What Drives Me? My Family Curse
Kerala, India in the 1920s. My grandmother was giving birth in what I can only imagine was a hot and unventilated birthing room with low-skilled attendants performing her blood transfusion. That day doomed our family. Fast forward 65 years to the mid-1980s. My father, a pediatrician working in Saudi Arabia, was the youngest of seven […]
Harlem: Social Determinants of Health, Asthma and the American Dream
Harlem By Langston Hughes What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore— And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over— like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode? […]
African Development and Public Health
A month ago, I attended the African Development Conference hosted by the Harvard Kennedy School of Policy. The conference’s theme was, “Looking South – Moving Forward – Fostering Development collaboration within the Global South.” The main emphasis throughout the conference was private public partnerships, talent and resources for development within the African continent. The conference […]
Promoting public health care equity and access
Public health care access and affordability is a civic right that every citizen is owed to enjoy unconditionally. However often social, economic, political and environmental barriers deter individuals from exercising this right. One billion people world over survive on less than $1.25 a day, making them unable to afford their health care needs and eventually […]
Hidden Risks in Small-Scale Farming Initiatives
Over the last few years there has been a huge boom in small-scale farming initiatives within a multitude of NGOs around the world. In Kasese, Uganda, where I have spent the past year as a Global Health Corps (GHC) fellow, the story is no different. Many NGOs have started focusing specifically on small-scale farming programs […]
Things to Remember During My Fellowship
I did not expect that my fellowship would end so soon! It’s just very fast. I still have fresh memories of flying from Kigali International airport to JFK and a warm drive to Yale University for Global Health Corps’ training institute like it was yesterday. Retreats for quarter one and two were normal and I […]
When You Accidentally Walk Through The Right Door: My GHC Experience
For a long time, my heart has had the desire to work with vulnerable groups of people, specifically the refugee population. My past positions opened doors for me in not-for profit work but limited my experience to working with children and youth, which did not give me the full satisfaction of working alongside vulnerable people […]
Health policy activism
Policy activism is now gradually appearing in the public health lexicon. Though still embryonic in professional practice, there appears to be a modest conceptual foundation that supports many of today’s public health policies and programs designed for expansive community engagement. Like many newly minted Masters in Public Health (MPH), I was also lost when I […]
Naloxone: Another Tool in the Toolbox
Every day in the United States, 120 people die as a result of drug overdose. Deaths from drug overdose have been rising steadily over the last two decades and are now the leading cause of injury death in the United States [1]. In particular, deaths from overdose involving heroin have almost quadrupled from 2000 to 2013, with […]
Using ICTs at the Grassroots Level: My Story Better Told through GHC
Growing up I always had the intrigue to learn how computers can change the lives of people and the desire to actually make it a reality. Together with my colleagues we pitched the idea of what is today called Cultural Waves Uganda, a small grassroots organization that has reached girls that would otherwise drop out […]