Category: Summer 2022

Until Next Time!

Posted on by nayavill
Beach Day in Wrightsville, NC

It’s me again! I can’t believe how fast this summer has gone. As I reflect on my summer and my work with UNC Zambia Hub as their intern, I realize all the experience I have gained with literature analysis, dissemination, and writing! In my last blog post, I talked about how I was helping with a systematic review to help identify risk factors for HIV acquisition during pregnancy and breastfeeding in sub-Saharan Africa. Since then, I also started work on the Hub’s secondary analysis assessing the impact of different HIV testing strategies on couples HIV testing. I was tasked with drafting the introduction for this paper which involved researching studies that have tested uptake of couples HIV testing and synthesizing that information. From this task I learned about how integral couples HIV testing can be prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission. This work further emphasized how the health of a child does not only fall on the shoulders of the mother but the father as well. My internship experience, as a whole, has given me a wealth of knowledge and experience working in research, which is exactly what I hoped to gain. More specifically, I sharpened my writing skills, expanded research techniques, and made great connections with leaders at UNC Zambia Hub.

The next step for me will be completing my master’s thesis for my Maternal and Child Health concentration which I hope to write, in some capacity, on the topic of mother-to-child HIV transmission. I also hope to finish my 2nd year in the MPH program strong and graduate in May 2023. From there I want work on research that produces solutions, and then actively implement and evaluate these solutions as it relates to maternal and child health. Until next time! 🙂

Jasmine

A Public Health Lens at Peace Corps’ Office of Global Health and HIV

Posted on by nayavill
Enjoying a water taxi on vacation this summer in Geneva, Switzerland – home of the World Health Organization.

It’s already the end of the summer and my practicum experience! I am proud of what I am finishing up for the United States Peace Corps in the Office of Global Health and HIV, a literature review and an implementation guide for Peace Corps Volunteers working towards the prevention of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Other Drug use among adolescents.

Over the course of the summer, I have been contemplating how my personality interacts with public health work. As an anthropology major in college, I am accustomed to thinking on big-picture levels and I tend to come away with the “big idea” rather than with details. I’m used to thinking, “How can I make it as easy as possible for anyone, including myself, to take away the main point?” Sometimes, including in my projects for Peace Corps this summer, I have to remind myself that my work in public health has to cite specific research and statistics; the distinguishing mark of public health is that everything we do is grounded in evidence. As we have seen in the COVID pandemic, maintaining the credibility of the public health field is crucial to ensuring the public’s willingness to engage in health interventions.

One of the highlights of the summer was having

the opportunity to speak with a couple of Peace Corps posts (offices operating at the national level that receive Peace Corps Volunteers for their respective countries), including Moldova and Albania. Those meetings helped me focus my literature review because they gave me a better sense of the on-the-ground lens. I returned to my drafts after those meetings and realized some parts needed more specificity and others were irrelevant. I believe this is another important lesson in public health; one has to be able to operate on the community level while keeping the local level in mind. Ultimately, even though we work on a population level, we are still improving individual lives. I suspect I will continue to learn how to manage that balance throughout my public health career.

As I finish up with the Peace Corps, I am excited to start the final year of my Master of Public Health in Maternal, Child, and Family Health. I will be in this year’s cohort of the Mary Rose Tully Training Initiative to become an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant. I will also continue an internship that I started this summer with the Gillings Humanitarian Health Initiative, for which I am on a team creating a research repository on infant and young child feeding in emergency settings (link: https://www.ennonline.net/ife/iycferepository). I am enormously grateful to Salwan, my supervisor at Peace Corps this summer, for her inspiring and patient mentorship and for renewing my interest in global health promotion.

Clara

Practicum Wrap-up and Takeaways

Posted on by
Lara
Lara

Hi everyone! The time has come to wrap up my summer practicum at EngenderHealth. This summer has flown by, but I know that what I will take away from this experience is something that I will cherish for a very long time. This summer I worked on a data analysis and draft manuscript for a project that EngenderHealth’s team is implementing in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The team ran a baseline survey to understand perceptions of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) among adolescents and I worked with the team in Ethiopia to summarize the data into the manuscript. The last few weeks have been spent finalizing the data tables and manuscript draft so that it can move into the publication stage and hopefully be published in a few months. The hope is that this manuscript will inform policies which will seek to further establish systems of support and reporting for SGBV.

My practicum experience has reinforced the importance of understanding data context and leading with curiosity. I have also learned a great deal about data communication and presentation and I will carry these lessons into the 2nd year of my MPH and whatever comes after. I want to thank my preceptor, Kate, for her time and dedication to teaching me. It was an invaluable experience to learn from you.

All the best,

-Lara