Check!

I’ve completed my summer internship! Can you believe it? I still have a few reports to submit to UNC but my work with the PNA has sadly come to a close. The team still has a lot of data analysis and report writing ahead of them but I do feel that I made a solid contribution during my practicum this summer. I know that I learned a lot and I am certain that my experiences from supporting the Kenya PNA will benefit my work on CapacityPlus and beyond.

I’ve been taking it easy the past few days. I finished painting six beautiful oak dining room chairs for my condo – with primer and two coats of paint each, it is like I painted 18 chairs! It was more work than I bargained for but I’m so proud of the finished product. I have the bug to decorate and I’m eager to get back into my home in Chapel Hill.

Tomorrow I’m heading to Canada for a much needed vacation. Word cannot describe how excited I am for this trip! My friend Chris and I are going to Ottawa, Montreal, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. I’m ready to explore in relax in all of these places unseen. So far, my Canadian travels have been limited to Toronto and Vancouver. I’m keyed up about Tim Hortons, exploring the streets of Montreal, whale watching at the coast and kayaking! It sounds like a dream vacation and Chris has done an excellent job planning out adventure. I can’t wait for that cooler air too!

Before you know it I’ll be writing about starting up my work on CapacityPlus – some new exciting things are coming our way so stay tuned! I am going to be supporting some new and very cool work surrounding nursing education! In the mean time, soon you can check out IntraHealth’s website for a guest blog by yours truly. (www.intrahealth.org)

School too will be back in session next month. In fact I plan to take a course at the Odum Institute before classes even start so I’m getting a jumpstart (inspired by my data analysis on the PNA). Stay tuned friends – I have so much more to write about, ay!

Making Dustin proud!

The data is coming in! I love this part of the study when data sets are coming in and after they are cleaned, we can look for trends and feedback to help us address our research questions. The PNA is so big, it will take a while to digest all of the information and how we want to report on it but for now, I’m taking some of the pieces and analyzing away. In a nerdy way, I am seriously enjoying this! Yesterday I downloaded a free trial version of SPSS and I’m getting a preview of what I’ll be learning in my Research Methods class this fall. SPSS seems much more user friendly than SAS and I’ve already been able to teach myself how to run some of the descriptive statistics.

Can you tell I am enthusiastic about our data analysis? Last night, I stayed up later working analyzing some qualitative data and went to bed thinking about how we can link pieces of that data to other parts of the PNA. This morning when I was typing out notes I had an epiphany – I literally slept with my data! My MCH girls will laugh because our biostatistics professor Dustin told us from day one that biostatisticians often sleep with their data to help process it. I’m by no means anything close to a biostatistician but last night, I slept with my data (no p-values yet Dustin, sorry).

In my last post I encouraged you to read Half the Sky. Well if you don’t have time to read a book but would like to read something uplifting and “public healthish”, I encourage you to pick up a copy of this month’s Glamour (Vanessa Hudgens is on the cover) and turn to page 125. There is a great story about a female US solider that saved a 13-year old girl’s life by delivering her still born baby in very resource constrained Afghanistan. It’s gripping and a reminder that we still have a long way to go to ensuring equal and high quality maternal health care for women across the globe.

Friends and the Dewey Decimal System

This past weekend was such a nice break for fun! Friday night I was invited to the Michael Buble concert with friends – it was a great show and even better was laughing and spending time with such a great family. Saturday I had breakfast with some of my oldest friends from growing up and that night had dinner in Raleigh at Sitti (yum Lebanese). Sunday I met grad school friends out in Carrboro to watch the World Cup final – great time but I just wish the Netherlands had won! So all and all, a great weekend spent with so many brilliant friends that I am thankful to have in my life. I am very appreciative of all of the support and happiness they bring to my life so for all of my friends out there who read my blog (and those that don’t), thank you for being so wonderful!

I have two weeks left supporting the Kenya project before taking a much needed vacation and returning to my work with CapacityPlus. All of the sudden time is flying by! While we are waiting for the data to be entered in Nairobi, I’ve been doing a literature review to see what else is “out there” about health worker training and the linkages between all of the parts of the system. Thank goodness for the internet and my experience in doing so much research and paper writing in grad school last year! I just don’t know how people managed without access to so many journals and articles from all over the world. I remember learning the Dewey Decimal System when I was in elementary school and I imagine kids these days are learning how to Google. What will my kids and grandkids be using? We are so fortunate to have so many tools at our fingertips to help further our work. We have to ensure we are expanding technologies to developing countries and using them to strengthen and improve the health workforce. I love reading about innovative ways of doing this and learning about programs that have successfully integrated new approaches using technology. We had a great presentation at work last week about using mobile phones (m-learning) for data collection and health education. This isn’t new but it is expanding in our field. Imagine a world where everyone has a cell phone and everyone has cell phone access. I think that might be in my lifetime!

One last note – I wanted to share with you a wonderful book I am reading called Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. This should be required reading for anyone in public health but there is much to gain for anyone who reads this book. It is a compellation of stories about empowering women and girls, focusing on gender-based violence, sex trafficking and prostitution and maternal mortality. Though these are dire subjects, this well-written book relays true stories with a twinge of hope and optimism for the future. See the link and please read this book!

http://www.halftheskymovement.org/

Adjusting...

The past week-plus has been busy! On the work front, I have been supporting the Kenya team from Chapel Hill. Data entry started in Nairobi this week and most data collection has completed. I am eager to see the data and start data analysis for my sections of the draft report. I’ll be looking specifically at the data from the client exit interviews, which assessed how clients rated the students who treated them or their children. There are other pieces of the data that I’ll be helping to analyze and I look forward to applying my skills in this next step of the PNA.

Outside of work, I have been adjusting to my unexpected return to the US. This has been much harder than I would have thought. While I am appreciative to be in a safe environment and surrounded by my friends and family, I have felt such emptiness. It is hard to explain and I don’t think it will go away for a while. I wish I were still in Kenya. I catch myself thinking of my Swahili words to make sure I have not forgotten them and I often dream of being back in Africa. This will pass but I am certainly learning to handle one of life’s familiar lessons – disappointment. I’ll go back to Africa and specifically Kenya sooner rather than later and I think it will mean so much more to me than it ever has before. I am determined to work hard at IntraHealth and at school to ensure I get back to East Africa soon to continue supporting teams like my colleagues in Kenya. Despite the lovely safaris and the exotic food, the ultimate goal is to improve health outcomes for families.

This past weekend was July 4^th. I had a low-key holiday celebration, spending some of it antiquing with my mom and friend Chris in Virginia and some of it at Christina and Greg’s party. This week there will be rest of the weary! I am staying with my friend Laura and I know it will be like a fun summer camp in the evenings! During the week, I already have a few early morning Skype calls on my calendar so the Chapel Hill team can liaise with the Kenya team on the PNA data! Have I mentioned I am excited to see what has been coming in from the field?!