Saturday, July 15, 2006
my job
Another one from 2006
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so what am i actually doing over here?
I had to wait to answer this question since it was really dependent on where I got sent in India, as well as what the local polio project's needs were. So, now that I've been in Mumbai for a few days, have gotten to know the system here a bit, and have met most of the key players, we've hammered out a general plan of action for the next five weeks and a half weeks.
So here's my plan:
1) Conduct "Train the Trainer" workshops: One of the responsibilities of the various surveillance and public health personnel here is to meet with hospitals, physicians, community health workers and quacks (the local term for traditional health providers. Yes, that is really what they call them) and explain the polio surveillance system to them and convince them to participate. The various public health people are already quite familiar with how the system works, but explaining this to others effectively is something they are still not completely comfortable with.
So, in a less than 1 week time frame, I'm designing a one-day "train the trainer" workshop to help teach the public health/surveillance people how to go about training the health care practitioners on the surveillance system. Oh yeah, we're covering routine immunizations too. Woo hoo!
I'm actually having fun with this. I enjoy teaching and have done a fair bit of designing exercises and courses for students, but teaching teachers is something new. Should be fun! (Thankfully I have my educational expert (my partner D) at home to help me out.
2) Informal evaluation of the surveillance system: The system that the polio project has in place already is quite good, but there is always room for improvement. I'm helping them refine and implement some ideas they've had for improving the system and am generally keeping an eye on the system to point out issues when I see them.
Doing all this involves following the surveillance people around to hospitals to meet with providers and do active case searches, as well as to the homes of children who have been reported to the system. The majority of the children live in slum areas. It's actually nice to get outside of the "tourist mumbai" and see what the city is really like.
3) Implementing evaluations: The system as it currently stands has structures in place to do routine evaluations of the system, particularly on the large scale. We're trying to expand that a bit and see if we can provide more consistent feedback at all the levels of the surveillance system.
And all of this comes out to one thing: I'll be working a lot. 12 hour days, seven days a week is not out of the ordinary. BUT, I'm having fun and learning a lot. So it's worth it.
On the other hand, this means I probably won't get much time to see Mumbai, eat in restaurants outside of the hotel (thankfully the restaurants are decent) or do much emailing. I will, however, do my best to blog regularly. Eventually I'll even find a few minutes to post some pictures here!
