As I bid goodbye to the Africa-bound American fellows after our orientation at Yale, I have to admit I felt a tinge of jealousy. I thought of the exciting and challenging experiences they would have in a new country, and questioned my decision to stay in Boston, where I had lived for the past four years.
One of the most remarkable aspects of the Global Health Corps experience is the partnership between a national and an international fellow at each site. When I first met Rhea, it never occurred to me that she would end up helping me understand my own country in new and surprising ways. Certainly, her knowledge of American pop culture is far superior to my own, and her love for the American post office and library systems have made me appreciate what I once took for granted. But more importantly, Rhea has reiterated for me the importance of bringing voices from other countries in order to improve health outcomes in the United States.
PACT, where Rhea and I work, as well as the broader community health worker movement in the United States, understands the value of learning from developing countries. Indeed, PACT’s community health worker model in Boston was based on the accompagnateur model that Partners in Health developed in Haiti. Similar community health models in the US have also drawn inspiration from abroad; a recent NY Times article described the influence of the Iranian experience in developing a community health worker program in Mississippi.
The concept of bringing an innovation from the developing world to the industrialized world is unfortunately termed “reverse innovation.” This unnecessarily condescending phrase surely does not reflect the respect I have for the host of innovations the US is lucky to adopt from other countries.
Rhea, who brings experience working with barangay (village) health workers in her native Philippines, has brought exceptional business and communications skills to PACT. More importantly for me, she has challenged me to think critically about the American health system. As I struggled to explain Medicaid, Medicare, and private insurers to someone from a country where everyone has the same insurance, I was reminded of the uniquely frustrating complexity of the American health care system.
Rhea’s energy, intelligence, and willingness to jump into working on health care in the United States has helped me to really learn from my fellowship experience. In addition to appreciating the importance of the international voice in domestic health care, I have been able to think more critically about my own context, erasing any initial envy I felt towards the fellows who ended up in Africa.
Even better, I’ve loved bringing Rhea along to celebrate some of my favorite aspects of American culture, in particular Halloween. Here we are celebrating with Powell, our colleague at PACT! Trick or treat!
