Who knew
another opportunity for public health work on the African continent would come
up so soon after our trip to Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire last fall?! I
certainly didn't expect it but I am so excited!
I will be joining a small delegation from the Illinois Conference of the United Church of Christ to conduct a public health needs assessment for the communities served by a sister church, Evangelical Congregational Church in Angola. The two-week long trip will cover several provinces in Angola and will utilize the skills of a diverse delegation. The delegation includes a public health practitioner (me!), two ministers (one being my husband), a retired pharmacist, a history and anthropology professor, and a high school teacher.
Interestingly,
Angola requires that you "present" yourself in person to apply for a
travel visa. That means that we had to travel to Washington DC for what equated
to about 10 minutes worth of paperwork and 30 seconds of fingerprinting. In any
case, we enjoyed our short stay in DC and had the chance to catch up with
family and friends.
Here is
our delegation outside of the Embassy of Angola in Washington, DC after
applying for our travel visas.
As the
only public professional on the trip, my primary goal is to put into practice
components of the three core functions of public health.
To my
students: Name the three core functions of public health...I'm going to assume
you were shouting *Assessment, Policy Development, and Assurance* Now,
how do you think operationalizing the three core functions changes when you're
working outside of the U.S.? We'll talk about this in class.
Thanks
for joining me on my continued international public health adventures!
