Summer 2015: My Experiences as a Global Health Leadership Intern

By Jasmine Uysal
UCLA School of Public Health
Summer 2015 (August 10-September 18) Global Health Leadership Intern

As a passionate Global Health MPH student at UCLA and self-proclaimed humanitarian, I learned about Unite For Sight (UFS) and immediately found myself inexplicably drawn to the organization and its mission to, “pioneer responsible healthcare delivery that serves, empowers, and mentors organizations and individuals to provide high-quality outcomes.” My primary goal in serving as a Unite For Sight Summer 2015 Global Health Leadership Intern was to expand my understanding of non-profit management and grassroots community health care mobilization in developing contexts. I am happy to say that the internship met, and in many aspects exceeded, my expectations.

During my time in New Haven, I worked closely with the compassionately-committed Unite For Sight team, including Jennifer Staple-Clark, Founder and CEO, and Lanch McCormick, Executive Director. I had the incredible opportunity to network with world-class global health professionals, and I even sat in at Yale's "Introduction to Global Health" lectures as well as at Unite For Sight speaking events. I spent my days reviewing literature and writing educational coursework for the Global Health University, promoting safe and sustainable best practices for global development, sitting in on global health webinars and other learning opportunities, absorbing the importance and critical aspects of quality research design and analysis, and furthering my understanding of how to drive global health delivery outcomes by fortifying local, sustainable partnerships. In only six short weeks, the Unite For Sight internship transformed my capabilities and perspective on global health development and leadership.

My specific internship tasks included the following:

• The Global Health University seeks to educate and empower the growing world of public health professionals, students, and advocates on local and global health risks, as well as on best practices. With extensive experience in environmental exposure and occupational health risks, I elected to research and write two educational courses: “Asbestos – A Man Made Disaster” and “Lead – A Risk Too Often Ignored.” These courses outline the health hazards of these specific toxic chemicals, highlight their prominent role in both the United States and developing countries, and provide preventative measures to minimize risk of individual exposure.

• Through Global Health Fellow research projects, UFS seeks to further develop their global health delivery models at their local partner eye clinics in Honduras, India, and Ghana. As an intern, I was charged with the task of cleaning and analyzing data from these research projects, as well as creating a visual chart summary (otherwise known as a dashboard) of my analysis, including, for example, measurements on factors that “positively or negatively correlate with patients previous eye care.” During this process I learned the nuances of cleaning and analyzing a data set (with both quantitative and qualitative data). Examples within my dashboard included graphical representation of patients' top diagnoses, symptoms, and barriers to care, such as the effect of education level and distance from clinics. 

• Beyond research data, UFS also collects clinic outreach data to monitor the output of clinics and the outcomes of patient eye health. Here, I also cleaned and analyzed large data sets, and subsequently created dashboards to summarize the data for presentation to the partner clinics.

• Each year, the Unite For Sight Global Health & Innovation Conference at Yale University attracts over 2,000 participants and 300 speakers. As a part of this process, I daily tracked speaker updates and invites through Client Registration Management (CRM) software.

• For the Unite For Sight Global Health & Innovation Conference, I also managed the preliminary review of submitted pitches and abstracts. With a critical eye, I assessed abstracts on the methodology of the study (ensuring rigorous standards), the significance and accuracy of presented data, and the cultural competency of the researcher. For pitch submissions, I studied the relevancy and evidence behind the proposed innovation, as well as the entrepreneurs' focus on health outcomes rather than strictly outputs.

• I reviewed student submissions for the Global Health University, assessing student understanding and critical thinking on course content.

As a UFS intern, I not only entered the world of global health, but I got to be a part of the change advocating for sustainable, community-based solutions grounded in constant feedback evaluation and outcomes-based program assessment. As I leave New Haven and enter my MPH studies at UCLA, I will take these lessons and this experience to heart, continuing the practice of grassroots partnerships and solutions. Even more exciting, I will stay connected and involved with UFS as a Campus Representative at UCLA and hopefully as a future participant at the Global Health & Innovation Conference. Once you start at Unite For Sight, you just don’t want to leave!