I am beyond grateful for this experience at icddr,b and believe it has been extremely influential towards my future career. I pursued this Master’s degree in order to help me narrow my research focus. When I started this degree, I knew I wanted to do public health research and decided to concentrate in maternal and…
Fresh Eyes, Curious Mind – Last week
I spent this last week putting all the pieces together and presenting my findings to the Ministry of Economy and the Ministry of Health. Despite the short amount of time, I believe I did a complete evaluation within the scope we defined. I was able to build upon the data analysis I performed in week…
What A Transformative Experience, Somaliland|Edna Adan Hospital|4|Valentina Vargas
From the OR to the camel market, this week was a busy one. I worked tirelessly with Mubarak and Fikuro, to increase participant recruitment from students at the University. We reached 118 responses, which is very low compared to the initial goal of 400 but I am satisfied knowing I had to overcome many obstacles…
The Bittersweet Ending of my First Trip to Africa|COMONETH|4|Janella Kang
Janella Kang, SM2 – Global Health and Population January 24th, 2020 COMONETH by Makerere University Iganga, Uganda The amount of knowledge I’ve gained through the past 3 weeks is quite amazing. From simply learning the health system and care Iganga has from being fully immersed in the Ugandan culture. One of the key takeaways…
People over Publications | Final week in Zambia | Rebecca Youngerman
I’ll miss walking in the Zambian sunshine each day to work and sipping tea out of one of the office mugs with a little cactus on it. I’ll miss how everyone says “hello, good morning, how are you?” to everyone in the room as they walk in, even if it’s the fifth time. I’ll miss…
People are not irrational; they just have rationales that we do not know
The highlight of this week was visiting the health centers I selected last week. I have always been fascinated by how much everything can change beyond certain geographical points. In Lima, you do not have to drive many miles to see the stark difference between those parts and the center of the city. We visited…
Learning more about post-abortion care in Bangladesh
Over the past two weeks I’ve developed a draft of a paper on contraception discontinuation and switching in Matlab, Bangladesh. The literature review for the background and the methods section were the simpler parts of the draft writing, but one of the major challenges was the data analysis. The data analysis was started over a…
Deriving Lessons from the Less-Obvious|3| Jenna Sherman
It is genuinely shocking that I’m already at the cusp of entering into my final week here. Both traveling and becoming familiar with a place do something interesting to one’s sense of time, respectively. The former — from my personal perspective and with some exceptions — tends to slow time down. Novel sights, sounds, smells,…
Wearing many hats, Somaliland | Edna Adan Hospital |3|Valentina Vargas
The hospital is starting to feel more like home everyday! A staff member even complimented how I wrapped my hijab saying that I looked from Somaliland. This week I had the opportunity to eat authentic Ethiopian food with some of my colleagues and I also went to the camel market with Selanne and Derrel. (pictures below) In regard…
Finally, Nshima | Week 2 in Zambia | Rebecca Youngerman
Feeling more settled into my environment and routine caused this week to go all too quickly. During my first weekend I spent the day at a mall on Saturday, which I was told is “very Lusaka of me”. The plans for an outdoor market got rained out, but I still got to meet up with…
