Written by Deen Gu, Masters of Public Health in Health Administration student

During the summer of 2015, I worked as a Program Intern at Impact Global Health Alliance Global. I learned many things, but what surprised me the most was learning about how often women die during pregnancy and childbirth, especially in developing countries.

A pregnant woman is more susceptible to infection even during the early stages of pregnancy. Pregnant women are also more predisposed to complications of malaria, measles, and influenza, all of which are endemic in developing countries. Even after childbirth, when you think you are in the clear, there still are precautions that need to be taken by both the mother and the child. After the birth, Impact Global Health Alliance’ programs support the mother and child in promoting healthy nutrition, getting vaccines, and educating the mother about symptoms of pneumonia and severe diarrhea.

I was happy to be able to play a role in two of Impact Global Health Alliance’ projects in West Africa that focused on maternal and child health. The first was helping to start a new community health project in Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone has some of the poorest health indicators in the world, with a life expectancy of only 47 years, an infant mortality rate of 128 per 1,000 live births, and an under-five (U5) mortality rate of 217 per 1,000 live births.

My tasks included revising training materials, updating budgets, and developing a project start-up timeline. There was time to learn the material that I found interesting and make direct contributions. For instance, my area of interest is monitoring and evaluation systems. I was able to select and make improvements to the monitoring registers that resulted in a simpler and streamlined reporting system.

The second project was backstopping an Ebola Community Response Project in Liberia, one of the three countries hit hardest by the recent 2014-2015 epidemic. My responsibilities included writing a final report to donors using qualitative and quantitative data submitted by in-country staff and tracking the overall budget. It was sad to hear all the stories coming from West Africa, but encouraging to see that Impact Global Health Alliance’ eleven high-risk communities had zero confirmed cases of Ebola.

I was also able to hone my skills of grant writing during this summer. I helped write a  grant application for a family planning component that complements the existing Sierra Leone project. Even though grant writing is not my favorite activity, I believe that it is a skillset every global health professional must learn. Writing a grant means understanding every aspect of the program: designing technical aspects of the program and figuring out how to implement and monitor project activities.

All in all, I really enjoyed my time at Impact Global Health Alliance. I am looking to resume my second year as a public health graduate student at UNC, and continuing a career in global health. It is a career that is the perfect intersection between humanitarianism and deep technical knowledge. I believe that the people I met at Impact Global Health Alliance will become lifelong friends and acquaintances in the field of global public health!

Interested in becoming a Impact Global Health Alliance Global intern? Contact [email protected]

About Deen:

Deen Gu is currently pursuing his Masters of Public Health in Health Administration at UNC Chapel Hill. Prior to interning at Impact Global Health Alliance Global, Deen worked with FHI 360 as a Technical Officer in Vietnam, and also as a consultant with URC in Cambodia.