By Alyssa Smaldino | Project Leader
At GlobeMed, our alumni often share stories of how deeply their GlobeMed experiences influence their lives beyond academia. As we prepare for a new academic year, we want to share some inspiring stories of a few alumni who are continuing to advance the movement for global health equity.
This year, five GlobeMed alumni have been chosen to be part of the 2015-2016 Global Health Corps Fellowship class. Global Health Corps is a non-profit organization that provides opportunities for young professionals from diverse backgrounds to work on the frontlines of the fight for global health equity.
Learn more about three GlobeMed alumni who are beginning their time as Global Health Corps fellows in their profiles below.
Carly Hubbard
University: Washington University in St. Louis
Major: International and Area Studies
Graduation Year: 2013
What are you doing as a GHC Fellow? I am working as Development Coordinator for Last Mile Health based in Boston, MA.
How is partnership relevant to your work now? Last Mile Health’s mission is to extend access to healthcare to the most remote, difficult to reach communities in Liberia by recruiting, training, and employing local Community Health Workers. This vital work is done through a strong partnership with Liberia’s Ministry of Health, exemplifying the idea that solutions to some of the most difficult issues of accesibility to healthcare come from within (particularly in a time of intense scale-up after the Ebola epidemic). Furthermore, my role of Development Coordinator involves maintaining private partnerships with collaborators and funders across a wide spectrum of individuals, foundations, and multilateral entities – each one being a vital piece we could not function without.
University: University of Colorado at Boulder
Major: Integrative Physiology
Graduation Year: 2012
What are you doing as a GHC Fellow? I am working as a Health Counselor at Covenant House New Jersey. Covenant House is a homeless youth shelter offering services for young people ages 16-21 to become successfully independent. My role is to ensure that the residents of Covenant House have access to health and wellness services. I do an initial Physical Wellness Assessment for each youth that walks into the shelter. Then I create an individualized Health Plan for each young person and manage their medical case throughout their time at Covenant House. I also bring community partners into the shelter to lead health education sessions for our residents. My goal is for our youth to exercise agency over their own health and decisions made about their healthcare.
How is partnership relevant to your work now? Partnership is essential to my current work as a Global Health Corps Fellow. Many of the youth staying at Covenant House have not seen a doctor in many years so their medical needs are often quite extensive. I am not a licensed medical professional so I cannot provide medical services. My job is to address these medical needs using existing resources in the community. I can only do my job if there are partnerships between Covenant House and the organizations that will directly service our youth. One current partnership I manage is with a traveling clinic that comes on site twice a week to hold various medical appointments. Another example of a partnership that I maintain is with a testing van that comes to Covenant House every other Friday to test the youth for STIs. These are just two of the vital partnerships that maintain the health and wellness of my clients. This year I am very excited to build new partnerships and deepen existing relationships in order to expand my capacity to serve.
Kalin Werner
University: University of California - Los Angeles
Major: Geography and Environmental Studies
Graduation Year: 2012
What are you doing as a GHC Fellow? Resource Mobilization and Partnerships Officer at Planned Parenthood Association of Zambia
How has your commitment to global health changed since graduation? Since graduating I have become more passionate about the development of policy and management systems in global health– shifting from a more narrow programs view to seeking opportunities that will allow me to address health from a systems perspective. Experiences working in the field for the CDC, with GlobeMed alumni Ankur and Amee on Article 25, and later on in Kuala Lumpur, have really helped pushed me to radicalize my thoughts on what possibilities lie ahead for global health. They’ve pushed me to not only see what is possible in the next few months of a project, but really look at how we can flip the system on its head to get to the root of social injustice.
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