Over time, my understanding of wellness and disease have broadened. Through experiences allowing me to view healthcare from bottom-up community efforts and top-down public health interventions, I have come to understand human health contextualized within social circumstances, physical environment, and subjective experience. The ongoing dialogue between human body, mind, and surroundings continuously reinforces, amplifies, or undermines the states that we experience. The documents below attempt to capture some of this growth.
My passions and interests fall generally into the broader category of Planetary Health, defined as “the health of human civilization and the state of the natural systems on which it depends” (Rockefeller Foundation – Lancet Planetary Health Commission Report). I believe that as champions of health as a central and essential human right, it is simultaneously our responsibility to understand these reciprocal relationships and fight for the well-being of the planet we inhabit. We cannot achieve health, at the individual level, without consideration for our place in the world. This means looking beyond the artificial lines demarcating a nation-state, pursuing psychocultural forces and the meanings various people ascribe to disease, combatting social determinants of illness, and advocating for an unprecedented level of environmental stewardship.

 

Lima, Perú

I spent the winter of 2017 (January-March) in Lima, Perú working with Partners in Health (Socios en Salud) on their Mental Health team. Though I regret the brevity of my stay, and would have loved to stay for years if possible, this experience was formative in a way no other learning experience has been. During my time with Socios, I worked on a variety of projects that differed day to day. I often served as a translator for calls, or accompanied staff on visits to community health centers to deliver supplies. I also worked on some longer term projects over the course of my stay. My partner and I spent one day a week at the Ministry of Health pushing forward the WHO mental health systems evaluation. I also focused a great deal of my energy on adapting a perinatal depression intervention for mothers in our community. Perhaps the most fun was teaching English; I was both humbled and inspired by the time I spent teaching english to two age groups of young students. Each of these endeavors pushed my own personal growth and development and helped me better understand the work of an international NGO focused on improving health and well-being.

Icy Showers: A reflection on my time in Lima, Perú

 

Prishtina, Kosovo

Over the course of the summer of 2017, I worked on a team with two other students from Dartmouth College conducting maternal health policy research with the Kosovar NGO Action for Mothers and Children (AMC). We sought to explicate and offer policy solutions for the unprecedented rise in cesarean sections across Kosovo. Our team traveled throughout the nation’s provinces interviewing key stakeholders in the healthcare sector, ultimately producing a series of policy memos for AMC and the Ministry of Health. We then compiled these policy memos in a single final report, below. Through this process, I learned a great deal about the advantages and limitations of public health interventions and experienced firsthand the necessity of maintaining dialogue with the communities, providers and administrators whom such decisions and policies most affect.

Promoting Maternal and Child Health in Kosovo

 

Yellowknife, Northwest Territories Canada

I am very much looking forward to spending the upcoming year working at the Institute for Circumpolar Health Research (ICHR). Based out of Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories, I will have the opportunity to directly pursue the overlap between climatic change and human health. As the region of the world perhaps most directly affected by the shifting climate, the arctic has received only a fraction of the attention it deserves within the Global Health community. I hope that we can begin to position Arctic health on the global agenda. This opportunity is truly an honor.