The past eight weeks have passed by in the blink of an eye, and I am already beginning my second year in medical school. I have learned so much about the initial processes involved in the development of a research project in public health. Throughout this project, I have gained a lot of insight into what a future in global health may entail. I found the results of the study to be enlightening in many ways. Most of the community health workers agree that their use of WhatsApp has been beneficial in their job, but many of them are also not very literate with technology. Some of the barriers to the implementation of mHealth include access to service, this is a problem in many places worldwide. For this, we are going to have to be resourceful and think of innovative ways to overcome this problem. Two of the community health workers said that they have to walk an hour or more to receive signal to use their phones, which to the average American probably sounds crazy.
Moving forward with my career in medicine and global health, I will take with me what I have learned about the CBPR model. I found this approach to research to be very exciting because it more accurately aims to assist the communities with their specified needs. This process also ensures that the community members have a stake in the research, and I find that to be very important. Overall, this experience through the MHIRT program with AMOS as our partner has been great. I can now say that I have a little bit of experience with global health, and I am looking forward to continuing to do work abroad in the future. It's my hope that I can stay in contact with AMOS and possibly work with them in the future as a physician!
Also visited St. Louis during the past week! It was cool to see how I can do global health from anywhere, which means heading into the future, I may not have to be abroad to make an impact abroad.
Picture of the arch that I took on my phone below (it may or may not show up, I am not sure why, so I included generic image from internet too).
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