sums up the work that they do and their ultimate goals, “Eradicating poverty and promoting social and economic justice has to start with agriculture and it has to be accomplished in a way that protects and restores the natural resources on which all life depends. At the crux of this challenge is rice, which provides a source of living to two billion people, most earning less than $200 a year.”

2. One Acre Fund: Tony Kalm, director of business development, introduced the One Acre Fund, an incredible organization that is changing the lives of “one of the largest groups of ‘forgotten poor’ in the world.” Concentrated on one-acre subsistence farms in Sub-Saharan Africa, the One Acre fund serves small-scale farmers and uses markets to achieve poverty eradication. Their ultimate goal is to make farmers more prosperous. One Acre Fund empowers and educates local farmers, provides environmentally sensitive seeds and fertilizers, facilitates crop handling and storage, and pays farmers in the event of crop loss due to drought or disease. The organization releases performance reports every six months; in the most recent report (fall 2011), 77% of their field costs were covered through farmer repayments on low interest loans. Today they serve 75,000 farm families in Kenya, Rwanda, and Burundi.

3. The Center for a Livable Future: Directed by Dr. Robert Lawrence, the Center for a Livable Future (CLF) at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health was founded to address the interlocking relationships of diet and health, agriculture and the environment, food equity, and population issues. CLF aims to increase knowledge about these interconnections ‘in order to influence public policy toward more equitable and sustainable systems.’ CLF encourages public health professionals to collaborate and share discoveries to ultimately influence policy. They also raise awareness among individuals and institutions about environmental issues through classroom education as well as public events to ‘effect individual behavior and stimulate societal changes.’ The center puts out a list of research and program ideas for students that could make for some awesome independent study or summer research projects!

As a recent Northwestern graduate with a degree in biology and global health, I’m left wondering why these issues were if anything a sidenote in my undergraduate coursework. I’m also wondering why my fellow students aren’t more up in arms about these harsh realities. Even more importantly, I’m wondering why I’m still not even sure how I fit into a solution – what I can personally to do be a part of the necessary change as someone who will be going into medicine and not public policy. I think it’s time that food production issues were discussed across departments rather than limited to environmental science and engineering. I know that creating renewable energy sources, a more sustainable environment, and new approaches to global health are all focuses of the 2011 Northwestern strategic plan, and I’m eager to see how the university will increase awareness among students, shaping future leaders who will be a part of the solutions to these urgent problems.

Note: This post has been edited for accuracy. Many thanks to Jeff Anhang from the Worldwatch Institute for providing some helpful resources. Check out this report from Forbes about an analysis by Jeff Anhang and Robert Goodland if you’re wondering how you can be a part of the solution to climate change.
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Category: General, Policy, Sustainability, Water Management | Tags: agriculture, center for a livable future, food production, lotus foods, one acre fund, Policy, the environment, Unite for Sight | Comments (0)
From Idea to Innovation: Insights from the 2012 Global Health Unite for Sight Conference
April 26, 2012 by Mary Poliwka
Sponsored by Unite for Sight, this past weekend’s 2012 Global Health & Innovation Conference at Yale University featured various speakers and panelists from diverse backgrounds in global health. The Acumen Fund, USAID, Management Sciences for Health, PATH, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation were just a few of the many organizations present. Esteemed speakers such as Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and Special Advisor to Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon of the United Nations, inspired and informed the audience about the most pressing global health challenges.

This year’s conference theme was innovation. Clearly, innovation is a key to the future of global health. Take for example, Laura Stachel, Co-Founder of WE CARE Solar, who described her journey in “bringing light to maternal health care”, literally. Studying maternal mortality in Northern Nigeria after serving many years as a doctor in the U.S., she found that many state facilities only had sporadic electricity that was rationed among the various communities. Without the ability to predict when they would have light, doctors and nurses often found themselves unable to work at night, putting delivering women and critically ill patients at severe risk.  Her husband, a solar energy educator, designed an off-grid solar electrical system (the size of a suitcase) in response to this need. Put to use in a Nigerian hospital, the self-sustaining system was instantly successful and quickly led to improvements in local health outcomes. Demand for their product grew rapidly and now they supply their Solar Suitcases across the developing world.

Perhaps the most important takeaway from this conference was learning how one can pursue global health work without being a doctor or a nurse.  I was quite surprised to hear many speakers talk about how they had worked in medical practice for many years but then decided that global health was their next step. In fact, Laura Stachel was one of them. Actually, at the career panel I attended I was intrigued to learn that all five speakers had not originally pursued public health but either encountered the need in their current positions, such as with USAID, or altered their career trajectory down the line to pursue this interest. While I have felt concerned about my ability to impact health outcomes without pursuing medicine, here were all of these very accomplished men and women who were doctors and decided it wasn’t enough! So, to all of you global health students out there who are not pre-medicine, feel confident that you are also critical to advancing healthcare around the world.

But how you ask? There are so many avenues a global health practitioner can pursue! The conference’s speakers included engineers, designers, educators, environmentalists, energy and food experts, film producers, photographers, and artists, health policy and advocacy leaders, infectious and non-communicable disease specialists, and maternal and child health experts, organizational managers, researchers, philanthropists, social entrepreneurs, social media and marketing professionals, technology specialists, and water and sanitation authorities. Clearly, you should not limit yourself to the confines of direct service delivery! All of these presenters are working towards sustainable, significant, and culturally appropriate improvements to the health of populations across the globe with their diverse work. Through collaboration across sectors and specializing in specific interests, these individuals advance disease prevention and lessen the social, financial, and environmental factors that negatively impact access to care in very different ways.

Another conference-inspired insight to leave all of you readers with: if the professional opportunity you seek does not exist or is out of your reach, either create it or look elsewhere. To create it, you may pursue independent research in your interest or begin to mull around ideas about the practicality of starting your own organization with the global health emphases that are missing. You may also consider collaborating with an organization that already exists and developing an interest area that is lacking. When I say look elsewhere, I am referring to unconventional places for internship placements. You may want an internship with NIH in Washington D.C., but you are competing with many, many other like-minded applicants. So what should you do? I would suggest directly contacting lesser-known non-profits here and abroad or foreign public health government agencies. Offer to volunteer your time and contribute your skills. Perhaps you can work for a start up with a small staff; it may be less prestigious, but because it is small you may achieve more responsibilities as an intern. After speaking with many global health students both at Northwestern and at this conference, I find that many successful students took the path less traveled. Again, this approach takes initiative and time, but it is worth the effort when you gain unique professional experiences and real world insights that you may have otherwise missed out on.

Furthermore, if there is a need to be addressed and you know a solution, take the initiative to make a change. It doesn’t take millions of dollars and a large cohort of people to make a difference. If this conference taught me anything, it is that notion. All it takes is a simple idea plus perseverance and resilience. Plenty of college students start their own companies and non-profits with due diligence of research coupled with professional networking. Plenty of college students have also developed products that are either created by impoverished individuals in the developing world or aimed at reducing environmental damage and supporting local farmers. The difference between one of these inspiring conference speakers and you is not intelligence or money, but rather the idea, the persistence, and open-mindedness.  To further back up my claim, let me point out that many of the conference’s speakers were undergraduate, master’s, and PhD students presenting their own cutting-edge ideas and affecting change.

The Unite for Sight Global Health Conference is an annual event bringing together hundreds of people from all professional backgrounds and academic disciplines. As a Northwestern global health minor graduate and future health professional, I found it to be an extremely worthwhile experience and I know the other NU undergraduate attendees felt the same. Be sure to check out the event next year and consider contacting IPD/Global Health Studies for financial assistance in attending this inspiring conference!
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Category: Community Health, Health Education, Public Health, Social Entrepreneurship | Tags: global health, global health and innovation conference, Unite for Sight, WE CARE Solar | Comments (0)
Uganda, Mali, and Burkina Faso… and maybe an MPH/MSW? But that’s for the future! Global Health Alumni Interview with Jorie Larson (2010, SESP)
April 23, 2012 by Guest Bloggers
Name: Jorie Larson (2010, SESP)
Major: Social Policy
Minor: Global Health

Only a few weeks after graduating from Northwestern University in the Spring of 2010, Jorie Larson was already on her way to Mali to work as a health education specialist with the Peace Corps. Two years later she is back in the US, temporarily, while getting ready for her next big step in her career: the Peace Corps Response Program in Burkina Faso. Read an interview with global health studies alumna Jorie Larson about her professional and personal experiences in various stages of her career.

Q: What did you do after graduation and where are you now?

Jorie organized a training for 16 local traditional birth attendants in her village Malinke, Mali

A: While at Northwestern, I completed my BS in Social Policy from SESP and a global health minor. Within weeks of my graduation ceremony I was en route to hot, dry Mali, West Africa to live in a small rural village as a health education specialist with the Peace Corps. My experience living there, up until recent weeks when the program was evacuated due to political instability, was one of the most valuable experiences, personally and professionally, in my life. I was posted in a village of 1,000 ethnic Malinke in a difficult-to-reach area of western Mali. My primary work revolved around maternal/child health, since up to 1 in 5 children in Mali dies before age 5 due to malnutrition, malaria, diarrheal disease, and other preventable illnesses. I primarily worked in conjunction with the local community health center, conducting a behavioral health survey of the community; standardizing a malnutrition outreach and infant growth monitoring program; creating Information, Education and Communication opportunities within and outside of the center; and working with both formal staff and informal, locally-chosen community health educators on preventive and health promotion efforts including vaccination and family planning education. While there, I also collaborated with the district hospital doctors to organize a training for the staff of 36 health centers on the visual inspection method for cervical cancer prevention in low-resource environments; on the local level, the doctor at my clinic worked with me to organize a training for traditional birth attendants, whose services were heavily relied upon in my area, on basic principles of safer home births. Next month, I’ll be moving to Burkina Faso to begin a year-long post with the Peace Corps Response program, focusing on combating child nutrition with the Center for Nutritional Rehabilitation and Education there. After that, I’m considering pursuing an MPH/MSW program…but that’s for the future.

Q: How did your global health studies at NU influence your career choice and your life in general?

A: Global health studies and my minor had a huge influence on my chosen path. As a social policy major, I did not plan to pursue clinical medicine but was very interested in health and access to health care as a social justice issue, and I knew I wanted to work on a global scale. I loved that the minor offered the chance to delve into global health from a variety of angles, from the policy side, the programmatic side, the epi side, and from the perspective of various sub-fields within global health. One of the favorite courses I took was “Community Health Program Planning,” where we did case studies of various health issues being tackled all over the world through innovative approaches, many of which were at least partly socio-behavioral in nature. It was really that class that got me thinking about what it might be like to work with an NGO or international organization on broad health issues, on finding locally-appropriate ways to increase access to health information and health care. As my time at Northwestern progressed and I was able to take a variety of GH courses, it became more clear to me that a career combining public health and social justice would be a good fit for me.

Q: Which IPD program did you choose for your studies abroad and how has it influenced you?

Jorie on the Northwestern IPD Public Health in Uganda Program in 2009

A: But it wasn’t until I went on the IPD study abroad program, Public Health in Uganda, that I really made a decision to pursue international health work immediately following graduation. I had been to Ghana on a brief HIV/AIDS related service trip before, but this was my first time to spend a significant amount of time in Africa. The program, which provided classroom experience in public health in the developing world as well as practical experience with an NGO, taught me a few things. 1) I had to find some way back to Africa, to live, for some substantial amount of time, 2) I wanted to get a better sense on the scope of health challenges in rural Africa, where most Africans live–there were many public health resources in the capital of Kampala, but I knew the difficulties and the need must be even greater in villages and in harder to reach areas, and 3) There was no need to choose between my interest in social justice/concern for the most vulnerable and my interest in public health. While in Uganda, I worked with an NGO for current and former street children, and we developed an educational drama on HIV/AIDS to share at a local school. It was in many ways the best of both worlds, as I got to work with vulnerable youth–which I’d done quite a bit in the States–and also to work on a very real and salient health challenge. I also had a great opportunity to see firsthand the anthropological aspects of public health, and how effective public health messages have to be culture- and resource-appropriate. I left Uganda after that spring quarter of my junior year knowing that I would look for international opportunities in health following graduation, and I applied to Peace Corps within two months of being home. In that sense, the Public Health in Uganda program had a major influence on my choices.

Q: Do you have any advice or suggestions for current global health students on how to get involved or how to choose their career path in global health?

A: My only piece of advice would be to be open-minded and try to take advantage of taking courses in a variety of different areas while you’re still at NU. One of the greatest things about the program, I think, is that it is broad and designed to be extremely flexible to your interests. We all have to take core GH courses, but really take a good look at courses in other disciplines, such as gender studies, anthropology, or international studies, and even look at seminars that may be salient to global health issues. For those minors who are not planning on going into any kind of medicine and are instead coming from a sociology, social work, anthropology, policy, or other background, know that there are so many ways to find meaningful work in global health; you needn’t be a doctor or nurse. Much of the public health work I’ve seen going on in Mali is preventative in nature, and public health needs social workers, policy makers, anthropologists, health educators, and development specialists just as it needs clinical medicine practitioners. If you’re on the fence about which direction you want to go, getting some grassroots experience, especially internationally through a volunteer program or with an NGO, might give you a good sense of what areas interest you–being in the Peace Corps gave me a chance to see different health issues at the ground level, and solidified my interest in maternal/child and reproductive health. Whether international or in the US with underserved populations, a good health field experience will make decisions about further study or a career path much easier, and many grad programs now prefer several years’ experience, so it will only be an advantage.

Q: What’s one life lesson that you have learned since you started working?

A: One life lesson I’ve learned from my work experience post graduation, so far, has been that having a sense of humor and remembering your purpose, is invaluable. Any kind of work in the developing world often goes at a glacially slow pace, and there will inevitably be ridiculous setbacks and moments when the enormity of the fight you’re fighting seems impossible–but there are also beautiful moments when you realize that each person that you can influence positively, be it a colleague at the health center or a mother of a malnourished child or a secondary school student in a health class–is one person empowered to be healthier, and one by one is how real change occurs and is sustained. Laugh at yourself, do it often (Mali taught me that) and remember that each relationship that you build is important–though you may not see the effects right away.
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Category: Burkina Faso, Child Health, Global Health Alumni Series, Health Education, Mali, Nutrition, Uganda | Tags: Community Health Program Planning, Global Health minor, Health Education Specialist, Mali, Peace Corps, Public Health in Uganda | Comments (1)
From doctor to journalist, Feinberg alum discusses career in global health
April 18, 2012 by Marguerite McNeal
Panosian, a Feinberg alum, co-founded the global health program at UCLA, where she is a professor of medicine. She spoke about her career in global health Tuesday at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

What do malaria, global health and main street journalism have to do with one another? Dr. Claire Panosian Dunavan, a Feinberg alum, wove together her experience in these three fields Tuesday morning for the annual alumni lecture at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

Panosian had no medical expertise when she spent the summer of 1972 in Haiti. Little did she know the images of malaria, malnutrition and severe diarrhea she encountered would lead her to a career in global health.

Panosian, currently a professor at UCLA in the infectious disease department,
recounted stories from her experiences studying malaria in Africa and Asia. She also talked about her accidental role as a medical journalist and how it enables her to spread awareness about global health.

In 1993, Panosian was invited to participate in a major malaria policy report that recommended subsidizing artemisinin drug combination treatments for the entire global market.

“To see how the policy played out, both perfectly and imperfectly, has shaped my education,” she said. Subsidies for these drugs remain crucial for malaria control today.

Experts underestimated mortality from malaria, according to a February report from The Lancet. “The study shows that mortality from malaria is about twice what we thought it was,” Panosian said. “It’s very worrisome.”

During Panosian’s work with control policies, she noticed a surge of interest in the field of global health from young doctors. She co-founded the global health department at UCLA, where she teaches an introductory course every year.

“I expect my students to understand health and finance indicators, such as life expectancy and fertility rates,” Panosian said. “We should all understand these statistics as global citizens.”

The public, inundated with blogs, single-source articles and short health clips on the nightly news, is uncertain about what’s happening in medicine. “There’s a traditional role of medical experts to assist and advise professional journalists,” Panosian said.

She encouraged fellow medical professionals to harness their expertise and use their voice to help the public understand health issues. “It isn’t as hard as you think to write an op-ed for your local paper.”

Panosian writes about global health and other medical issues for Los Angeles Times, Scientific American and Discover Magazine. “Starting with a local audience is a great way to expand and to introduce global health,” she told the crowd of doctors and medical students. “People will turn to trustworthy sources and you are those sources for certain topics.”
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Category: General, Global Health Alumni Series, Infectious Diseases, Policy, Public Health | Tags: Africa, Feinberg, global health, journalism, malaria | Comments (0)