START Center Research Assistant, Provost Award
PhD in Implementation Science program
Please tell us a little bit about yourself.
I'm a PhD student in Implementation Science in the University of Washington's Department of Global Health. Following my undergrad as an electronics engineer, I worked at Bain and Company, a global management consulting firm, at their India and Africa offices. I transitioned to the field of public health in 2018, working for the Clinton Health Access Initiative supporting service delivery of their Tuberculosis, Oxygen, Vaccines, Nutrition, SRMNCAH, and Health System Strengthening programs in Southeast Asia. I pursued my MPH at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH), graduating in December 2021. After graduating, I continued exploring my interests in costing, cost-effectiveness, program management, and implementation science, working at the Department of Epidemiology at JHSPH helping support clinical trials in East Africa. I love traveling, hiking, and playing and watching soccer, tennis, and cricket.
Why did you decide to attend the UW for graduate school?
UW has a great reputation for their pragmatic work in the global health context. The Implementation Science Program provided a lot of flexibility for me to pursue my research interests while simultaneously learning new methods that I could choose to apply to my work. UW was the only school that was interested in me submitting a "Personal History Statement", which allowed me to express myself freely and got me excited for the program. This is one of the few programs where my programmatic experience with Ministries of Health, as well as my research experience in the past, both were equally valued.
What are your research interests?
My experience focuses on addressing delays in patient diagnosis and linkage to care, applying both a patient-and-provider-centered approach in low resource settings. This could be through research at the intersection of health economics, infectious disease epidemiology, and health systems in LMIC settings.
What are you enjoying most about your graduate program?
The flexibility to pace my program is what I love the most. And Seattle as a city has so much to do, great diversity in the culture and the food, and the UW campus specifically offers so much for everyone to pursue their interests outside of academia as well.
Did your award influence your decision to attend UW?
I am funded by the START Center. And yes, having the security of funding early on did heavily influence my decision to join (and this would be true for any school I'd apply to).