Submitting guest blogs is open to Global Washington’s members of the Atlas level and above. We value a diversity of opinions on a broad range of subjects of interest to the global health and development community.
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Have an idea of what you’d like to write about? Let’s continue the conversation! Email comms@globalWA.org and put “Blog Idea” in the subject line.
On Thursday July 26th, Global Washington hosted a Global Worker Series event on Global Health at iLeap. Speakers from PATH and I-TECH came to discuss hiring processes in the field and gave advice to those looking to go into global health work.
PATH is an international organization based in Seattle that, “transforms global health through innovation.” With more than 1,000 employees worldwide, they have diverse opportunities for employees within their organization. They have a very human as well as global impact as, for example, they bring vaccines more quickly and more cheaply to the developing world, partner with similar organizations to work toward common goals, and cross-cut solutions between health and socio-economic conditions to create lasting change.
Richard Wilkinson, HR Director for the International Training and Education Center for Health (I-TECH), shared with us his personal experience getting a position in the Global Health field when he transitioned to a new career in his fifties. He encouraged those looking into careers in global health to aim for the “sweet spot” of what you love, what you’re great at, and what needs doing before looking for a unique position in the field. He shared that global health needs workers that have two-fold skills: they have technical understanding of the socio-environmental determinacy of health as well as the interpersonal skills to work in a field where you cannot accomplish your goals on your own.
Jenna Herron, Recruiting Director for HR at PATH, and SaraBeth Ross, Global Recruiting Coordinator at PATH, both shared their personal experience of finding a position at PATH and gave insights on how PATH finds their employees. They look for applicants with easily transferrable skills, and those who have field experience along with skilled experience.
All of the speakers encouraged those seeking careers in global health to make connections and network as much as possible. As Jenna advised, the path to a career in global health can be a “hop, skip, and a jump” away through other positions and fields as you make connections. PATH hosts a Community Coffee Quarterly that all recruiters attend, which could be a great place to network and learn more about the field of global health. (The next event is on August 30th at 8am.)
Global Washington’s Careers in Global Development Center on our website offers opportunities for job seekers to find the best position in the global development sector, available from Washington State. Whether it’s a paid position, internship, or training opportunity that you’re looking for, the Careers in Global Development Center is an open resource to help you find it. Please visit us at: https://globalwa.org/resources/careers-in-development/
On May 29, President Obama honored Washington’s own Dr. Bill Foege with the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, for his leadership of the campaign that successfully eliminated smallpox, the first and only human disease ever to be completely eradicated.
Born in 1936, the 6’7″ Dr. Foege (pronounced Fay-ghee) graduated from Pacific Lutheran University, attended the University of Washington Medical School, and interned for Public Health Seattle-King County. When he became a global health expert for the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in the 1960s, smallpox was killing 2 million people every year and infecting 50 million more. After earning an MPH from Harvard in 1965, he worked with missionary groups in Nigeria to transform their approach from hospital-based medicine to community-based medicine. Vaccine shortages and mass vaccination’s poor record led Foege and other CDC scientists in Africa to pioneer, largely on their own initiative, the “survey and containment” method of stockpiling vaccine reserves and mass vaccinating only people from areas with recorded smallpox cases. The implementation demanded ingenuity from local people and scientists alike. In one afflicted Nigerian village, Foege vaccinated 2,000 people in a single day. When he asked the chief how he had gotten so many people to come, the chief explained, “I told everyone to come and see the tallest man in the world.” As Foege recounts in his 2011 memoir House on Fire, he would explain to people that “if a house is on fire, no one wastes time putting water on nearby houses just in case the fire spreads. They rush to pour water where it will do the most good: on the burning house.” When it saw the effectiveness of the “survey and containment” strategy, the CDC adopted it as its smallpox strategy with remarkable speed for a bureaucracy. “It shows the value of having young people involved in the project,” says Foege. “Julius Richmond, the former Surgeon General, once said that the reason smallpox eradication worked is that the people involved were so young they didn’t know it couldn’t work.” In 1967, Foege joined the World Health Organization’s newly-launched campaign to eradicate smallpox through mass vaccinations. Under Foege’s leadership, the WHO smallpox program quickly adopted the “survey and containment” strategy. By the mid-1970s, the disease had been effectively eradicated. On May 8, 1980, the WHO formally certified smallpox as the first major epidemic human disease to ever be eradicated.
Dr. Foege served as Director of the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta from 1977-1983. He also co-founded the Task Force for Global Health and took up teaching at Emory University. As Executive Director of the Carter Center from 1986-1992, he led the international campaign to eliminate Guinea Worm and other diseases by pioneering new models of partnership between global health groups and pharmaceutical companies. He also served on the board of Pacific Lutheran University and played a crucial role in establishing the Global Health Program of Seattle’s Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which he still serves as a Senior Fellow.
Foege is a passionate teacher who considers the present day to be the most exciting and promising time in the history of global health. A pious man whose uncle’s missionary work inspired him to enter the global health sector, he tells his students, “Love science but don’t worship it. There’s something better than science, and that is serving humanity.” He says global health practicitioners should understand and respect the cultures of those they seek to help and to look for inspiration everywhere. “I tell students they should be generalists and specialists simultaneously. Generalists try to figure out how the world works…and then follow some passion [as a specialist], but then you know how that passion fits into the general picture. And there are so many things to be done that you really can follow your passion and improve the world.”
Now, more than ever, organizations funded by the government need even more funds in order to continue to help under-developed nations. The success due to Congress’ investment in improving global health is greater than ever imagined, and in order to keep this success growing, more funds will be needed.
However, due to the cuts in foreign assistance funding, many of these programs will have to consider new ways to continue their work with a limited budget. The two types of funding, bilateral and multilateral, have paved the way for helping millions of people with new life-saving treatments. These treatments have helped in the fights against HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and maternal and child mortality throughout the world.
The government funding has not only helped fight these diseases and issues, but also has ensured that over time countries will be able to sustain and hopefully take control of these efforts to prevent and treat diseases and maternal and child mortality.
Even though the U.S. government still supports global health programs, the decrease in funding has put a strain on global health organizations as they try to construct a new ways of implementing these programs with a smaller budget.